little more in their 11th-hour assaults than
to add to the carpet of dead and dying men
in front of the Round Forest.
Rosecrans himself narrowly avoided
death toward the close of the action. While
riding at the head of a group of officers, a
Confederate projectile flashed by the gen-
eral and struck his close friend Julius
Garesché. The shell carried away Garesché’s
head, and his horse plunged another 50
yards before the officer’s body fell to the
ground. Rosecrans kept his composure
through the macabre incident and tersely
expressed his view of a soldier’s lot. “Brave
men,” he remarked, “die in battles.”
It was a stark assessment that could just
as easily apply to the thousands of men
who were killed or maimed during the
opening day’s fighting at Stones River. As
darkness fell, the troops in both armies
instinctively collapsed after enduring 10
solid hours of grueling combat. During the
course of the daylong struggle, the two
opposing armies had brutalized each other
in some of the worst fighting in American
history. The once pastoral fields and forests
outside of Murfreesboro had been trans-
formed into a bloody shambles littered
with human wreckage. In all, approxi-
mately 20,000 men were left killed,
wounded, or missing during the deadly
struggle west of Stones River.
The nightmarish ordeal left searing mem-
ories. Some of the dead, remembered
William Newlin of the 73rd Illinois,
appeared to be sleeping, “eyes closed,
hands at their sides, and countenances
unruffled. Others appeared as if their last
moments had been spent in extreme pain—
eyes open, and apparently ready to jump
from their sockets; hands grasping some
portion of their garments and their features
all distorted and changed. It was a sicken-
ing sight to look upon.”
The unspeakable bloodletting failed to
dissuade Bragg from maintaining the fight.
His troops had wrecked a good portion of
the Army of the Cumberland, battered in
the Federal right for about three miles, and
come tantalizingly close to ultimate victory
on the Nashville Pike. All in all, it seemed
to have been a promising start. “Weassailed the enemy at seven o’clock this
morning,” the general reported, and “have
driven him from every position except the
extreme left. With the exception of this
point we occupy the whole field.” Bragg
decided to sit tight and await develop-
ments, convinced that daylight would find
the Army of the Cumberland in full retreat.
In that belief he would be sorely disap-
pointed. In the candlelit confines of his
headquarters cabin, Rosecrans assembled
his army’s senior officers for a momentous
council of war. No one would readily admit
suggesting retreat, but the possibility was
discussed at length. Thomas and Critten-
den were for giving battle again. Although
McCook’s wing had clearly taken a severe
thrashing, the troops had fought remark-
ably well and exacted a steep price from
the Confederates. More importantly, the
lines had stabilized and battle-weary sol-diers, justifiably anxious for a little cover
on the morrow, were working feverishly to
throw up breastworks.
Before he made his decision, Rosecrans,
accompanied by McCook, rode east along
the pike. McCook later explained that
Rosecrans was looking for defensive posi-
tions to which he could fall back. Nearing
Overall Creek, the general spotted torches
in the distance. They were carried by his
own cavalry, but in the darkness he was
convinced that Confederates were prepar-
ing for a dawn assault. Returning to head-
quarters, Rosecrans explained that the
enemy had gotten “entirely in our rear and
are forming a line of battle by torchlight.”
The Army of the Cumberland, he
announced, had little choice but “to fight
or die.” By the closing hours of December
31, it was unclear which of those options
was the most likely to occur.Decapitated by a whooshing cannonball, Rosecrans’s aide, Colonel Julius P. Garesché, is buried by torchlight
on the battlefield. Garesché’s body was later reinterred at Mount Olivet Cemetery in Washington, D.C.CWQ-Sum16 Stones River_Layout 1 4/20/16 4:46 PM Page 93