The aftermath of the battle in the cedars was horrific.
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While Federal forces successfully delayed the Confederate onslaught during the opening hours of the Battle of Stones River, it was far from a Yankee victory.
It fact, the morning of Dec. 31, 1862 would have been a complete rout, if the Army of Tennessee had attacked en mass instead of brigade after brigade.
The far left of the Union right, under command of Brig. Gen. Phillip Sheridan, had held and bloodied the nose of the Confederates in the process, causing a late morning lull in the fighting just off Wilkinson Pike near what now is called Murfreesboro's Gateway Center.
Sheridan, his troops sheltered by cedar brakes and limestone outcroppings, needed to drop back.
"A lull followed the third fierce assault, and an investigation showed that, with the exception of a few rounds in my brigade, our ammunition was entirely exhausted," he wrote in his memoirs. "While it was apparent that the enemy was reluctant to renew the conflict in my front, yet I was satisfied I could not hold on much longer without the danger of ultimate capture."
A third of Sheridan's division had been killed or wounded in the holding action.
"I had already three brigade commanders killed; a little later I lost my fourth – Colonel Schaefer," he said.
As the troops of Maj. Gen. Lovell H. Rousseau's division were moved up to replace Sheridan's men, the Third Division of the Army of the Cumberland discovered withdrawing was easier said than done.
Rousseau was a Kentucky Unionist whose stint in the U.S. House of Representatives was best known for his assault on Rep. Josiah Grinnell of Iowa. Grinnell was an abolitionist minister. Rousseau was tall, 6-feet-2 and was often compared to another famous Kentuckian, Abraham Lincoln, in that he was self-educated, rising from poverty on the frontier.
"The difficulties of withdrawing were very great, as the ground was exceptionally rocky, and the growth of cedars almost impenetrable for wheeled carriages," Sheridan said.
Artillery had to be pulled back by hand. Some was abandoned when troops found it impossible to pull them over the rock outcroppings.
Plus, Sheridan's division was nearly surrounded.
Capt. Henry Hescock's 1st Missouri Battery and Capt. Asahel Bush's 4th Indiana fired some 1,100 artillery rounds — each — during the previous hour. More than 80 of their horses had been killed and two of Bush's cannon were captured.
Gen. Lucius Polk's Tennesseans had overrun Capt. Charles Houghtaling's battery and many of his men were captured.
"What a scene! Death and blood everywhere. Colonel Harrington, bravely leading his 27th Illinois, was struck by a piece of a shell, which tore the jaws from his face," wrote Alexander Stevenson in his 1884 "The Battle of Stones River." Alexander served in the 42nd Illinois.
Nearly 40 percent of the 42nd and 22nd Illinois was killed or wounded and were out of ammunition when Sheridan approached commander Lt. Col. Nathan Walworth and pulled the regiments off the line.
They emerged between the lines of Gen. John Palmer's division.
Palmer, seeing Walworth, asked, "Colonel, where is the balance of the 42nd?"
"General," Walworth responded. "This is all there is left of the 42nd and 22nd."
"Great tears filled the general's eyes, as he glanced along these remnants as they filed past him with their flags _ flags tattered, torn, and shot to pieces, but saved —thank God! — after all," Stevenson said.
The rifle and artillery fire had similar effect on the cedar thickets in the area of the Slaughter Pen.
"Before the fight was over, the bullets had cut them down to such an extent that but a few were left standing; those that remained were stripped of their branches," Stevenson said.
While Sheridan had finally been forced to retreat, the Confederate forces attacking his position did not fare much better.
Confederate Private Sam Watkins was wounded in the arm and he walked back to a field hospital noticing all of the wounded and dead along the way.
"I overtook another man walking along. I do not know to what regiment he belonged, but I remember of first noticing that his left arm was entirely gone. His face was as white as a sheet. The breast and sleeve of his coat had been torn away, and I could see the frazzled end of his shirt sleeve, which appeared to be sucked into the wound," Watkins said.
"I looked at it pretty close, and I said, 'Great God!' for I could see his heart throb and the respiration of his lungs. I was filled with wonder and horror at the sight. He was walking along, when all at once he dropped down and died without a struggle or a groan."
While en route to the hospital, Watkins had yet another encounter, this time with a dead Union colonel, possibly Col. Fazilo Harrington of Robert's brigade. The Confederate private, like most of his compatriots, was in need of boots in the cold, Tennessee winter.
"I came across a dead Yankee colonel. He had on the finest clothes I ever saw, a red sash and fine sword. I particularly noticed his boots. I needed them, and had made up my mind to wear them out for him," Watkins wrote.
Despite his trepidations about robbing the dead, Watkins grabbed one foot and tried to pull off a boot.
"I happened to look up, and the colonel had his eyes wide open, and seemed to be looking at me. He was stone dead, but I dropped that foot quick. It was my first and last attempt to rob a dead Yankee."
Meanwhile, Sheridan's troops strived to pull themselves together and to re-equip with much-needed ammunition. As this point, the brigadier general finally encountered his commander, Maj. Gen. William S. Rosecrans, who directed him to come to the aid of Palmer's division and take position in a new line along the Nashville Pike.
"His usually florid face had lost its ruddy color, and his anxious eyes told that the disasters of the morning were testing his powers to the very verge of endurance, but he seemed fully to comprehend what had befallen us," Sheridan said.
"His firmly set lips and, the calmness with which his instructions were delivered inspired confidence in all around him; and expressing approbation of what my division had done, while deliberately directing it to a new point, he renewed in us all the hope of final victory, though it must be admitted that at this phase of the battle the chances lay largely with the enemy."
As his troops rested, Sheridan joined Rosecrans' party as they moved along the new Union line near the Nashville and Chattanooga Railroad. Across Stones River, an Alabama battery watched from Wayne's Hill, and spotting the headquarters' unit on horseback fired an artillery round. That was when the cannonball decapitated Rosecrans' chief of staff, Col. Julius Garesché.
Sheridan's men did not see any more action that day.
"The loss of my brigade commanders ¬– Sill, Roberts, Schaefer, and Harrington – and a large number of regimental and battery officers, with so many of their men, struck deep into my heart: My thinned ranks told the woeful tale of the fierce struggles, indescribable by words, through which my division had passed since 7 o'clock in the morning; and this, added to our hungry and exhausted condition, was naturally disheartening.
"The men had been made veterans, however, by the fortunes and misfortunes of the day, and as they went into their new places still confident of final success, it was plain to see that they felt a self-confidence inspired by the part they had already played," Sheridan concluded.
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