General Rosecrans rallies the troops next to the railroad
Posted on 08/06/2007 8:42:25 PM PDT by indcons
With so many Civil War battlefields gone and forgotten, just how was Stones River saved?
After all, the federal government protects only 15 percent of all significant Civil War battlefields. So how was Murfreesboro so fortunate?
When it comes down to it, Civil War veterans and the Nashville, Chattanooga and St. Louis Railroad saved the battlefield. Probably none of that would have happened if a national cemetery had been established elsewhere like Nashville or Franklin during the war.
The Battle of Stones River was fought for control of the railroad and for the fertile land of Middle Tennessee, which could support a large army like the Confederate Army of Tennessee or the Union Army of the Cumberland.
As always, Murfreesboro was important because of its location in the exact center of Tennessee. It was a regional transportation hub with the Nashville & Chattanooga Railroad and 10 or more major turnpikes or roads.
Following the Battle of Stones River, the Union army exploited that advantage and built Fortress Rosecrans and used Murfreesboro as a major supply depot. Thousands of tons of supplies and animals were transported here for dispersal to units in the field.
Fortress Rosecrans fueled the Union’s campaigns in Chattanooga, Atlanta and helped made possible Sherman’s March to the Sea.
Murfreesboro was a familiar stop for troops moving south.
And the actual battlefield was unique in its proximity to the railroad line.
The Army of the Cumberland made its final stand backed up to the railroad tracks. Breckinridge’s charge on the final day of the battle was near the railroad tracks as well.
Stones River National Cemetery was built next to the N&C line, probably for convenience sake. The Civil War and the period of federal occupation ruined Murfreesboro’s economy for decades to come.
A correspondent for a Boston newspaper wrote in 1864:
“Let this point (Murfreesboro) be the center, and then make a circumference of 30 miles, and with me, we will stay a week in the womb of destruction. Whether you go on the Salem, the Shelbyville, the Manchester, or any other pike for a distance of 30 miles either way, what do we behold? One wide, wild and dreary waste, so to speak. The fences are all burned down: the apple, the pear and the plum trees burned in ashes long ago: The torch applied to thousands of splendid mansions the walls of which alone remain.”
A period of slow recovery began about 1870 and continued to 1900. Agriculture fueled the return to stability marked by the emergence of the Farmers Alliance, a group that attempted to improve the situation of farmers by focusing on national, state and local issues. The organization pushed farmers to become more self-reliant and more scientific. Diversification was stressed. Cooperative buying was organized to reduce the cost of equipment and seed.
John P. Buchanan of Rutherford County was president of the Tennessee Farmers Alliance and when the organization gained control of the Democratic Party, Buchanan was elected governor of Tennessee. He is the only Rutherford County native to serve in that post.
The Nashville & Chattanooga Railroad grew along with the economy. It pushed to become a regional line and adopted St. Louis as part of its name in 1873. The N&C was one of few Tennessee railroads to survive the Civil War intact thanks largely to the U.S. Military Railroad.
NC&StL provided easy access to Stones River National Cemetery, which had been established by orders of Maj. Gen. George H. Thomas on March 29, 1864.
Capt. John A. Means of the 115th Ohio, a topographical engineer, picked the site and designed the cemetery. It was located on a point where Union forces had repulsed Hardee’s corps during the first day of fighting and was across Van Cleve Lane from Hazen’s Monument, which was built in 1863.
It didn’t take long for the national cemetery to become a focus of Civil War memorial efforts, which was something NC&StL quickly recognized. A railroad stop was established at the cemetery and the Nashville branch of the Grand Republican Army (a Union veterans organization) began holding Decoration Day ceremonies there in 1887, and veterans who had fought at Stones River returned to the battlefield.
The NC&StL began to run special trains to the national cemetery on Decoration Day and building on the battlefield connection, the railroad began advertise battlefield tours. The railroad offered special rates for veterans groups wishing to visit.
Around the turn of the century, the railroad acquired two key plots of historic land, both visible from passenger cars. Redoubt Brannan, a reinforced part of Fortress Rosecrans, and a rise at McFadden’s Ford were purchased and promoted. NC&StL built a 31-foot obelisk near the ford in 1906.
During this same period, a citizens group began to push for the establishment of a federal military park along the lines of Chickamauga. Congress had authorized the creation of four national military parks Chickamauga and Chattanooga authorized in 1890, Shiloh in 1894, Gettysburg in 1895, and Vicksburg in 1899.
The Stones River Battlefield and Park Association was chartered in 1896 and secured options on most of the 3,400 acres where the battle was fought. The group also erected wooden markers at key points. Despite having the support of important U.S. Rep. James D. Richardson, D-Murfreesboro, all proposals to acquire any of the land were rejected chiefly because of the interference of Chickamauga National Park Commission Charles H. Grosvenor.
With Congress buried with requests for national military parks, no real action occurred until a decade after World War I. A historic sites survey, called the 1926 Act for the Study and Investigation of Battlefields, was authorized. The Army War College did the research and a plan was drafted for commemoration of battles in which the military forces of the United States were engaged.
The study placed battlefields into different tiers:
Class I: Battles worthy of commemoration by the establishment of national military parks. These should be battles of exceptional political and military importance and interest, whose effects were far-reaching, whose fields are worthy of preservation for detailed military and historical study, and which are suitable to serve as memorials to the armies engaged.
Class II. Battles of sufficient importance to warrant the designation of their sites as national monuments. The action of Congress and the great difference in the importance of these battles give reason for the subdivision under this class into:
Class IIA. Battles of such great military and historic interest as to warrant locating and indicating the battle lines of the forces engaged by a series of markers or tablets, but not necessarily by memorial monuments.
Class IIB. Battles of sufficient historic interest to be worthy of some form of monument, tablet, or marker to indicate the location of the battlefield.
Not many battles rated Class I, just two from the Revolutionary War (Saratoga and Yorktown) and four from the Civil War (Gettysburg, Vickburg, Shiloh and Chickamauga/Chattanooga.)
No Revolutionary War battle rated Class IIA. Battles like Lexington, Concord, Bunker Hill, Brandywine and Kings Mountain were classified as Class IIB or worthy of commemoration with a tablet or plaque.
Earning a Class IIA ranking were the Battle of New Orleans (War of 1812) and 15 Civil War battles. Stones River was placed sixth on the list ahead of Chancellorville, the Wilderness, Cold Harbor, the Atlanta Campaign, Petersburg and Nashville. Franklin was ranked IIB.
Based upon that study, Congress voted on March 3, 1927 to establish Stones River National Military Park. A three-member commission was named, and Lt. Col. H.L. Landers of the Army War College began to research troop movements.
Land acquistion began in 1928 with NC&StL donating Brannon’s Redoubt and the Artillery Monument site. Plans were to acquire 325 acres that were along key points of the battle. With so many other national battlefields under development, it proved impossible to purchase the entire battlefield site even at 1920s prices.
“Central to the commission’s plan was the recognition that available funding was not sufficient to allow for the acquistion of the entire field of battle .... The recommended land was described by the commission as a nucleus for future acquisition should funding be made,” the battlefield’s 1999 historic resource study says.
Much of the property in question fronted on the Nashville Pike, which had become a part of the Dixie Highway system in the early 1920s. That bit of luck placed the new national battlefield right on the major highway connecting the U.S. Midwest to Florida.
Stones River National Military Park, under the domain of the U.S. War Department, was dedicated in July 1932. Stone pillars crafted by Murfreesboro mason Herbert Smith marked the two main entrances to the park on the Nashville Pike. A tour road was constructed and a ranger’s station was built. There was no visitor center. The landscape was stripped of its cedar brakes and was planted with flowering trees and shrubs not native to the area. The area was more of an arboriem than a historic battlefield.
Then came the Depression and World War II. Little funding was available until the late 1950s when the National Park Service began to prepare for its 50th anniversary in 1966. Control of the battlefield had been transferred to the park service in 1933.
A new master plan for the park was drafted in 1962 with National Park Service Historian Edwin Bearss preparing a ground cover map for Stones. The tour was converted to a loop with one entrance and exit to improve security at the park and help protect its integrity. Most importantly a new visitors’ center was constructed in time to tie in with new national obsession with the Civil War Centennial.
Unfortunately, the Nashville Pike was no longer the main road between Nashville, Murfreesboro and Chattanooga. The new four-lane U.S. 41-70 (Broad Street) was then the main road and the battlefield was obscured.
The main entrance remained on the Nashville Pike with access off of Broad Street via Van Cleve Lane, which proved to be both ugly and unsafe to visitors. Ugly because of the industrial development in the area and unsafe because Van Cleve Lane crossed the main line of what was now the Louisville and Nashville Railroad.
In 1979, the National Park Service completed a new draft management plan for Stones River, which called for more land acquisition and closing the Van Cleve Lane entrance. Interstate 24 had replaced U.S. 41-70 as chief tourism path. NPS realized that most visitors should be routed off I-24 even before the construction of the Thompson Lane extension or Medical Center Parkway.
“The National Park Service will work with community officials and State Highway Department officials to provide additional directional signs to the park from I-24. When the proposed Thompson Lane extension and/or the Manson Pike connector road are constructed, more direct access to the park from the Interstate will be provided and access confusion will be further minimized,” the 1979 study said.
Twenty-eight years later and the entrances off Thompson Lane are still pending. Funding was recently approved by the U.S. House of Representatives to finalize plans for exits to the battlefield. It will be several more years before actual construction begins.
Meanwhile, the battlefield boundaries have continued to grow. The park now encompasses 706 acres. U.S. Rep. Bart Gordon was recently honored by the Civil War Preservation Trust for his role in preserving battlefields in Tennessee and across the nation.
CWPT honored Gordon with its 2007 National Preservation Leadership Award.
Gordon's district includes five of the state's major battlefields, including Stones River Battlefield. In addition to his work on behalf of the Battlefield Preservation Program and the Congressional Battlefields Caucus, Gordon was instrumental in the creation of the statewide Tennessee Civil War Heritage Area, one of 37 congressionally-designated heritage areas in the country. He also lobbied successfully for the renovation and expansion the Stones River National Battlefield Visitor Center, as well as numerous other preservation-related causes.
Thank you indcons. Great post......
You’re welcome :) - the credit goes to FReeper Pharmboy
Dixie Ping?
Dixie Ping - Preserve America’s History
Well thanks to Pharmboy too.....*~*
The National Cemetery here in San Diego is named for Rosecrans.
Also my 3rd great grandfather was with the Ohio 54th in the Battle of Shiloh where he was shot through the right thigh
Us RevWar folk are usually not drawn to the War Between the States...but we know there are many fans of that dreadful conflagration around and are willing to help when something presents itself.
my great grandfather was also at Shiloh .Fighting for the Confederacy as a member of the 15th Mississippi Reg. under General Breckenridge . He was uninjured in that fight.
God bless um all...
When I was stationed at Ft Campbell I read about this civil war fort called Fort Defiance. Up till that point I had no idea any Civil War battles had been fought in Clarksville so I went to go find it.
Sure enough, high on a bluff overlooking the Red and Cumberland rivers were distinct walls of where the old fort used to be. Looked like it hadn’t been touched in ages. But I did run into a few people out there. Pretty cool.
Its been many years since I've been to Stones River. It struck me as a dreary place even then. Nearby is the Hermitage, Andrew Jackson's plantation house. Also nearby is Franklin which has very little battlefield left although four Confederate Generals fell there.
Thanks for the ping SB!
The CWPT is a fine organization, great cause.
Hub and I love the history of the South and we’re in the process of visiting as many battlegrounds as we possibly can because it’s a part of us. So humbling to see sacred ground where your ancestors fought.
My cheap excuse for the error is that I read so much history, I sometimes forget the finer details of specific events. Thank you for inspiring me to get it straight.
My g-g-g grandfather Lt. John H. Goff of the 10th AR was killed at Shiloh. According to the regimental record, he was about 100 feet from Sidney Johnston when he was shot.
I have collected a number of books and articles on Shiloh.
Mine served under Grant and Sherman there, both sides had the great Generals of the war at Shiloh.
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