BGuthrie Photos: TN -- Murfreesboro -- Stones River Natl Battlefield -- Fortress Rosecrans

TN -- Murfreesboro -- Stones River Natl Battlefield -- Fortress Rosecrans:

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Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. STONFR_170606_005.JPG: Battle at Stones River December 31, 1862 - January 2, 1863 Stones River National Battlefield preserves some key portions of the ground where one of the most important battles of the Civil War raged from December 31, 1862 through January 2, 1863. "I can never forget... you gave us a hard earned victory, which, had there been a defeat instead, the nation could scarcely have lived over." -- President Abraham Lincoln to Major General William Rosecrans, August 1863 To explore the stories of the people who lived and fought here, start at the visitor center. Maps are available there to help you find battlefield points of interest. You Are Here at the Fortress Rosecrans: After the battle of Stones River, Union troops fortified a vast area just outside downtown Murfreesboro. They named their fortress for their popular commander, General William S. Rosecrans. Three miles of walls protected the encampments and warehouses of the Army of the Cumberland. Here you can explore short trails that lead into a Civil War fort the remains mostly untouched by modern development. Exhibits along the way tell the stories of the soldiers who served here.
2. STONFR_170606_008.JPG: You Are Here at the Fortress Rosecrans: After the battle of Stones River, Union troops fortified a vast area just outside downtown Murfreesboro. They named their fortress for their popular commander, General William S. Rosecrans. Three miles of walls protected the encampments and warehouses of the Army of the Cumberland. Here you can explore short trails that lead into a Civil War fort the remains mostly untouched by modern development. Exhibits along the way tell the stories of the soldiers who served here.
3. STONFR_170606_014.JPG: Fortress Rosecrans Stones River National Battlefield Constructed in 1863 after the Battle of Stones River, Fortress Rosecrans protected the huge Union supply depot at Murfreesboro. The nearly three miles of earthworks enclosed about 200 acres of storehouses, blockhouses, and powder magazines. Union engineers designed the fortress to shelter an army of 50,000 troops and to store enough provisions to feed that army for up to 90 days. The works here were a powerful deterrent and never came under attack. The defenses include four interior fortifications called redoubts. Only fragments of the fortress survive on public and private land. Curtain Wall #1 may be viewed on the Lytle Creek Greenway and Redoubt Brannan on West College Street. The earthen walls in front of you are the remains of the largest earthen fortification built during the Civil War. The National Park Service has planted native grasses with deep root systems to prevent erosion and stabilize the works. Please help preserve Fortress Rosecrans by staying on the one-mile paved trail and boardwalks. Fortress Rosecrans was named for Major General William S. Rosecrans, commander of the Union Army of the Cumberland.
4. STONFR_170606_035.JPG: Fields of Fire At the end of 1863, more than fifty cannon stood ready to defend Fortress Rosecrans. Five, including one 8-inch siege howitzer, were assigned to Lunette Palmer. The lunettes of Fortress Rosecrans were primarily artillery platforms. The ground in front of the fort was cleared of trees, and every battery commander carefully sighted each of his guns on a variety of likely targets. From Lunette Palmer, the gunners picked potential targets nearly a mile away, well beyond Stones River and modern Route 96. No Confederate troops ever came within range of Fortress Rosecrans's cannon. This diagram, drawn by a Union engineer, shows some of the targets selected by the batteries in Fortress Rosecrans. Note that one battery near Lunette Thomas chose as a target the county courthouse in Murfreesboro, 1,770 yards away. The Federals threatened to shell the town in the Confederates attacked the fort. A battery at drill. Though this photograph was taken at Stevenson, Alabama, the artillerymen here at Lunette Palmer performed identical tasks with similar equipment.
5. STONFR_170606_038.JPG: Lunette Palmer Civil War fortifications were precisely designed. Every angle, every mound of earth, and every slope you see here in Lunette Palmer had a specific purpose. Lunette Palmer is a multi-sided, angled earthwork that projects outward from the basic profile of the fort. The ten lunettes of Fortress Rosecrans were designed to allow infantry or artillery to sweep every inch of ground in front of the fort. There were no "dead spaces" where an attacking foe could take refuge. The original function of the earthen mounds to your right is not certain. They may be the remains of a magazine, a roofed earthen structure designed to store ammunition for the lunette's cannon.
6. STONFR_170606_042.JPG: A Vast Depot "Nearly every house in the place is filled with government stores. There is a pile of meat larger than our house, besides flour, hay, corn, coffee, rice, sugar, salt, tea, vinegar, etc. etc.... If one family of ten persons had these rations to eat they would last them 2,465 years." -- A.S. Bloomfield, Co. A, 1st Ohio Lt. Artillery Fortress Rosecrans was one of many Union defenses along the vital Nashville and Chattanooga Railroad. It protected one of the largest supply depots in the war's Western Theater. A vast complex of weapons, ammunition, and food storehouses sprawled across the open ground within the fort - mostly beyond Lytle Creek to your left. The fort also included four sawmills and a fifty-acre vegetable garden used by the large hospital here. The depot helped supply Maj. Gen. William S. Rosecrans's army during its advance toward Tullahoma and Chattanooga in the summer of 1863. This view shows a depot in Virginia that probably looked much like the one here at Fortress Rosecrans. For a time, warehouses at Fortress Rosecrans held enough supplies to feed 50,000 men for ninety days. This is the only known view of the interior of Fortress Rosecrans. It shows the camp of the 115th Ohio Infantry, drawn by a member of the regiment in November 1863. The works are clearly visible in the background.
7. STONFR_170606_048.JPG: Toil and Mud For nearly five months, thousands of soldiers and African-American laborers worked around the clock to build Fortress Rosecrans - digging, shaping, and compacting the works. It was backbreaking, highly unpopular duty. "Feb. 1, 1863. [Building fortifications] may be valuable and necessary in a military view, but our men had three objections to it today: because it was Sunday, because it was muddy and greatest because it was work.... We did not enlist to get a job of working. We expected just a big picnic with good clothes, good rations, regular pay and glory, not work and mud." -- Lyman S. Widney, 34th Illinois Infantry The curtain wall of Fortress Rosecrans, designed to be used by infantry, included a dry ditch on its outward side and a firing step for infantrymen on the inward side. The works perpendicular to the curtain wall (running toward you) are called traverses. These were designed to prevent flanking fire from sweeping the length of the fort. During the first four months of 1863, nearly 40,000 fighters like these men of the 21st Michigan cast aside weapons and took up shovels to help construct Fortress Rosecrans.
8. STONFR_170606_072.JPG: New Citizen Soldiers In the months after this fort was built, thousands of men from Middle Tennessee joined eight new federal infantry regiments. Black men in blue coats guarded the railroad that fed Fortress Rosecrans, and helped garrison Nashville and Chattanooga. By the end of the Civil War, 150 black regiments - called the United States Colored Troops - made up 10 percent of the U.S. Army. Their death toll was high. From 1863-1865, one third of U.S.C.T. volunteers died while in military service. Once let the black man get upon his person the brass letters, U-S, let him get an eagle on his button, and a musket on his shoulder and bullets in his pockets, and there is no power on earth which can deny that he has earned the right to citizenship in the United States. Frederick Douglass From the first shots in 1861 up to mid-1863, Union and Confederate leaders both saw men of color mainly as a pool of labor available to support the war effort. Black men built many fortifications - like the earthen walls where you now stand - for North and South. Tennessean Hubbard Pryor just before his November 1864 enlistment. Private Pryor, 44th Regiment, United States Colored Troops.
9. STONFR_170606_080.JPG: I Never Saw Anything Like Them Before Looking over this parapet, you can still see some 1,400 feet of earthwork walls stretching out before you. In 1863 Fortress Rosecrans had more than 14,000 feet of walls surrounding a compound that covered 200 acres. Lunette Thomas: This earthwork defense, the curtain walls, and Lunette Palmer in the distance are all that is left of this side of Fortress Rosecrans. We have taken our position here and we intend to hold it. There is not a man among us who fears for the moment that we may be driven out no matter what force the Rebels may bring against. -- Lyman Widney, sergeant-major, 14th Illinois Volunteer Infantry ....the fortifications... are a big thing. I never saw anything like them before. They are said to be the strongest in the world except for one place in Russia. -- Hiram M. Gibbs, captain, 21st Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry All the forces....have been drawn in near the fortifications which are very numerous and of such strength that I think 50,000 can hold the place against 100,000. -- Alpheus S. Bloomfield, private, 1st Ohio Volunteer Light Artillery It would Supprise you if you was here to See the amount of work that has been done by this army i seen heavy fortification at fort donelson and bowling green but they are Small works... these works [are] ready for [a] fite any time. i dont think the rebels will ever fite us here... -- James H. Jones, private, 57th Indiana Volunteer Infantry
10. STONFR_170606_088.JPG: Living Under the Guns The citizens of occupied Murfreesboro had constant reminders of the powerful federal army entrenched here on their doorsteps. From January 1863 to April 1866, "the streets were crowded at all times with wagons and soldiers....Soldiers camping thick in and round town," townsman John Spence recorded. And all could hear the rumble of regular cannon practice. Federal cannon here could hit the Rutherford County Courthouse you can see in the distance. If the Confederates had tried to raid the fort, Union troops were under orders to shell and burn Murfreesboro. "... [there are] Refugees wimmen and Children going north on prettinear Every trane they are the poorest folks i Ever Saw they have no money and allmost no Clothing i guess the government is Halling them off to keep them from Starvation ... the folks in the north knows nothing about war." -- James H. Jones, private, 57th Indiana Volunteer Infantry, Company E General Orders No. 20 The guns of the Command can be discharged between the hours of 12 and 1 o'clock each day. The men will be encouraged to fire at targets but in all cases it must be under the direction of Company Officers with all necessary precautions against accidents... By Command of Brigadier General Van Cleve Headquarters, Post of Murfreesboro, Tennessee December 2, 1864
11. STONFR_170606_103.JPG: Lunette Thomas 1863 - 1866 [Our fortress] consists of a line of works called "lunettes" forming an irregular circle on both sides of Stones River. The "lunette" is a fortification having embankment, ditch, angles, and so forth in front, but open to the rear. Some of [the] smaller ... lunettes were defended at this opening by a stockade of hewn logs, but most of them are irregular half circles having no protection immediately behind them ... These works are all named for prominent Generals in this army... -- Harvey Reid, corporal, 22nd Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry, Company A This earthwork was named for Major General George H. Thomas, a native of Southhampton, Virginia. An 1840 West Point graduate, General Thomas commanded the XIVth corps of Rosecran's army in 1863. No historic photographs of Fortress Rosecrans earthworks survives. This image shows trenches at Petersburg, Virginia in 1865. Attention to orders: No one should be allowed to walk on the parapets, nor move or sit upon the gabions, barrels, or sandbags that may be placed upon them. by Order of -- Major General William S. Rosecrans, commanding, Army of the Cumberland, United States Army You are standing near the dry ditch of Lunette Thomas. The tall earth mound to your left was once the main eastern wall of this Civil War defense. Imagine how long it took to build more than 14,000 feet of earthworks and ditches to protect Fortress Rosecrans. This stronghold could shelter 50,000 troops and warehouse the provisions they would need for up to 90 days. Lunette Thomas is one of ten lunettes that made up Fortress Rosecrans. Soldiers used sod to keep these earthen walls from eroding. The National Park Service continues that work by planting native grasses. These plants stabilize the earthworks while they improve the health of the park's wildlife.
12. STONFR_170606_116.JPG: Covered by Cross Fires To find such a wide break in a fort's wall seems strange to a person today. Yet the gap you see here - then called a sortie passage - is a carefully calculated part of the defenses of Fortress Rosecrans. The area close to the walls was covered by cannon fire from many nearby angles. Enemy troops could not reach this point without suffering massive losses. With all the nearby trees and brush cleared away, Fortress Rosecrans had no blind spots. No enemy came close. The Lunette [if] attacked repulses the enemy by its direct fire of musketry and artillery; the collateral Lunettes and curtains cross their fire in front of it [if] the enemy attack one of the curtains... the enemy is met by direct fire ... and cross fire from the ... Lunettes. -- James St. Clair Morton, brigadier general, Chief Engineer, Army of the Cumberland Civil War cannoneers could fire solid shot, exploding shells, or case shot at long ranges. When the enemy approached within 400 yards, the gunners switched to canister or grapeshot, sending a deadly shower of iron balls into their ranks. The sortie passages ... are designed to admit, or give exit to, large masses of our own troops, in the case of a general engagement taking place... -- General Morton
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