The Most Important Civil War Battle You've Never Heard Of

I’m doing a summer internship at the Stones River National Battlefield, so of course I have to do a post on the battle!

The Battle of Stones River (as the Union called it, apparently they loved naming things after rivers, including their armies. It’s the 2^nd Battle of Murfreesboro for the Confederacy) occurred from December 31^st, 1862 to January 2^nd, 1863. Those dates are pretty important because they tell you that something weird is up with this battle. If they can at all help it, armies don’t march in the winter. The reason this one did has to do with a document that should be pretty familiar to my readers, The Emancipation Proclamation.

A Typeset Copy of the Emancipation Proclamation signed by Abraham Lincoln (Wikimedia)

The EP went into effect on January 1^st, 1863 and the Union hadn’t won a battle since Lincoln had announced it. Since the EP was issued under Lincoln’s authority as Commander in Chief of the US Army, the Army kind of had to be winning the war for the EP to mean anything.

Lincoln also knew that the war was losing favor with the public in the North. Midterm elections hadn’t gone well for the Republican party and people were getting to the point where they were willing to let the South go if it meant the war would end. Lincoln needed to win some battles to boost Northern morale and regain support.

Finally, England and France had been making motions like they were going to come in on the side of the Confederacy. If that happened, it would be nearly impossible for Lincoln to reunite the country. So he also wanted a victory to show England and France that the North would be winning the war and there was no reason for them to get involved.

So Lincoln sent General Rosecrans and his Army of the Cumberland (like the river, remember what I said about the Union and rivers?) out to find the enemy, in this case, General Bragg and the Army of Tennessee.They found them just north of the town of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, a flat area made up of a patchwork of cedar brakes and crop fields.

My own picture of the Stones River Battlefield

The Union would very nearly suffer a devastating loss on the first day of battle. Luckily for Lincoln, they were able to hold on and over the next couple of days make it difficult enough for the Confederates that Bragg decided he would rather retreat than try to hold on to the field.

Thus Lincoln gets his victory, the EP goes into effect, Northern morale goes way up, England and France stay out of it, and the American Civil War continues for another two and half years.

Pretty important battle, right?