| |
Did
You Know...?
Ten Crawford County men were killed in the Battle of Stones River during
the Civil War? In late 1862, the Union effort was not going well
and Major General Rosecrans was expected to get positive results with
his 14th Army Corps. Rosecrans was based in Nashville and
Confederate General Braxton Bragg and his Army of Tennessee had its
winter quarters in Murfreesboro, 30 miles southeast of Nashville, along
the railroad and the Nashville Pike. On December 26, 1862,
Rosecrans started out from Nashville to meet and engage the enemy and
drive him out from central Tennessee. The two armies aligned
themselves in a north-south line astride the railroad and the pike with
the bulk of both forces south of the highway. The Stones River ran
near the pike but was north of the road. Bragg's army was divided
into two Corps; Rosecrans' army into three wings. As night fell
December 30, both sides were planning a major attack for the next
morning. Coincidentally, both commanders were planning an attack
on the right of their opponent's lines. Rosecrans planned to force
Bragg away from his communication line on the railroad; Bragg planned to
sweep the Union into a bend in the river and destroy them. Bragg
just got his attack started earlier than Rosecrans. At daylight,
the Confederate infantry shocked the Union troops who were outflanked
and retreated back towards the highway. Unfortunately for the
Confederates, their pursuit drew them farther west than Bragg's plan had
called for, causing much confusion between units and spreading out the
Confederate line. The only Union troops prepared were Brigadier
General Phil Sheridan's division which was forced to pull back but his
stand blunted and delayed the progress of the Confederates. By
nightfall, the Union army had been pushed back and rested entirely along
the railroad and pike, but they still had control of their lines of
communications back to their base in Nashville. Bragg expected to
see the Union withdrawn the next day, but as the sun came up, the Union
troops were still in place. Both sides rested that day.
Finally, on January 2, Bragg ordered Breckenridge to attack some Union
troops that held a hill on the north side of the river that commanded
some of his lines. Breckenridge, unsure about the order, moved his
troops forward and drove the Union off the hill, but as his troops
pursued, they came into range of massed artillery on the other side of
the river that decimated his forces, forcing them to withdraw.
Bragg pulled his forces back to a line south of Murfreesboro, ending the
Battle of Stones River, a move that incensed Bragg's subordinates.
The battle so weakened both armies, that neither moved out of camp for
six months. Total casualties for the two days of fighting were
over 23,000 for both sides, which included these ten Crawford County
men: William H. Dean, James G. Gilmore, Henry Hardy, Alfred
Harrison, Solomon Jones, Henry B. Longnecker, John W. Martin, Joseph W.
Maxwell, Allen Patton and Hiram C. Phillips. Taken from http://ilgenweb.net
More
information about Palestine's history can be found in books and
newspaper articles here at the library. |
