Everyone has heard of Gettysburg, but for the sheer ferocity of fighting, it is tough to match the horrendous stories of what happened in the fight for Tennessee in the battles of Stones River and Chickamauga.

This is the story of two armies and their equally different commanders, the Union army of the Cumberland led by the charismatic William Starke Rosecrans against the Confederate army of Tennessee and its hot-tempered commander Braxton Bragg.

As 1862 ended and the birth of a new year of war loomed on the horizon, an end to the bloodletting was nowhere in sight. It was a year that had just seen the horrific April fight at Shiloh, the incredible ineptness of McClellan in the Peninsula, the September bloodbath known as Antietam, and President Lincoln’s launch of a huge gamble in the Emancipation Proclamation—all followed by the near disaster for the union at Fredericksburg. It would be followed by a year that would see death, destruction, and a level of ferocity in warfare on a scale never before seen on the American continent. Of all the major battles of the Civil War, Stones River had the highest percentage of casualties on both sides. Although the battle itself was inconclusive, the Union army’s repulse of two Confederate attacks and the subsequent Confederate withdrawal were a much-needed boost to Union morale after the defeat at the Battle of Fredericksburg, as evidenced by Abraham Lincoln’s letter to General Rosecrans: “You gave us a hard-earned victory, which had there been a defeat instead, the nation could scarcely have lived over.”

It dashed Confederate aspirations for control of Middle Tennessee. The Confederate threat to Kentucky and Middle Tennessee was gone, and Nashville was secure as a major Union supply base for the rest of the war.

Daniel Korn

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