The Lost Gettysburg Address (19 page)

N
EW YEAR’S EVE DAY
dawned cold and dreary. A fine mist
made the air seem heavy. The brigades of
August Willich
and
Edward Kirk awoke about five o’clock in the morning,
anticipating a warm fire and a hot breakfast. These men had a first
look at their position and were pleased by what they saw. Most had
an open line of fire in front, sufficient cover in the form of cedar
breaks in their rear, and a potential escape path to the north ending
at the Gresham house. Brigadier General August Willich, one of the
most experienced officers in
Major General Rosecrans’s army,
protected the Army of the Cumberland’s exposed right flank. General
Edward N. Kirk, a veteran of the Battle of Shiloh, commanded the
brigade to the left of Willich, just across a small path called Gresham
Lane.
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Colonel Philemon Baldwin, commanding the Third Brigade in
the division of Richard Johnson, was with his men about a mile
behind the other two brigades. Baldwin had four regiments at his
disposal: the First Ohio, the Fifth Kentucky, the Sixth Indiana, and
Charles Anderson’s Ninety-Third Ohio. These men were in reserve,
positioned far enough back to respond to any threat to the Army of
the Cumberland’s right flank. Most of the men of the Ninety-Third
Ohio had been out scouting with cavalry half the night, after a tiring
march the previous day. Since Anderson’s men had been late in
arriving, Baldwin ordered them to take a position a few hundred yards
behind Willich and Kirk. Anderson complied, but the night was so
cold that his troops could not sleep. Feeling that they might rest
easier in a cedar break, he moved them back behind the other reserve
regiments of Baldwin’s brigade. This was against orders, but Baldwin
was already asleep. The mere happenstance of this move would save
many of Anderson’s men, as the very spot where the Ninety-Third
Ohio first camped became the focal point of the Confederate attack
just hours later.

On that cold and dreary day, the Army of the Cumberland was
deployed in a long north-south line paralleling the west fork of
Stones River to its east.
Rosecrans had more than forty-one
thousand men at his disposal. Their immediate objective was the town of
Murfreesboro two miles southeast of the river. More than thirty-five
thousand men from the Confederate Army of Tennessee, under the
command of
General Braxton Bragg, stood between Rosecrans and
his objective. Bragg had chosen Murfreesboro as a defensive position
to block what he believed to be Rosecrans’s ultimate goal of
capturing Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Rosecrans deployed his army in three sections in a line of battle
four miles long.
Major General Thomas L. Crittenden commanded
the army’s left wing. The center was led by
Major General George
H. Thomas. On the right wing,
Major General Alexander McCook
deployed his men in a long line with no natural obstacle to serve as an
anchor protecting his right flank. This would prove to be a vulnerable
position for the Union forces. Early that morning, General McCook
enjoyed a shave at his camp on the Gresham farm. As coffee boiled
and bacon simmered, the captain of one of his artillery batteries took
half of the unit’s horses five hundred yards to the rear for
watering. Elsewhere, the men in each of the three divisions under McCook
began to rouse themselves.

On the far right, at a salient angle where the north-south Union
line made an abrupt turn to the right, or west, the men of
Richard
Johnson’s division rose from their bedrolls. August Willich of the
First Brigade received an order from General Johnson to have his
troops armed and ready by daybreak, but the silence convinced
Willich that the enemy had departed. Edward Kirk had left three
of his Second Brigade regiments in a dense cedar break, rather than
move them to a clearing in front that would have afforded better
visibility for firing. After breakfast, Willich rode slowly north to confer
with Johnson, giving one of his colonels instructions should anything
happen while he was away. This lack of preparation would cost both
brigades dearly.

Meanwhile, Charles Anderson’s regiment and the rest of
Philemon
Baldwin’s Third Brigade were in the reserve camp about a mile
behind the Union front lines, just within the bounds of a large stand of
cedar trees. Anderson and his second-in-command,
Colonel Hiram
Strong, had spent the night at Johnson’s camp, returning to their
brigade at about six in the morning. Twenty minutes later, they heard
musket fire and before long the booming sounds of artillery from
the south, indicating that the battle had begun. Hours before, while
the Union brigades were eating a leisurely breakfast, Confederates
led by
Brigadier Generals Matthew D. Ector of Texas and
Evander McNair of Arkansas had formed their troops in ranks. With no
sustenance other than a small ration of whisky, the rebels smashed into
the Union right wing. McCook’s troops were caught completely by
surprise.

Sergeant Major Lyman Widney of the Thirty-Fourth Illinois
walked casually out toward the picket lines of Kirk’s brigade when
one of the soldiers ran toward Widney. As he passed, the soldier
exclaimed, “They’re coming!” Widney heard no firing, so he was
skeptical and moved further forward until he could see the enemy’s
breastworks. What he saw frightened him. A tide of men in gray
uniforms was pouring out of the defenses and onto the open field
in front of him. Widney hurried back to his regiment. In just
minutes they were under a tremendous attack. “They came down on us
like a tornado,” Widney remembered. His comrade,
Sergeant Arnold
Harrington, was shot through the knee joint. The men threw
themselves flat on the ground and commenced firing, while their six
cannons threw shells and grape shot over their heads into the onrushing
rebels. “It reminded me of the passage of a swarm of bees,” Widney
later wrote of the battle. In ten minutes, twenty-one men of the
regiment were killed and more than one hundred wounded.

The soldiers of the Thirty-Fourth Illinois fired only three rounds
each before they were forced to retreat. They began running through
an open corn field, but the tops of the stalks had been cut off, so cover
was limited. The turf exploded around them as bullets made little
furrows that looked to one soldier as if a mouse had been ploughing
the ground. Other projectiles hit the corn stalks with a splattering
sound. The worst sound of all was the thud of a Minié ball lodging
in flesh.
Kirk himself was struck in the thigh and later died from this
wound. The retreat soon degenerated into a full-speed run.

The men of
Willich’s brigade first heard skirmishing and then heavy
firing on their left flank as Kirk’s brigade came under attack. Men
from Ector’s Texas brigade overwhelmed Willich’s front line, driving
the Yankees into their own camp, where some Union troops were
killed while lying in their tents.
Robert Stewart of the Fifteenth Ohio
Infantry saw his pickets running back to camp, followed closely by
a swarm of yelling and screaming Confederates. “Dropping our pots
and pans, leaving our haversacks and blankets, we snatched up our
cartridge boxes and rushed for our guns,” Stewart recalled, “only to
find ourselves with our backs to the foe.” They too could do nothing
but run. One dead Union soldier was found still clinging to his coffee
pot.

Bragg’s strategy was working perfectly. Kirk and Willich’s
frontline brigades were swept from the field. Confederate
General J. P.
McCown’s forces, including his crack cavalry troops, were turning
the Union right in on itself and driving it back to the northeast. In the
meantime, battle-hardened troops from the Arkansas and Tennessee
brigades of
Brigadier Generals St. John Liddell and
Bushrod Johnson
had run over McCook’s left flank and were advancing toward
Baldwin’s reserves. Fewer than thirty minutes after the battle began,
Charles Anderson ordered his regiment out of the cedar break to
form a line of battle to the left of the Fifth Kentucky.

Baldwin immediately countermanded Anderson’s orders and the
Ninety-Third Ohio moved back into the woods. The men watched in
earnest as their comrades from the First Ohio and the Fifth Kentucky
marched into the cornfield, settling behind a rail fence and scattered
limestone boulders. It was now 7:30 in the morning. The First Ohio
took the brunt of the assault and responded admirably, keeping the
rebels from advancing for about twenty minutes. Bullets and artillery
from both sides claimed many lives in one of the fiercest engagements
some of the experienced soldiers had ever seen. When Confederate
Brigadier General McNair’s Third Brigade finished mopping up the
remnants of
Kirk’s forces, he pivoted right to support
Liddell.

At that point
Major Jacob Stafford, commanding the First Ohio,
knew that further resistance would be suicide. He shouted orders to
retreat, but the constant artillery barrages drowned him out. He
repeated the command and still was not heard. The third time he yelled
at the top of his lungs. The Ohioans fell back into the Fifth Kentucky,
became confused, and broke into a dead run. The Kentuckians,
left alone in the cornfield, also skedaddled. The Ninety-Third Ohio
Infantry was now the only Union regiment facing the enemy from the
edge of the woods.

Anderson was losing his patience. He asked for orders. No
response came. He asked again. No reply. Anxious to do something, he
deployed skirmishers across the line of the woods from the left flank
of the two retreating regiments east to Gresham Lane. While this
movement was under way,
Baldwin finally appeared on the scene and
ordered Anderson to form his regiment in a line of battle on the left
flank. Just as the Ninety-Third Ohio was preparing for what would
have been certain annihilation against two brigades of
adrenalin-fueled rebel killing machines, Baldwin shouted, “Colonel Anderson!
For God’s sake, retreat!”

Anderson ordered his men to about-face and they marched north
through the woods in slow time. When the rebels entered the trees,
Anderson’s men increased their speed. By the time the Ohioans exited
the forest, they were in an all-out run. Anderson’s horse was hit three
times, twice by bullets glancing off trees and once by another spent
ball that did little damage. As Anderson turned to see how rapidly
the enemy was advancing, he was hit in the pit of his stomach by a
ball at a range of seventy-five yards. He thought he was mortally
wounded, but the ball hit the second button of his coat, then glanced
off the third vest button, passing through the back of his coat. A
stinging sensation seconds later confirmed that the bullet had torn
away flesh on the outside of one left rib. It was not a serious wound.
Then Anderson’s horse was struck above the root of its tail near the
spine and dropped like a stone. Anderson jumped off, but the animal
unexpectedly rose again. When the colonel attempted to grab the
reins, his horse knocked the drawn sword from his hands and ran
away. Kicking and bucking through the lines, the horse fell again,
presumably dead.

Anderson joined his troops in their scamper, entering a cotton
field, where the real slaughter began. He was a surprisingly fast
runner. Despite his age, his long legs allowed him to overtake the much
younger
Captain William Birch. As Anderson passed Birch, he was
hit again and experienced another miraculous escape from serious
injury. The ball hit the middle button of his left sleeve and glanced
off his hip joint, creating a flesh wound fewer than two inches deep.
Several days later, Anderson found the actual bullet had lodged
harmlessly in his boot. Meanwhile, the booming artillery was so
distracting that some soldiers stuffed cotton into their ears to avoid
the concussions. In the cotton field the remnants of the Ninety-Third
Ohio reformed briefly with elements of other retreating regiments
and attempted to make a stand. It was brief, bloody, and
unsuccessful. Anderson’s regiment lost many of its killed and wounded in this
area. The retreat finally ended as soldiers from
Horatio Van Cleve’s
division arrived. Anderson’s troops had been pushed back more than
two miles. Their backs were to the Nashville Pike.

Anderson went to the hospital surgeon to have his wounds
examined and dressed. When he removed his coat, he saw that it had
five bullet holes. Anderson returned to his regiment. Remnants of
Johnson’s shattered Second Division assumed a reserve position at
the far northwest end of the battlefield. In front of them, rival cavalry
brigades battled to gain control of the turnpike. Should the rebels
cross the pike, capture the supply wagons, and cut off a northern
escape route, the Union army might be pushed into the river. The
Union cavalry held. The fighting was essentially over for Anderson
and the Ninety-Third Ohio, though prospects for a Union victory
looked bleak at best.
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