Colonel Arthur Manigault. The South Car-
olinian led his troops into the same
firestorm that had chewed up Loomis.
Advancing without support, the Confeder-
ates were sent reeling back across the field.
Despite his division’s admirable perfor-
mance in the face of repeated attacks, Sheri-
dan nonetheless deemed it high time to pull
the troops back to better ground. His men
were running low on ammunition; worse
yet, it was obvious that the Rebels were
regrouping for a concerted push for the
Wilkinson Pike.
Sheridan narrowly extricated his division
before the blow struck. Desperate to get his
troops back to better defensible ground,
Sheridan ordered Colonel George Roberts’s
brigade to mount a counterattack into the
advancing Confederates. Roberts, who
defiantly exposed himself in front of his
own line, histrionically appealed for his
men to rely on cold steel. “Don’t fire a
shot!” he shouted. “Drive them with the
bayonet!” His brigade tore into Mani-
gault’s brigade and gave Sheridan a brief
but much-needed breathing spell
Along the Nashville Pike, Rosecrans was
painfully slow to comprehend the magni-
tude of the looming disaster. Prior to
launching his own attack earlier that
morning, the general had, as was custom-
ary, heard Mass along with his friend andchief of staff, Lt. Col. Julius P. Garesché.
He then optimistically sent two of Crit-
tenden’s divisions across Stones River in
execution of his planned attack on Bragg’s
right. Due to a lack of clear information,
Rosecrans remained blissfully unaware
that his right had caved in. After receiving
the first vague reports from the right wing,
Rosecrans remained confident that every-
thing was proceeding as planned. “It is
working right,” he announced to his staff.
If McCook could maintain his ground,
“we will swing into Murfreesboro and cut
them off.”
Such an assessment was utterly discon-
nected from reality, a fact that became
increasingly apparent. When Rosecrans
received word that Willich’s brigade had
been obliterated, he sprang to action with
characteristic energy, immediately order-
ing one of Thomas’s divisions under the
command of Maj. Gen. Lovell Rousseau
to shore up the line on Sheridan’s right. At
the same, he called back the two divisions
he had sent across Stones River. Far from
assuming the offensive, Rosecrans was
locked in a desperate defensive battle that
threatened the destruction of his entire
army.
As the battle raged unabated on the right,
Federal officers enjoyed mixed success as
they frantically attempted to rally their bro-ken and disordered commands. The tan-
gled cedar thickets and farm fields south of
the Wilkinson Pike were the scene of a
bloody running fight that took a horrific
toll of life. “I cannot remember ever seeing
more dead men and horses and captured
cannon, all jumbled together,” recalled Pri-
vate Sam Watkins of the 1st Tennessee.
“The ground was literally covered with
blue coats dead.” While Manigault
regrouped his disordered brigade, he found
help in the form of Brig. Gen. George
Maney’s Tennesseans. Manigault’s men
had been taking a beating from two Federal
batteries, those of Captains Charles
Houghtalling and Asahel Bush, that had
the South Carolina troops trapped in a
deadly crossfire.
The two brigadiers agreed to launch their
troops at the batteries in unison, Maney at
Bush and Manigault at Houghtalling.
Bush’s battery fled before Maney could
close on the position, and the Tennessean
assumed that Manigault had already seized
Houghtalling’s guns as well. The South
Carolinian, however, was nowhere to be
found. When Maney’s luckless troops
approached Houghtalling’s battery, which
they unaccountably assumed to be friendly,
they were greeted by a murderous salvo
that disabused them of the notion. While
Houghtalling’s Illinoisans banged away atCWQ-Sum16 Stones River_Layout 1 4/20/16 4:45 PM Page 89