graduated in the West Point Class of 1855
and cut his teeth fighting Comanche on the
southern plains. Badly wounded during a
fight in 1859, Hazen was back in the field
as an Ohio colonel at the outbreak of the
war. He was also one of the toughest
brigade commanders in Crittenden’s left
wing. Hazen’s four regiments, the 41st
Ohio, 9th Indiana, 6th Kentucky, and
110th Illinois, were positioned across the
Nashville Pike and would defy the Army
of Tennessee for the better part of a day.
They were drawn up in a conspicuous
stand of timber that would forever be
remembered as the scene of unspeakable
carnage—the Round Forest.
Troops positioned in the vicinity of the
Round Forest had sparred with the Con-
federates since daybreak, but their first
major challenge came from Brig. Gen.
James Chalmers’s Mississippi brigade. Not
untypical for Confederate attacks that day,
Chalmers’s troops came forward unsup-
ported. Adding insult to injury, the 44th
Mississippi on Chalmers’s right went into
action woefully underequipped; many of
the troops were armed with what one staff
officer described as nearly inoperable
“refuse guns.” A number of unlucky sol-
diers carried no arms at all. Nevertheless,
the indomitable Mississippians improvised
and went forward with wooden staffs at
shoulder arms. It was a recipe for disaster.
As the brigade angled its way forward, it
divided when it reached the Cowan Farm
southeast of the Round Forest. Chalmers
personally led the bulk of his men to the
left of the farm, while two of his regiments
veered north. Both detachments stumbled
into a maelstrom. Chalmers and his men
slugged it out with the Federals from a dis-
tance of 50 yards. The unforgiving
exchange of musketry resulted in ghastly
and pointless carnage. While the defenders
of the Round Forest remained unmoved,
Chalmers’s brigade was torn to pieces. So
many of the Rebels littered the ground that
the scene was remembered as the “Missis-
sippi Half Acre.”
The attacks continued unabated. Brig.
Gen. Daniel Donelson led his fresh brigade
of Tennesseans in Chalmers’s wake andexecuted a bloody reprise of the earlier
attack. His command likewise split when it
reached the Cowan Farm, and Donelson
veered to the west of the Round Forest. The
Federals couldn’t help but watch the grand
attack with admiration. The Rebels came
on in crisp ranks, thought Brig. Gen. John
Palmer, and “it was not easy to witness that
magnificent array of Americans without
emotion.”
Donelson would have help. Brig. Gen.
Alexander Stewart’s Tennessee outfit came
into action on his left, driving back the Fed-
erals under the command of Brig. Gen.
Charles Cruft. General Thomas was quick
to react. Close at hand was a crack brigade
of U.S. Army regulars under the command
of Oliver Shepherd, still a lieutenant
colonel after two decades of service. Direct-
ing Shepherd to the dark cedar forest south
of the Nashville Pike, Thomas gave simple
orders. “Shepherd,” he said, “take yourmen in there and stop the Rebels.”
The regulars faced a harrowing crucible.
In an unforgiving toe-to-toe fight, the two
lines repeatedly unleashed shuddering vol-
leys into each other; both sides stubbornly
refused to yield an inch. “Men were falling
all along the line,” recalled an admiring
Federal staff officer, “but not one turned
his back to the enemy.” Ultimately, cool
discipline triumphed. The regulars suc-
ceeded in shattering Stewart’s advance but
paid a heavy price for it. After the smoke
cleared, 400 regulars lay dead or wounded
on the forest floor.
When Stewart’s and Donelson’s battered
brigades fled the field, it was growing
increasingly clear that Confederate troops
were unlikely to wrest the Round Forest
from Rosecrans, who had shifted so many
spare regiments to the threatened sector that
the area was now the most heavily manned
section of the battlefield. Bragg, however,
remained as committed as ever to seizing
the Round Forest, and the attack stub-
bornly continued, one brigade at a time,
constituting a truly senseless loss of life.
The next Confederate unit haphazardly
thrown into the meat grinder was Brig.
Gen. Daniel Adams’s outfit. Advancing
directly astride the Nashville Pike into the
teeth of Hazen’s fortress, Adams’s troops
were badly torn by Federal artillery and
small arms as they pressed the futile attack.
Their advance stymied by the persistently
troublesome impediment of the Cowan
Farm, Adams’s troops approached the
Round Forest badly deprived of momen-
tum. Sensing an opportunity, Colonel
George Wagner unleashed the 15th and
51st Indiana in an unexpected bayonet
charge. Taken aback by the Hoosiers,
Adams ordered a retreat.
Polk, however, was far from finished, but
unfortunately for the common soldiers des-
tined to do the actual fighting and dying,
the high command had clearly run out of
fresh tactical ideas. The bishop launched a
further series of attacks toward the Round
Forest that were clearly doomed to failure
and executed with little enthusiasm. Three
more brigades, those of John Jackson, John
Palmer, and William Preston, accomplishedTOP: A bugler with the 9th Indiana, one of four Union
regiments to grimly hold off Confederates in the
Round Forest. ABOVE: Union Generals August Willich,
left, and William B. Hazen.CWQ-Sum16 Stones River_Layout 1 4/20/16 4:46 PM Page 92