STONES RIVER--Trip 2

Once we drove beyond Knoxville and Oakridge, the terrain became more rolling, and the traffic thinned. But the two hours through the metropolitan area prompted nightmare moments: semis swerving to avoid blown out tire pieces, motorcycles cutting between lanes, businessmen weaving back and forth to gain a car length. It was morning rush on I-40.

"This part of Tennessee reminds me of Pennsylvania," said Andy. The road rose and fell gently east to west. With the sun behind us, the trees painted a multi-colored landscape across the windshield, and the fall mural was picture perfect with every possible shade of yellow, orange, red, green and brown.
"They must have just cleaned this road," said Andy. "There is hardly a piece of blown out tire anywhere to be found. It's really clean."

"We'll have to do one more big road trip to hit the missing states," mused Andy, "like Colorado, Nebraska and Kansas. We'll probably go as far as Utah, but I don't think it will be in Little Red. That would be asking too much. I doubt highly Little Red would make it that far with the way we are burning oil. We are putting in a quart about ever 1,000 miles."

I kept working with the yarn, trying to undo my too-tight stitches of crocheting. Little Red has served me well. I didn't want to think about it.

About 160 miles west of Pigeon Forge, the trees looked more green. "We drove south," said Andy. "Light affects tree color, and it's warmer here." Temperatures above 85 were predicted for today. People in shorts and shirt sleeves sat at picnic tables around the Carthage rest stop.
I don't remember learning much about Stones River, a battle in the Civil War, but from December 31, 1862 to January 2, 1863, 81,000 soldiers fought here for three days and 23,515 died, or were wounded or captured (13,249 Union and 10,266 Confederate). A ten-minute movie in the Visitor Center told the story.

Volunteer John walked us through the opening displays in the museum and filled in historical tidbits. "The Union soldiers had blue uniforms, so if a southern boy had a blue coat, he would dip it in a dye from the butternut tree to make it light brown." John pointed out a sample of a chestnut jacket on a mannequin. Across the display area, John told us about Francis Clalin. "Of course, she wasn't the only woman who served in the Army as a soldier, but she was the most famous," he said. "Disguised as a man, she served with the Missouri regiment.
I can't prove it, but I heard one woman served and no one ever found out until years after the war. History tells us one of them got pregnant, so someone knew she was female!" He laughed. "But you'll go in now to see the movie and read the displays."
The movie explained that the Battle of Stones River aimed to fulfill the second of two major Union strategies in the Civil War: to drive a wedge through the Confederate States and divide them. The first was to gain control of the Mississippi River.

Near Stones River at Murfreesboro, General Braxton Bragg and his 38,000-man Confederate Army of Tennessee set up winter quarters. Union Major General William S. Rosecrans followed to Nashville with 43,000 men and camped a half mile from Bragg.

The three-day confrontation started on December 31, 1862, when Confederates struck the Union right flank at dawn. At times the noise grew so intense soldiers picked cotton in the nearby field and stuffed it in their ears.
After the movie we walked part of the Auto Tour trail. A lull in the fighting on New Year's Day allowed soldiers to rescue the wounded and gather the dead.

In the cedar thicket at Stop #2 on the Auto Tour, Brigadier General Philip H. Sheridan's and Brigadier General James S. Negley's divisions warded off several determined Confederate assaults. Confederates brought in artillery, but attack after attack failed. The resulting carnage reminded Union soldiers of the meat packing plants in Chicago, Indiana and Ohio. They nicknamed the thicket the Slaughter Pen. The limestone rock provided good initial defense, but it made retreat a death trap of broken ankles.

Bragg, confident that Rosecrans would retreat, was surprised to see federal troops on the morning of January 2, 1863. He had considered the earlier confrontation a Southern victory. He ordered Breckenridge and his five brigades of 4,500 men to seize the high ground near the river.

At first they routed the Union soldiers, who retreated to McFadden's Ford, a river crossing, but Union artillery chief Captain John E. Mendenhall assembled 58 guns, all trained on the field the Confederates would cross. In 45 minutes, between 4:00 and 4:45 p.m., as they came up the hill on January 2, 1863, 1,800 Confederates were killed or wounded by the nonstop barrage. Rosecrans claimed victory, and President Abraham Lincoln used the news to his advantage, even though the Battle of Stones River had no tactical winner.
After the battle, most of the dead were buried on the field. When a national cemetery was established here in 1865, the Army reburied Union dead. Most Confederates were taken to their home towns or to nearby southern communities. The cemetery stands as a stark reminder of the terrible loss from war.

Only 50 feet from the railroad line stands the oldest monument of the Civil War. The stone memorial, erected in 1863, honors and remembers those from Colonel William B. Hazen's brigade who died those three days of the Civil War. Survivors returned within six months to construct the impressive memorial as it stands today.

Not far from the scene of battle in 1863, and marked now by a pile of cannon balls, Bragg, a West Point graduate, set up his field headquarters. Even though the sites are not well marked and the National Park Service is in the process of redoing the entire battlefield display, we found our way, with a few wrong turns, to the location of Bragg's headquarters and the other various sites where 81,000 men fought for their beliefs and for control of Middle Tennessee in one of the bloodiest encounters of the Civil War.

Here too is Bark Park of Murfreesboro. At least five dogs traced the exercise path as excited owners shouted commands.

Amazingly enough and in spite of Bark Park, we were told that the battlefield scene today differs little from what it looked like in 1862 before the battle. The railroad and turnpike are still in the same place, and fields are still planted between the cedar thickets as time goes by.