Union commander William Rosecrans gestures
toward the onrushing Confederates during the
height of the Battle of Stones River. It would
take two days of fighting to decide the victor.F
or the weary troops of the Army of
the Cumberland, there was precious
little sleep to be had in the farm fields
and cedar thickets northwest of
Murfreesboro, Tennessee. For four days,
the men had battled driving rain and
ankle-deep mud as they groped their way
southeast from Nashville in search of their
Rebel opponents. By the evening of
December 30, 1862, the Federals were
miserably camped, many without tents,
on sodden ground that offered little com-
fort from the cold night air.
Senior officers fared little better. Maj.
Gen. Alexander McCook, commander of
the army’s right wing, was curled up in the
corner of a rail fence when he was
abruptly wakened a little after 2 AMby
two of his subordinates, Brig. Gens. Phil
Sheridan and Joshua Sill. The officers, for-
mer roommates at the U.S. Military Acad-
emy at West Point, were agitated; for sev-
eral hours, Sill had listened as Confederate
troops moved in the darkness across his
front, heading, he was certain, to strike
the army’s exposed flank.
A bleary-eyed McCook listened for
some time then enjoined Sheridan and Sill
not to worry. The right flank would hold
just fine, he announced, and he further
doubted “that there was a necessity for
any further dispositions.” While McCook
fell back asleep, Sheridan and Sill, disap-
pointed that they had gotten nowhere
with the wing commander, returned to
their troops. It was not the first time, lit-
erally or figuratively, that McCook had
been caught napping.
That October, commanding the left
flank of the Army of the Ohio at Per-
ryville, Kentucky, his wing had been the
target of a Confederate surprise attack.
McCook, whose command had been
badly chewed up in the subsequent fight-
ing, did little to improve his reputation.
Ohio Colonel John Beatty regarded him
as little more than an overrated “chuckle-
head” who was “deficient in the upper
story.” The army’s overall commander,
Maj. Gen. Don Carlos Buell, fared even
worse. Repeatedly prodded by the Lincoln
administration to mount a vigorous pur-CWQ-Sum16 Stones River_Layout 1 4/20/16 4:45 PM Page 83