George Eggleston - The History of the Confederate War, Its Causes and Its Conduct. Volume 2 of 2

But the next day was passed in inaction on both sides, and it was not until the second of January, 1863, that the battle was renewed. Even then it was renewed only in part and obviously with no disposition on either side to bring on a general engagement. Nevertheless there was very bloody fighting on the part of the detachments engaged, in which the Confederate general, Breckinridge, becoming involved and being subjected to a concentrated artillery fire at short range, lost nearly two thousand men.

Two days later and after desultory fighting, General Bragg abandoned his position at Murfreesboro and retired to Duck river, where he fortified. He reported his losses in this battle – which is variously known as Murfreesboro, and Stone river – at 10,000 men, and declared that he had taken 6,000 prisoners. He had also captured thirty guns and lost three. On the other hand, General Rosecrans reported a loss of 8,778 in killed and wounded, and about 2,800 in prisoners lost to the enemy – a total of somewhat less than 11,000. The two reports are hopelessly at variance and irreconcilable, as to the number of prisoners taken, as was usually the case with the reports of battle losses at that period of the war. They were usually inaccurate and never trustworthy, as every historian who has honestly tried to find out the truth has learned to his annoyance.

But whatever the exact losses were on either side, they were far greater than were those of many more famous battles, and about as great as those of the battles commonly accounted as of superior proportions. Thus the loss admitted by the Confederates at Murfreesboro out of a force of about 35,000 or 40,000 men, was nearly twice that which Lee, with a force of 68,000, suffered at Fredericksburg; while the admitted Federal loss at Murfreesboro, where the army numbered 43,700 men, was very nearly as great as that sustained by Burnside's army of 120,000 at Fredericksburg, including the fearful slaughter in the six terrible assaults upon Marye's Heights.

Obviously the battle of Murfreesboro must be accounted one of the bloodiest struggles of the war, as well as one of the most heroically contested on both sides. Its indecisiveness has been very interestingly summed up by General Van Horne in his "History of the Army of the Cumberland" as follows:

Neither army commander had fully executed his plan of battle, although General Bragg had approached very nearly the completion of his. He had turned a flank of the National army, bent back the right to the rear of the center, but had failed to turn its left or reach its rear, and hence had not gained the extreme advantages which he had anticipated in assuming the offensive and [which he] had seemingly attained at the grand crisis of the battle. He had assaulted boldly and persistently from first to last, but had completely exhausted his army without gaining a decisive victory. General Rosecrans had fought a battle radically different from the one he had proposed for himself. Instead of turning the right of the Confederate army and taking its center in reverse, according to his plan, he had been forced into the most emphatic straits in maintaining the defensive from flank to flank. Both commanders had lost heavily; General Bragg by continuous assaults with massed forces, and General Rosecrans by resistance at each point to superior numbers, and by frequent recessions under the guns of the enemy… A battle whose emergencies of offense and defense involves the use of all reserves, must necessarily be a bloody one.

It is seldom that an engagement of such dimensions has left two commanding generals so much in doubt as to the course that either would adopt, and hence each determined to await developments, and each was ignorant of the purpose of the other. Of the two General Bragg was the more hopeful.

In the end, as we have seen, both armies fell back and fortified, and campaigning ended in the southwest for that season.

Other events of that winter may be briefly summarized.

Mr. Lincoln's emancipation proclamation became effective on the first of January.

The Confederate Congress passed a second conscription bill in February extending age limits both ways and putting practically every able-bodied white man in the South into the army.

The Federal Congress, on the third of March, authorized the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, thus virtually establishing martial law throughout the North.

A Confederate loan of $3,000,000 was promptly subscribed for in Europe.

On the seventh of April the fleet off Charleston assailed the defenses of that city, but was beaten off with the loss of one ironclad, the monitor, Keokuk, sunk.

However important the operations at the West and South might be, the vital seat of the war was always in Virginia.

There the contending armies ceaselessly threatened the two capitals, the conquest of either of which would have been decisive. There both sides concentrated their best armies. There was present the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia under Lee, of which General Hooker, after being overthrown and beaten by it, testified: "That army has, by discipline alone, acquired a character for steadiness and efficiency, unsurpassed, in my judgment, in ancient or modern times. We have not been able to rival it nor has there been any near approximation to it in the other rebel armies."

And there on the other side was present for duty that Army of the Potomac which had so distinguished itself for heroic devotion and unfaltering courage upon a score of desperately contested battlefields.

After Burnside's bloody defeat at Fredericksburg the authorities at Washington proceeded to swell the Army of the Potomac to vast proportions until as the spring of 1863 approached, its total was no less than 180,000 men and 400 guns. 2 2 These are the figures given by Col. Theodore A. Dodge, U. S. A. , in his singularly able monograph on "The Campaign of Chancellorsville," pages 2 and 19.

Meanwhile operations below Richmond had compelled Lee to detach about one fourth of his force, thus reducing his strength to a total of 58,100 men and 170 pieces of artillery.

There was one important difference, however. In Lee the Southerners had found their very ablest commander, a master of all the arts of war, and an absolute master of the hearts of all the men who served under his command.

The Army of the Potomac had been commanded in succession by McDowell, McClellan, Pope, McClellan again, and Burnside, no one of whom had manifested an ability to contend successfully with Lee, even with the unstinted resources given into the hands of each. The Army of the Potomac still lacked a capable commander and the lack was for long a determining factor of the problem.

Colonel Dodge, an officer of the United States army, and a historian of exquisite conscientiousness and high repute, puts the matter in these words:

Great as was the importance of success in Virginia, the Confederates had appreciated the fact as had not the political soldiers at the head of the Federal Department of War. Our resources always enabled us to keep more men, and more and better material, on this battle ground than the Confederates could do; but this strength was constantly offset by the ability of the Southern generals 3 3 Italics ours. Author. and their independence of action as opposed to the frequent unskilfulness of ours, who were not only never long in command, but were then tied hand and foot to some ideal plan for insuring the safety of Washington.

No impartial student of the history of the war can doubt that Colonel Dodge here touches the very marrow of the matter. In the operations in Virginia the North had more men, often by two or three to one, more guns and incalculably better supply departments. Their men were as good as the Southerners. Their guns were better, and their materials immeasurably superior both in quantity and quality. But until Grant was summoned from the West in 1864 to take command, the Army of the Potomac was commanded by no general who had capacity enough to make effective use of these superior advantages in a contest of strategic wits with Lee.