Thursday Jan. 2 1862
MCCLELLAN MAKING MILITARY, MEDICAL MUDDLE

The first New Year’s holiday of the War had come and gone, and both sides were frustrated and in states of confusion. In the North, Gen. George McClellan had bullied and backstabbed his way to command of the Army of the Potomac, and indeed was turning it from an undisciplined, untrained mob into something more resembling an army. Unfortunately he was unwilling to put them to use in anything resembling a battle, and had then come down with typhoid fever, rendering him incapacitated for weeks. In the South, some of the initial patriotic fervor was wearing a little thin. Newspapers such as the Memphis, Tenn., “Argus” were noting that the Confederate armies were taking huge numbers of men out of productive work, and they weren’t doing any fighting either. Plus, taxes were too high.



Friday Jan. 2 1863
BRECKINRIDGE, BRAGG BATTLE BRAVELY

The Battle of Stones River, or Murfreesboro, had been going on since Tuesday and showed no signs of being over yet. Confederate Gen. John C. Breckenridge’s “Orphan Brigade” did the major part of the fighting today, taking, after heavy battle, a small hill on the north side of the river. They held it only briefly, though, being pushed off with heavy losses. This allowed overall commander Bragg to wire to Jefferson Davis in Richmond that they had won a great victory. The early winter sunset called a halt to action, with both sides hoping desperately that their opponents would withdraw, which was the usual way of figuring out who won Civil War battles.

Battle of Stones River concludes
The battle of Stones River concludes when the Union troops of William Rosecrans defeat Confederates under Braxton Bragg at Murfeesboro, just south of Nashville. This battle was a crucial engagement in the contest for central Tennessee, and provided a Union victory during a very bleak period for the North.

The end of 1862 found Rosecrans's Army of the Cumberland in Nashville, thirty miles north of Bragg's troops. Rosecrans assumed command of the army only in October, with the understanding that he would attack Bragg and drive the Confederates from central Tennessee. This move was delayed throughout the fall by John Morgan's cavalry, who harassed the federals and threatened their supply line. Finally, the day after Christmas, Rosecrans moved his force south to meet Bragg.

The armies collided along Stones River on New Year's Eve. Facing a larger Union force (42,000 Union soldiers to 35,000 Confederates), Bragg launched an attack in bitterly cold morning fog against the Yankees' right flank. The attack was initially successful in driving the Union back, but the Yankees did not break. A day of heavy fighting brought frightful casualties, and the suffering was compounded by the frigid weather. The Confederates came close to winning, but were not quite able to turn the Union flank against Stones River. The new year dawned the next day with each army still in the field and ready for another fight.

The strike came on January 2, and the Confederates lost the battle. Bragg attacked against the advice of his generals and lost the confidence of his army. The Union troops repelled the assault, and Bragg was forced back to Chattanooga. The North was in control of central Tennessee, and the Union victory provided a much-needed moral boost in the aftermath of the disastrous Battle of Fredericksburg. Stones River was a hard-fought and very bloody engagement, with some of the highest casualty rates of the war. The Confederates lost 33 percent of their force, while 31 percent of the Union force was either killed, wounded, or missing. Combined casualties totaled nearly 25,000 men. Lincoln later wrote to Rosecrans, "...you gave us a hard victory which, had there been a defeat instead, the nation could scarcely have lived over."




Saturday Jan. 2 1864
WINTRY WINDS WITHER WARFARE

The inactivity that had marked the end of last year was still continuing into this one. A major reason for this was a massive cold front which had come down visit from Canada, and subjected such Southern towns as Cairo, Illinois and Memphis, Tennessee, to temperatures far below freezing. All the way to the Gulf of Mexico thermometers and people were subjected to uncommon frigidity. The only military action that was even proposed was a plan put forth by US Naval Secretary Gideon Welles for a joint Army-Navy attack on Wilmington, North Carolina. This notion made it as far as the desk of Secretary of War Stanton, who sent it to Major Gen. Halleck. Halleck vetoed the whole idea on the grounds that all the armies were busy or too far away, and therefore, he could not provide manpower for the project.



Monday, Jan. 2 1865
BUTLER BOONDOGGLE BACKFIRES BADLY

One would like to think that after all this time, the United States high command would have figured out that Gen. Benjamin Butler had only one real talent, administrating occupied Southern cities. As an engineer he was a disaster, and as a fighting commander he was a catastrophe to his own men. Admiral David D. Porter, who had commanded the naval arm of the attack on Wilmington, wrote a private letter to General of the Armies U.S. Grant, saying that the attack was perfectly feasible under another Army commander. Grant promised swift action. Ben Butler was, unfortunately, given another job, in engineering this time. He was handed a huge corps of black laborers and allowed to use them to dig a canal through a bight of the James River, to bypass some heavily defended cliffs below Richmond and permit a naval attack. Time would tell.