by Michael Haskew

For more than eight hours, Hazen's four regiments, the 9th Indiana, 6th Kentucky, 110th Illinois and 41st Ohio, stood their ground in the face of unrelenting Confederate pressure. Hazen described the action: "Upon this point, as a pivot, the entire army oscillated from front to rear the entire day....I dispatched word to the rear that assistance must be given, or we must be sacrificed...and gave orders to Lieutenant-Colonel Wiley to fix his bayonets and to Colonel Casey (without bayonets) to club his guns and hold the ground at all hazards."

Using his interior lines to great advantage, Rosecrans was able to bolster threatened areas of his defensive perimeter by shifting troops only short distances. This he did without regard for command or unit organization. At various times during the day Hazen was reinforced by units from Rousseau, Palmer, Van Cleve, Negley, Wood and Sheridan.

Late in the afternoon, Bragg ordered Breckinridge to release four brigades to Polk for a final assault in the fading light. Polk, however, doomed this desperate attack to failure from the outset by sending in the brigades piecemeal. First the men of Brig. Gens. Daniel Adams and John K. Jackson were sacrificed with heavy losses. Then those of Brig. Gen. William Preston and Colonel Joseph Palmer met a similar fate.

As Hazen's men began to waver under Confederate pressure, Rosecrans rode forward with his staff to rally them. In their gallop to the line, Rosecrans and his staff exposed themselves to Rebel fire. A cannon shot crashed through the trees and bounded along the ground like a bowling ball. The missile passed just wide of Rosecrans and struck his chief of staff, Colonel Julius P. Garesche, in the face. Rosecrans' overcoat was splattered with his close friend's blood. Garesche's headless body stayed astride its mount for 20 paces before falling lifeless to the earth.

Rosecrans rode bravely into the Round Forest, unaware that several members of his staff had been killed or wounded. A number of soldiers close by urged him to take cover, but the general bravely responded: "Men, do you know how to be safe? Shoot low! But to be safest of all, give them a blizzard, and then charge with cold steel!"

The Confederate attempts to carry the Round Forest failed at terrible cost to both sides. The determined Southerners had thrown the strength of 10 brigades against the Federal position, but still could not dislodge the defenders. As the cold and darkness of night closed in, the sheen of a bright moon revealed the sad carnage of the day, and the horrors of war became vividly evident.

In the winter chill, Hazen searched near the railroad tracks for the body of his friend Garesche. Rigor mortis had set in, and the dead man's hand was outstretched as if to greet Hazen's burial detail. Hazen removed Garesche's West Point class ring and the latter's well-worn copy of Thomas A. Kempis' book, The Imitation of Christ. The body was removed and temporarily interred on a small knoll as Hazen looked on, shivering in a borrowed, blood-stained blanket.

Bragg, flush with victory, cabled Richmond with news of the day's events as the last hours of 1862 passed into history. "God has granted us a happy new year," he informed the Confederate high command, fully expecting to find the Union army in complete retreat at sunrise.

As Rosecrans' exhausted soldiers bivouacked for the night, the Union generals discussed the possibility of retreating. He concluded, however, that his men still had plenty of fight left--he would remain on the field. But he would have to reform his line to meet the possibility of a renewed Confederate attack. Through sheer force of character and organizational skill, Rosecrans consolidated his battered forces during the night, reassuring his subordinates and encouraging the soldiers in the lines to be prepared for a renewal of the bitter contest at daylight.

While his adversary worked through the night, Bragg went to bed without changing troop dispositions at all. He expected to catch the Army of the Cumberland in the open on the road back to Nashville on the first day of 1863. He thus was surprised and chagrined to find the Union soldiers still in position to give battle on New Year's Day and lapsed into deep depression. For a while the Rebel general entertained the faint hope that the Union army might still retreat, but that was not to be, and Bragg's men spent the day occupying the abandoned Round Forest and caring for the many wounded.

The next day it came to Bragg's attention that the Federals had reoccupied some high ground on his right, east of Stones River. These troops threatened the Rebel flank, and Bragg determined to dislodge them. Once again he called upon Breckinridge. A 4 p.m. attack, Bragg theorized, would take the position and allow his troops to dig in at dusk, with nightfall preventing a Union counterattack. Again Breckinridge was hesitant. The Union line looked virtually impregnable. His Kentucky and Tennessee veterans were anything but lacking in courage, but they would have to cross several hundred yards of open ground, exposed to Federal artillery from the ridges on both sides of Stones River.

Bragg was insistent, and once again tempers flared. Breckinridge, however, acceded to his commander's order. He placed Brig. Gen. Roger W. Hanson's famed Orphan Brigade in the front line, along with the Tennesseans of Brig. Gen. Gideon Pillow. In the second line, some 200 yards back, were the units of Preston and Colonel Randall Gibson.

All the while, Brig. Gen. Samuel Beatty's Union division watched from the heights. Rosecrans also took notice of the Confederates massing for attack and assembled reinforcements. Major John Mendenhall, Crittenden's chief of artillery, rolled up 58 cannons, almost carriage to carriage, on a hill just west of the river.
Breckinridge rose at 4 p.m. and shouted in a booming voice, "Up my men, and charge!" The Union guns thundered and tore great holes in the lines of advancing Rebels, who closed ranks and pressed forward. The men of the 2nd and 6th Kentucky and 18th Tennessee swept up the crest of the ridge, driving the Federals before them.

Breckinridge's troops had surprised even themselves with their dazzling success, but now it was time to stop and consolidate their position. Instead, they kept up their pursuit of the fleeing Union soldiers and came into full view of Mendenhall's artillery. The carnage was incredible. Within minutes the Confederates were in headlong retreat as Union gunners rained a terrible fire on their enemy.

Hanson was mortally wounded in the fighting, and a Union counterattack retook the ridge. Breckinridge's ravaged troops struggled back to their original positions. The general was wracked with grief as he surveyed his shattered command. He was raging like a wounded lion as he passed the different commands from right to left, but tears streamed from his eyes when he beheld the remnant of his own old brigade. "My poor Orphans! My poor Orphans! My poor Orphan Brigade! They have cut it to pieces," he wailed.

During the night, Bragg, on the advice of Polk and Hardee, decided to retreat to Tullahoma, 36 miles south. Rosecrans allowed the Confederates to move unmolested and entered Murfreesboro on January 4. Bragg's Army of Tennessee, having lost 9,239 casualties, or 27 percent of its fighting men, went into winter quarters at Tullahoma. The Army of the Cumberland suffered 9,532 killed and wounded, a loss of 23 percent.

The Confederate withdrawal left Rosecrans in possession of the field and constituted a costly, if somewhat qualified, victory for the North. After teetering on the brink of disaster, the Federals had stood firm and forced their enemy back on the defensive. Kentucky would remain free of organized Confederate units with the exception of infrequent cavalry raids, and Nashville would remain a key base of supply, especially useful in the campaign to capture Chattanooga that Rosecrans, even now, was planning for the coming spring.