Free Never Call Retreat by Bruce Catton

Federal musketry tore them apart; they re-formed, came on again, were broken by artillery fire, General Chalmers was shot down, some regiments lost half a dozen color bearers in rapid succession—and at last the survivors, completely fought out, went back to their rifle pits. A Tennessee brigade charged beside them and captured two batteries, but the Yankee line remained unbroken. By an extremely narrow margin the Federals kept the Round Forest.
    They probably would have lost it except for an unexpected echo from the one fragment of Rosecrans' original battle plan that was ever put into effect. Earlier in the day Crittenden had started his corps across Stone's River to lead the attack on the Confederate right. He had to bring it back almost at once because of Hardee's attack, but the simple fact that he had made this unproductive move had a profound effect two hours later. For at the height of the action, when it seemed clear that the Confederates would storm the Round Forest if they could get a little more weight in their attack, Bragg sent for his reserve—Breckinridge's division, far off on the right—and Breckinridge replied that he could send no help because he was about to be attacked by the Yankees. He was of course entirely wrong, but he was going by the best information he had; Crittenden's advance had been reported to him, but somehow the withdrawal had not been noticed, and so Bragg's reserve remained out of action all morning, waiting for an attack that was never made. By the time the misunderstanding was cleared up it was too late; the Federal grip on the Round Forest was too strong to break.
    Once his tactical plan had been knocked out of his hands, Rosecrans could do little more than shore up his collapsing lines and show his troops that their commanding officer was still undaunted, and this much he did with unflagging spirits. He seemed to be galloping along the lines all day long, a dead cigar clenched in his teeth, black hat jammed down on his head, his overcoat all streaked with blood—a shell had taken off the head of his chief of staff, riding beside him, and the general had been spattered. If the soldiers needed a general's words to hearten them, Old Rosey was the man. He reined up once by a line of infantry to demand: "Men, do you wish to know how to be safe? Shoot low! Give them a blizzard at their shins!" Gunners in a battery that was hard pressed remembered that he galloped up and told their captain: "Be a little more deliberate and take good aim—don't fire so damned fast!" Usually he rode alone, except for one or two of those sandy fellows on his staff, and one admiring enlisted man said that with his rumpled hat, stained coat, and stubby cigar "he looked more like a third-rate wagon master than a great general, as he is." 8
    If his day was heroic it was frustrating, a continuous process of staving off disaster. When night came and the fighting ended the Federal army was still in one piece and it was not running away, but it had unquestionably taken a beating. It had lost more than a fourth of its numbers, the Confederates had captured twenty-eight pieces of artillery, there had been a cloud of stragglers drifting back toward Nashville throughout the day, and Joe Wheeler had gone rampaging around in the army's rear, destroying wagon trains and threatening to cut the army off from its base entirely. At nightfall Bragg confidently expected the Federals to retreat, and he telegraphed to Richmond that he had won a noble victory and that "God has granted us a happy New Year." 9
    For the enlisted men of the two armies, New Year's Eve was not at all happy. The rain began again, the gloomy thickets dripped in the cold dark, and the fields where so many thousands of wounded men lay were deep with mud. Confederates who wandered across the ground they had won saw hideous things. Here a soldier leaned against a tree, an overturned coffee mill between his spread legs; a Minie ball had struck him while he