Kurz & Allison Battle of Stones River
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Gilder Lehrman Collection #: GLC00249.02 Author/Creator: Kurz & Allison Place Written: Chicago, Illinois Type: Print Date: 1891 Pagination: 1 lithograph : col. ; 53.5 x 70 cm. Order a Copy
Published by Kurz & Allison at 76 & 78 Wabash Avenue in Chicago. Full title is: "Battle of Stone River. Near Murfreesborough, Tenn." Seems to have been partially hand colored. Depicts Major General William S. Rosencrans on a black horse directing the battle on the left side of the image. Shows the Confederates attacking Union soldiers, who are on slightly higher ground. This is before the Union troops were pushed back across the Stone River. Fighting is taking place in the background beyond the river, mostly by calvary and artillery. Railroad tracks run parallel to the river. Mountains are in the far background, while a thin pine forest is depicted throughout the image. Smoke floats throughout the image, which is bloodless despite several fallen horses and men.
After Gen. Braxton Bragg’s defeat at Perryville, Kentucky, October 8, 1862, he and his Confederate Army of the Mississippi retreated, reorganized, and were redesignated 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 44,000 men, to defeat Bragg’s army of more than 37,000. 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.
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