earned his general’s stars in short order.
Wielding a keen intellect, Cleburne had
likewise proved himself a fierce fighter who
kept a cool head in action.
By dawn on New Year’s Eve, Federal
troops went about their morning routine
with misplaced nonchalance. Rations were
cooked, coffee was boiled, and arms
remained stacked. The enlisted men were
largely in the dark regarding the tactical sit-
uation, and most of their officers were
equally detached. On the far right, Brig.
Gen. August Willich was sanguine that the
Confederates posed no serious threat in his
sector. “They are so quiet out there,” he
remarked to a fellow officer, “that I guess
they are all no more here.”
At 6:30 AMsuch illusions were shattered.
Federal pickets could hardly believe their
eyes. Out of the morning mist stepped a
fearsome line of Rebel infantry, advancingin ominous silence. The attack was spear-
headed by McCown, arrayed in a three-
brigade front that easily overlapped the Fed-
eral right; Cleburne followed 500 yards
behind. The center of McCown’s line was
held by Brig. Gen. Mathew Ector’s brigade,
a tough outfit largely composed of dis-
mounted Texas cavalry. Northern batteries
frantically opened up on the Confederates
but failed to halt their progress. Federal
Brig. Gen. Edward Kirk, in a desperate bid
to buy time, ordered his 34th Illinois to
attack the Rebels. The Illinoisans went for-
ward gamely but were quickly brushed
aside, leaving the exposed Federal position
wide open.
There was little time for startled Union
troops to react. Coming on at the double
quick and howling like Indians, the Texans
tore into the Federal line. Kirk’s brigade,
which bore the brunt of the initial
onslaught, fought briefly and then disinte-
grated. Kirk was carried from the field with
a shattered hip. Although the Confederates
had run a gauntlet of artillery fire, the con-
test with Kirk’s infantry was over almostas soon as it began. The assault was “like
a storm taking them completely by sur-
prise,” recalled a delighted Captain John
Lavender of the 4th Arkansas. “Their cof-
fee pots was on the fire frying their meal,
guns in stacks.”
With Kirk scattered, the full weight of the
Confederate juggernaut fell on Willich’s
brigade. Cut off from the rest of the divi-
sion, Willich’s hapless troops took the
weight of Ector’s brigade full in the flank.
Isolated groups of Federal troops put up a
hopeless fight, but most fled in complete
disorder. They had, sometimes literally,
been caught with their pants down. A lieu-
tenant in the 14th Texas recallied that
“many of the Yanks were either killed or
retreated in their night clothes.” Hundreds
were taken prisoner during the chaotic
rout, including Willich, who was snatched
up by exuberant Texans.
In little more than 30 minutes of whirl-
wind fighting, the two brigades occupying
Rosecrans’s right flank had been nearly
obliterated. McCown’s troops, exhilarated
that the enemy had crumbled so quickly,Colonel John Beatty’s Union brigade, composed of
Midwestern troops from Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky,
reinforce the right flank against Maj. Gen. Patrick
Cleburne’s Confederates. Beatty was soon forced
back with heavy losses.CWQ-Sum16 Stones River_Layout 1 4/20/16 4:45 PM Page 86