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The Battle
of Stones River
(Murfreesboro)
December 31 -
January 2, 1863
By
Brian Brown
After Gen. Braxton Bragg's
defeat at Perryville, Kentucky,
October 8, 1862, he and his Confederate Army of the Mississippi retreated, reorganized, and were
re-designated as the Army of Tennessee. They then advanced to Murfreesboro, Tennessee,
and prepared to go into winter quarters. Maj. Gen. William S.
Rosecrans's Union Army of the Cumberland followed Bragg from Kentucky to Nashville.
Rosecrans left Nashville
on December 26, with about 45,000 men, to defeat Bragg's
army. He found Bragg's army on December 29 and went
into camp that night, within hearing distance of the Rebels. At dawn on the
31st, Bragg's men attacked the Union right flank.
The Confederates had driven the Union line back to the Nashville Pike by 10:00
am but there it held. Union reinforcements arrived from Rosecrans's
left in the late forenoon to bolster the stand and before fighting stopped that
day, the Federals had established a new, strong line. On New Years Day, both
armies marked time. Bragg surmised that Rosecrans would now withdraw, but the next morning he was
still in position. In late afternoon, Bragg hurled a
division at a Union division that, on January 1, had crossed Stones River
and had taken up a strong position on the bluff east of the river. The
Confederates drove most of the Federals back across McFadden's Ford, but with
the assistance of artillery, the Federals repulsed the attack, compelling the
Rebels to retire to their original position. Bragg
left the field on the January 4-5, retreating to Shelbyville and Tullahoma, Tennessee.
Rosecrans did not pursue, but as the Confederates
retired, he claimed the victory. Stones
River boosted Union
morale. The Confederates had been thrown back in the east, west, and in the
Trans-Mississippi.
THE SKIRMISH ON OUR
NORTHERN BORDER
Sale of
Civil War site proposed
Proposal would turn Carthage
battleground
into living history park
Susan Redden
Globe Staff Writer
2/17/06
CARTHAGE, Mo.
- A proposal to preserve land that was the scene of part of the Battle of
Carthage will be outlined at noon today at the Carthage Civil War Museum. Officials of Battle of Carthage
Inc. are to announce that the nonprofit group has obtained a purchase option
for land on which fighting took place on July 5, 1861.
Gordon Billheimer,
president of the organization, said the tract holds the potential to become a
commemorative and living-history park to recognize the important events that
happened in Missouri
at the start of the Civil War. "Many issues in our country
and in this area were impacted by the Civil War," he said. "It's
important that people understand it."
Billheimer said the group was
formed about seven or eight years ago and sponsored Battle of Carthage
re-enactments in 2000 and 2003. Money raised at the last event is "seed
money" for the purchase option. Details about the tract, the
purchase plan, and a fund-raising campaign will be announced today. Billheimer
said the property is north of Carthage
on Civil War Road.
A state historic site recognizing
the battle is located just east of Carthage
on Chestnut Street.
That tract is the location of one of the last skirmishes of the battle and was
a campsite for both armies - Union troops the night before the battle and
Confederate troops the following night. The battle was a running engagement
that spread over 10 miles. Col. Franz Sigel and his army of 1,100 fully armed men were sent to
Southwest Missouri to stop Missouri Gov. Claiborne Jackson's
army - 4,000 armed and 2,000 unarmed men - from joining Confederate troops in Arkansas.
On July 5, 1861, the troops met
about nine miles north of Carthage.
The most severe fighting took place at crossings of Dry Fork Creek, Buck Branch,
and Spring River. The Confederate Missouri State
Guard was victorious, but Union troops escaped the superior force with minimal
losses.
The battle happened more than two
weeks before the first Battle of Bull Run outside of Washington, D.C.
Billheimer, who is a Civil War re-enactor, said it has been recognized as the
first major land battle of the war. Sixteen other battles and skirmishes took
place in and around Carthage
during the war, he said.
KEEP
AN EYE OUT
Some things that may be coming this way:
A 2011 Committee is being formed to celebrate the Sesquicentennial of the
Civil War and the 100TH Anniversary of the UCV meeting in Little Rock.
The Military Museum has obtained an 1841 - 12-pound mountain
howitzer from Virginia.
Watch for Don
Hamilton’s excitement on this one.
Reed’s Bridge has finished the management study and is moving into the
acquisition phase.
 ARKANSAS 1861
March 1861
04 - Lincoln's
inaugural address. Union Secession convention members pay $75.00 for the text
to be wired to Little Rock.
Neither pro-Unionists nor pro-Secessionists cared for the speech at all.
04 - Arkansas Secession Convention convenes.
05 - "Test
vote" held for Convention chair, pro-Unionists win 40-35. The vote is
split geographically between yeoman farmers in the mountainous northwest and
planters in the delta.
06 - Two South Carolina visitors
are allowed to speak at the Convention. They stated that since South Carolina was responsible for Arkansas
being allowed into the Union, that Arkansas
should follow her out of it.
08 - Fire-eaters
at the Convention begin to lose patience when every attempt to draw up a
secession ordinance is voted down.
11 - Unionists in
good mood, rumor is that Lincoln will evacuate Charleston
Forts. Unionists vote to open each session with a prayer. Pro-secessionists are
exasperated.
12-15 - A titanic
display of Arkansans oratorical skills or lack thereof.
16 - Roll call
vote. Secession defeated 39-35. Thirty-nine guns are fired at Van
Buren in celebration. In the delta meetings are held advocating
division of the State. Secessionists manage to get a concession from the
convention that would allow a vote of the people.
State Seal Of
Arkansas
(1861)
Ordinance Of
Secession Of Arkansas
(Passed In The State Capitol At Little Rock On 06 May
1861, By A Vote Of
69-1.)
AN ORDINANCE
to dissolve the union now existing
between the State of Arkansas and the other
States united with her under the compact entitled "The Constitution of the
United States of America."
WHEREAS, in addition to the
well-founded causes of complaint set forth by this Convention, in resolutions
adopted on the 11th of March, A.D. 1861, against the sectional party now in
power in Washington
City, headed by Abraham Lincoln,
he has, in the face of resolutions passed by this Convention pledging the State
of Arkansas
to resist to the last extremity any attempt on the part of such power to coerce
any State that had seceded from the old Union,
proclaimed to the world that war should be waged against such States until they
should be compelled to submit to their rule, and large forces to accomplish this
have by this same power been called out, and are now being marshaled to carry
out this inhuman design; and to longer submit to such rule, or remain in the
old Union of the United States, would be disgraceful
and ruinous to the State of Arkansas:
Therefore we, the people of the
State of Arkansas,
in Convention assembled, do hereby declare and ordain, and it is hereby
declared and ordained, That the "ordinance and acceptance of compact"
passed and approved by the General Assembly of the State of Arkansas on the 18th day of October, A.D.
1836, whereby it was by said General Assembly ordained that by virtue of the
authority vested in said General Assembly by the provisions of the ordinance
adopted by the convention of delegates assembled at Little Rock for the purpose of forming a constitution
and system of government for said State, the propositions set forth in "An
act supplementary to an act entitled 'An act for the admission of the State of Arkansas into the Union,
and to provide for the due execution of the laws of the United States
within the same, and for other purposes,'" were freely accepted, ratified,
and irrevocably confirmed, articles of compact and union between the State of
Arkansas and the United
States, and all other laws and every other
law and ordinance, whereby the State of Arkansas
became a member of the Federal Union, be, and
the same are hereby, in all respects and for every purpose herewith consistent,
repealed, abrogated, and fully set aside; and the union now subsisting between
the State of Arkansas
and the other States, under the name of the United States of America, is hereby
forever dissolved.
And we do further hereby declare
and ordain, That the State of Arkansas hereby resumes to herself all rights and
powers heretofore delegated to the Government of the United States of America; that her
citizens are absolved from all allegiance to said Government of the United States, and
that she is in full possession and exercise of all the rights and sovereignty
which appertain to a free and independent State.
We do further ordain and declare,
That all rights acquired and vested under the Constitution of the United States of America,
or of any act or acts of Congress, or treaty, or under any law of this State,
and not incompatible with this ordinance, shall remain in full force and
effect, in nowise altered or impaired, and have the same effect as if this ordinance
had not been passed.
Adopted and passed in open
Convention on the 6th day of May, A.D. 1861
PROGRAMS 2006
January
24: Don Nall
Stonewall's Wounding and Death
Feb 28: Brian Brown
Stone's River
March 28: John C. Scott, NPS –
The Pea Ridge Story
including
Dr. Doug
Scott’s recent archeological
survey of the battlefield
April 25: Don Hamilton
A Day at Shiloh
May 23: Cal Collier
TBA
June 27:
TBA
July 25: Dr. Bobby Roberts
River War in Arkansas
August 22:
TBA
September 26:
Michael B. Dougan
Snarling
cormorants of newspaper filth:
"
The Civil War Press of Arkansas."
October 24:
TBA
November 28:
TBA
Election of Officers
December 2006 –
No meeting Scheduled in December
We Who Study
Must Also Strive To Save!
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"Edge of Conflict"
at the IMAX
AETN's "Edge of Conflict- Arkansas in the
Civil War" will be broadcasted onto the big screen at the Aerospace Education Center
at 7 pm on May 11. This event will be sponsored by AETN, the Arkansas Times,
KUAR, and the Aeropsace
Education Center.
At this event, the SCV, COC, UDC,
Reenactors from around the state, and the Civil War Roundtable of Arkansas will
have a direct involvement in promoting and being visible at this event. Mark
your calendars now for this Civil War extravaganza!
TENNESSEE CIVIL WAR SOURCEBOOK
http://www.civilwarsourcebook.com/
This sourcebook aims at
chronicling the military, economic, social, and political history associated
with the Civil War as it happened in Tennessee.
The sources consulted were diaries, period newspapers, official Civil War
records, diaries, ship deck logs, letters, and historical articles. There are
well over 7,000 entries in this collection.
When details of history are
obscured by circumstances of inscrutability, citizens may become imperfectly
informed of their own past and worse, distrustful of their institutions. This
work will have been successful should it be of some help in overcoming such a
state of affairs.
Of rebel raiders and the West
By Tom
Chaffin
TOM CHAFFIN is the author of the just-released book
"Sea of Gray: The Around-the-World Odyssey of
the Confederate Raider 'Shenandoah.' "
 FORT
POINT, A STATELY brick pile at the base of the San
Francisco side of the Golden Gate
Bridge, might be the most overlooked
landmark in California.
Literally and figuratively overshadowed by a world-famous landmark and a
storied view, it is the relic of a history that is as easy to miss as the fort
itself.
Between 1861
and 1865, 500 Army soldiers stood constant guard at Ft. Point, securing California's largest
(population 58,000) and richest city during the Civil War. Thousands of other
Union military forces were dispersed throughout the state.
California was anything but a passive bystander in America's
bloodiest conflict. Union and Confederate partisans had split, in large part,
over the question of whether the territories of the West and states such as California would be open
to the spread of slavery. When the war came, Confederate-Union conflicts,
including a handful of battles, flared on Western soil.
California entered the Union in 1850 as a free state, and Abraham Lincoln,
in the 1860 presidential race, managed to carry the state. But only barely. In
1861, slavery remained illegal in California,
but blacks lacked full rights, such as suffrage. Moreover, with the Gold Rush
of 1849, thousands of Southerners had streamed into the state, many of whom
favored the Confederacy. By the time, the war erupted, about 40% of California's white population of 380,000 hailed from
below the Mason-Dixon Line. U.S. officials in California thus faced the challenge of
tamping down open and clandestine Confederate insurgencies within the state and
preventing invasion by outside rebel forces.
In February
1861, two months before the Civil War's first shots, officials in the outgoing
administration of President James
Buchanan ordered the completion
and arming of Ft. Point, whose construction, begun in 1853, had languished.
They anticipated the fort's strategic importance in protecting the
"treasure steamers" that soon departed from San Francisco carrying eastbound gold donated
by patriotic Californians to Union coffers.
During the
war, the Confederacy launched eight major warships aimed at destroying
commercial shipping. Of those, the Shenandoah, a "commerce raider"
clandestinely purchased in Britain
and dispatched to prey on the whaling fleet, was the most feared along the West
Coast. A 220-foot auxiliary steamer — propelled by steam and wind — the
Shenandoah eventually became the only Confederate ship to circumnavigate the
globe. During the steamer's 13-month, 58,000-mile voyage, she destroyed 32
Union vessels.
By spring
1865, rumors in San Francisco
had the raider California-bound, intent on capturing a treasure steamer or even
laying siege to the city. One rumor suggested that San Francisco was so vulnerable that a ship
dispatched by the Shenandoah had already slipped into the port to procure
provisions for the raider.
Ironically, San Francisco's fears of
the Shenandoah reached their apogee in July 1865, three months after the Civil
War had formally concluded.
When sentries
at Ft. Point spotted a whaler, the Milo, approaching the Golden
Gate on July 20, 1865 — long before the end of the whaling season
— they surmised that she did not bring good news. Local newspapers soon
headlined sensational stories.
The
Shenandoah's Confederates, using their signature ruse — the flying of a false flag
— captured the Milo. They refused to believe
what the whalers told them: The South had surrendered months earlier. In
exchange for the Confederates' promise to save his ship, the Milo's captain had
to agree to transport his own crew and the Shenandoah's growing roster of
potentially mutinous prisoners to San
Francisco. The Shenandoah would go on to destroy 17
ships, including nine Yankee whalers burned on a single day in the Bering Strait.
In San Francisco, the cries
for retaliation mounted. Over the next few weeks, however, as the Shenandoah
failed to appear along the Pacific Coast of the U.S., the city breathed easier. By
then, the raider was off Mexico's
coast.
There, a
British merchantman had delivered — again — the news of the Confederacy's collapse.
This time, the Shenandoah's officers and crew believed it. The news meant that
for months they had been fighting without cause or state: In the eyes of the
world, they were no better than pirates, a hangable offense. Stowing their
cannons and camouflaging the ship as a merchant vessel, they commenced an
outlaw odyssey in search of a friendly port somewhere in the world.
California, and the
weary soldiers who stood the fog-shrouded vigil at Ft. Point, had weathered the
rebel threat. However, for the Confederates aboard the Shenandoah, their own
drama had suddenly grown infinitely darker and more complicated.
[EDITORS NOTE: Wordsworth
Bookstore in Little Rock
had a couple
of copies of this book. They are going fast.]
SEE YOU TUESDAY NIGHT
for The Battle of Stones River
Always Remember
Always Be Ready
VISIT
THE
BATTLEFIELDS
WHEN
YOU CAN...WHILE
YOU CAN
GOD
BLESS AMERICA
Copyright
©1997 Civil
War Roundtable of Arkansas
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