No Better Place to Die- The Battle of Stones River by Peter Cozzens

Author:Peter Cozzens
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9780252062292
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Published: 2015-11-05T13:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER ELEVEN

OUR BOYS WERE FORCED BACK IN CONFUSION

IT was noon. Six hours earlier a double line of blue had extended from Stones River to the Franklin road. Now only a tangled remnant remained to receive the eleven Butternut brigades approaching the Nashville Turnpike. Should any of them sever that vital artery, it might cost Rosecrans the battle and, conceivably, much of his army.

Rains had lunged at the turnpike alone and met with disaster. Undaunted, Ector was about to repeat that error. His failure to support Rains had doomed the attack; now Harper's inability to keep pace with Ector was to have the same result. McCown either was unaware that the two brigades had separated or was unable to reunite them, and Ector's men stepped out of the cedars alone.

They could not have struck a better-prepared segment of the Union line had Rosecrans guided them in himself. The units facing Ector were virtually the only fresh troops left to Rosecrans. Directly opposite the Texan, on the rise near the Cowan graveyard between the turnpike and the railroad, lay Morton's Pioneers, Stokes's Chicago Board of Trade Battery, and Battery B, Pennsylvania Light Artillery. And in a cedar glade beyond Ector's left, Sam Beatty's as yet uncommitted brigade paused to enfilade the Rebel flank.

Raising the rebel yell, the Texans surged into the open fields. Ector's right regiments enjoyed initial success as they crested the small but commanding knoll on the west side of the turnpike that today marks the battlefield park headquarters. There they settled in to trade blows with Morton's Second and Third battalions. On the left, however, the Texans found trouble the moment they came into range. Lured by the invisibility of Sam Beatty's brigade, the Fifteenth Texas advanced some three hundred yards before its skirmishers uncovered the enemy. The Texans surged forward and chased the Yankee skirmishers another three hundred yards before running into Beatty's main line. Colonel Andrews brought up the remainder of the Fifteenth, and the two lines disappeared in smoke.

Despite the advantages of surprise and cover, Beatty's troops were wavering. The human debris from the Right Wing that Ector had swept before him nearly stampeded them before they were able to form a line of battle. “They broke through the lines of the brigade,” complained Beatty, “infantry, cavalry, artillery, ambulances, baggage trains, etc. in the greatest confusion, frequently separating the regiments of the brigade, threatening serious trouble.” Major Charles Manderson of the Nineteenth Ohio, in front with the Ninth Kentucky, agreed: “This scene was one of disorder and panic. Regiment after regiment swept our lines in the greatest confusion; but through it all our men preserved an unbroken front.” Nerves were less steady in the second line. The Seventy-ninth Indiana, a new three-year regiment in action for the first time, almost collapsed under the weight of the troops retreating through its ranks. Before irreparable damage could be done, Colonel Frederick Knefler wisely instructed his Hoosiers to lie down. The men were grateful, and “they clung a little closer to the bosom of Old Mother earth than they had ever done before.

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