The Christmas of 1862 approached far differently than the year proceeding. Although the southern war for independence had begun in April of ’61,  the war was then still seen by many as a lark, an adventure – and soldiers on both sides could still feed off the prosperity of peace time. 1862, though, had made the war real: Shiloh killed more Americans in two days than all other American wars combined, and Antietam and Fredericksburg were similar slaughterhouses. Soldiers on both sides of the conflict were saddened, dispirited, and angry — angry at the politicians who started this and who kept it going despite the apparent stalemate. Southern soldiers were especially cantankerous, having learned of a recent law that effectively exempted planters from serving in the very conflict they’d created, and many were deserting not just to join their loved ones for Christmas, but to protest being ground up like grist in a mill for the planters’ pocketbooks.  In Tennessee, Billy Yank and Johnny Reb were both preparing for a Christmas slaughter — not of ham, but of one another, trudging through rain and mud and anxiously trying to keep their rifles and powder from being compromised by the wet. The next day would bring the Battle of Stones River, a multi-day affair that would, like Shiloh, begin with a Yankee rout that was eventually curbed, giving the Union army control of middle Tennessee and a technical victory despite the enormous losses on both sides — but the night before saw the soldiers, possibly imbibing in a little Christmas spirit, engaging in a Battle of the Bands against one until until they joined together to sing “Home, Sweet Home”.  This is a curious little history: I was anticipating something like the Christmas truce, but that never happened — and the two sides bonding together happened the night before they began slaughtering each other, so the whole “triumph of humanity over the state/politicians/etc” thing doesn’t really work. It’s quite nicely written, especially when McIvor describes the landscape of central Tennessee, and I appreciated his heavy use of soldiers’ memoirs and verse that make it something of a social history of late 1862. At any rate, I’d never even heard of the Battle of Stones River before, and now it’s a possible weekend trip next year.

Highlights:

A Confederate soldier, taken prisoner in an early skirmish, had watched in disgust as the panicked Federals around him had broken and run before the advancing Rebels. Unable to contain himself he began shouting, “What yer running fer? Why don’t yer stand and fight like men!” He had kept going in that vein, hotter and hotter, until a fellow Confederate prisoner interrupted him, “For God’s sake, Joe, don’t try to rally the Yankees. Keep ’em on the run!”

The noise of the battle was so great, recalled one artilleryman, that “birds sat in trees or on the ground, unable to fly, benumbed by the roar, rifle and cannon fire, shells bursting, men yelling, horses neighing, and wounded screaming made an awful crescendo.” A
former Murfreesboro slave would remember sixty years later how the tin pans in the cupboard had rattled and the house shook from the battle taking place miles away “It sounded like the Judgment,” she said.