The Lost Gettysburg Address (18 page)

Anderson hoped that his regiment would head back to Lexington,
where they could learn their “new trade” as he called it, before being
tested in battle. That plan was a fantasy. The relief that Union
commanders felt by saving Louisville and Cincinnati soon turned to
dread. Bragg had never intended to assault such a massive Union
force. By threatening Louisville, Bragg had tricked Buell into leaving
him an escape route open to the south. When Bragg started running,
Buell was compelled to pursue. The chase was on.
¹⁰

For five days Anderson’s regiment marched until they reached the
west side of the Kentucky River, opposite Frankfort, on October 6.
Fleeing rebel troops had destroyed the bridges, forcing the Union
soldiers to construct a pontoon bridge in order to cross the river.
The next day, they had no sooner crossed the river when Colonel
Anderson received word that
Kirby Smith’s forces had crossed to the
west side. The Ninety-Third retraced its steps, crossed back to the
west bank, and moved toward Lawrenceburg. Anderson’s regiment
was delayed by several brief skirmishes on the way. On October 7, he
predicted a “big battle in Kentucky” in a letter to Kitty. He had no
idea that it would happen the very next day.
¹¹

Confederate forces massed at the small town of Perryville,
Kentucky, for several reasons. Perhaps the most important of these was
access to fresh water. Kentucky had endured a terrible drought for
months, and soldiers on both sides who were not completely
dehydrated were sickened by drinking out of stagnant ponds. When the
advance portion of
Buell’s army arrived on October 7, that water
was almost reason enough to fight. The battle that ensued was
terribly bloody, with about 20 percent of thirty-eight thousand troops
engaged suffering as casualties. Bragg had pushed Union forces back
nearly a mile but was forced to acknowledge that his poor strategic
position was unchanged. He left that evening to rejoin Kirby Smith at
Harrodsburg and continue their exodus.

Anderson’s regiment and most of the division did not make it to
Perryville in time for the fight. When they arrived three days later, the
scene was horrific. Anderson had never seen the aftermath of battle,
and it both shocked and fascinated him. He saw carcasses of horses
with their legs straight up in the air. Anderson described hundreds
of men lying “dead, swollen, bursting—some blackened literally as
the blackest negroes.” Other corpses still “white, pale, thin,
beautiful,” contrasted with those whose legs had been “torn in shreds
of fibers and bones” and still others “with their entire skulls blown
away, the cannon ball dragging out all the brains.” After ten
minutes of exposure to this hellish aftermath, many men were already
desensitized. “How soon the most disgusting and appalling scenes
become commonplace and dull sights,” Anderson marveled. Before
long, men were eating and even laughing in view of this catastrophe.
Surely this laughter had a touch of nerves for the many soldiers who
had not yet seen real combat.
¹²
Anderson felt that Buell’s strategy of
luring Bragg into the net was wise. How could he risk letting him out
again? Buell was viewed by his own troops “with universal contempt
and suspicion,” Anderson wrote to Kitty. Their anger increased when
Smith and Bragg slipped the noose and made their escape through the
Cumberland Gap into middle Tennessee.
¹³

President Lincoln had seen enough. He replaced Buell with Major
General William Rosecrans. On October 24, Rosecrans arrived after
a successful campaign in northern Mississippi. The soldiers rejoiced.
Perhaps now they would end these incessant, debilitating marches
and meet the enemy in a decisive and successful battle. They were
on their way to Nashville to rest, regroup, and prepare for the next
engagement. Despite two or three days without rations due to a
commissary officer’s mistake, Anderson’s troops remained in good form
and spirits. The soldiers of the Army of the Cumberland finally had a
leader they could stake their lives on.
¹⁴

The weather changed drastically from summer drought to late
October snow. Rosecrans made sure that his troops had tents, their
first since leaving Louisville. The general held an officer’s reception
on November 2 near Bowling Green, Kentucky. Anderson was
impressed by Rosecrans’s “simple, good-natured urbanity and sense”
in contrast with the “affected hauteur and self-sufficiency” of Buell.
There was talk at the gathering of making Anderson a brigadier
general, but Anderson doubted that would ever come to pass. “I am not
a Democrat with a following to be bribed,” he asserted, “and the
Administration can’t forgive the offence of being for the Union outside
of the Republican Party.” He would never ask Lincoln directly for this
or any favor. He wished that his friends would not waste their time on
such efforts and instead concentrate on helping the army win the war.
If Anderson had his way, Rosecrans’s army would not go into winter
quarters at Nashville but would push aggressively to the south, not
stopping until they drove the Confederates into the Gulf of Mexico.
¹⁵

The Ninety-Third Ohio arrived at Nashville on November 7. The
garrison there had been cut off from all communications for nearly
two months, so they were overjoyed when they saw the massive
army march into town. Anderson’s regiment settled in for a month
of drilling, guard, and fatigue duty. They were on picket duty for
twenty-four hours every fourth day. A month of normal camp life
was the first opportunity for sustained military instruction that the
men had seen since they had enlisted back in August. The men were
now well-fed, rested, and hungry for a fight. On December 6, they
got their wish.

Anderson’s regiment left camp at 7:30 on a Saturday morning on a
foraging expedition. They were accompanied by men from the Fifth
Kentucky Infantry, the First Ohio Infantry, and the Ninety-Seventh
Ohio Infantry regiments, in addition to four companies of artillery.
These units escorted a wagon train some two miles in length down
a minor road south toward Murfreesboro. After about seven miles,
the train was halted by the sounds of cannon fire, and the
Ninety-Third, which had been guarding the rear of the train, moved forward
to form in line of battle. Not long after some minor skirmishing had
taken place, Anderson received word that the rebels had maneuvered
between the train and their camp and had captured five of their
wagons. Brigade commander Colonel Harvey M. Buckley then ordered
the Ninety-Third to relieve the Fifth Kentucky, who had been
skirmishing with the enemy in the rear, turn the wagons around, and
return to camp.

The train was long and not easy to turn. By 3:30 p.m., they were
finally headed back when reports reached Anderson of rebels
approaching on his right. Anderson and
Hiram Strong rode up a small hill
to witness a large number of Confederate soldiers running from the
woods into a deep valley, shouting at the top of their lungs. The rebels
thought they were attacking the center of the long train, not the rear
of the same train now moving in the opposite direction. Anderson’s
men raced along the side of the road, placing themselves between the
train and the oncoming enemy assailants. As the Ninety-Third passed
through a barnyard and reached a shed, they were greeted by a hail
of bullets such as none of them had ever seen.

Anderson and his men were enveloped in a cacophony of whistling
projectiles that made an awful sound like a hundred hammers
battering the barn walls in rapid succession. Men shouted in confusion
as the center of the Union column fell back several yards. Colonel
Strong thought that the regiment might be lost right there. He was
relieved when Company H emerged from under the shed, formed a
battle line in the center, and commenced rapid return fire at the rebels
less than two hundred yards away. Strong hid his horse behind the
barn and rushed forward to find Anderson. He could not locate him.

One soldier said that Anderson’s horse had bolted away,
taking its rider with it. Others said that he had been shot. Still others
maintained that the colonel’s horse had run off without him. With
their nearest support, the Ninety-Seventh Ohio, two miles distant,
Anderson’s Ninety-Third Ohio was isolated and vulnerable. Strong
became concerned. He finally saw Anderson running toward him
over an open field 150 yards away, where he had gone with his
regiment’s Company F. The engagement lasted just thirty minutes longer.
When it was over, the Ninety-Third Ohio had driven off the enemy
with a loss of only one killed and three wounded. Anderson praised
the men for their “gallantry and firmness in this, their first fight.”
The short but intense skirmish could hardly prepare them for what
was to come just a few weeks later.
¹⁶

On Christmas Eve 1862, Anderson’s fervent wish was granted.
Rosecrans was moving south to confront
Bragg and force a decisive
battle. What should have ended in Kentucky in the defeat of a much
smaller Confederate force was now a huge challenge. Bragg’s troops
had joined
General John C. Breckenridge’s army to form a
formidable force of thirty-five thousand men. Anderson respected
Major
General Alexander McCook but claimed that his new brigade
commander,
Colonel Philemon P. Baldwin, “would not be trusted in civil
life with the guidance on a smooth pike with a gentle ox-team.” Still,
Anderson had confidence that his men, though inexperienced in
warfare, were of good character and would perform well in battle. The
huge army marched in three columns, with McCook’s right wing
traveling the Nolensville Pike south to Triune.
¹⁷

Two of Anderson’s nephews were among the forty-one thousand
Union troops moving toward Murfreesboro.
Colonel Nicholas L.
Anderson, son of Charles’s brother
Larz, commanded the Sixth Ohio
Infantry. Nicholas’s younger brother,
Edward L. Anderson, was a
captain in the Fifty-Second Ohio. Edward’s regiment had been formed
about the same time as had his uncle’s. Edward and Nicholas had
escaped from the battle at Perryville unscathed. Nicholas’s troops were
a seasoned, frontline fighting force. During the advance southeast
from Nashville, Edward’s regiment was charged with maintaining
the supply train with provisions. The three Andersons were slowly
converging on a momentous event.

While Charles Anderson was excited to finally engage Bragg’s
forces, he was less confident of his own leadership. “The tangled
team does not feel the reins,” he admitted. “Indeed the driver does
not feel very sure that he holds any.” Of the coming march to battle,
Charles offered a haunting foreshadowing: “Some of our best hearts
and minds will be called to their long account,” he predicted, “while
a brigade of like heroes are gobbled up or cut to pieces in that sublime
enterprise of robbing widows and orphan babies of their winter food,
which we call foraging.”
¹⁸

The Ninety-Third Ohio’s journey to Murfreesboro was slow and
uneventful. Rain all day and heavy fog the next meant that Anderson’s
men marched in mud that sometimes reached their knees. At times
they could not see the road in front of them. Some soldiers’ shoes were
so wet after four days of rain that they simply disintegrated, forcing
them to march barefoot. A few minor skirmishes along the way held
no promise of a big fight. Bragg’s cavalry was famous for harassing
its enemies to slow their progress. Anderson’s troops joined the rest
of the division at three o’clock in the afternoon of December 30, three
miles northwest of Murfreesboro, near the division headquarters of
Brigadier General Richard W. Johnson. Colonel Baldwin’s Third
Brigade was placed in reserve behind the First and Second Brigades,
which formed in a line of battle to the southeast, west of Stones River.

In some sections of the long line of opposition, the two armies were
so close to each other that conversations between enemies took place.
Conditions were so miserable that the bands of each army began
playing not long after sundown to provide their forces with a small
amount of pleasure. “Yankee Doodle” competed with “Dixie” as
rival bands tried to outdo each other up and down the lines. At some
point one of the bands launched into the poignant melody “Home
Sweet Home.” In an instant all bands on both sides played the
touching tune, while Confederate and Union soldiers sang in unison.

Anderson’s men finally fell into an uneasy sleep in a cedar thicket
on that cold night. Their clothes and blankets were soaked and the
ground just as wet. Most were hungry. It was pitch black darkness,
as no fires were allowed. About midnight, another heavy rain set in.
Some soldiers were so exhausted they just slept through the
downpour, which continued all night. Bragg and Rosecrans slept little if
at all. Each planned a morning attack on their enemy’s right wing.
Bragg would strike first.
¹⁹