God Granted a Happy New Year - Stones River National Battlefield - Murfreesboro, TN
Posted by: 
YoSam.
N 35° 52.827 W 086° 26.078
16S E 551032 N 3970836
Marker behind the visitors center
Waymark Code: WMP8TT
Location: Tennessee, United States
Date Posted: 07/21/2015
Views: 4
County of marker: Rutherford County
Location of marker: Park Road, behind visitors center, Stones River National Battlefield, Murfreesboro
Marker erected by: National Park Service
Marker text:
God has granted us a Happy New Year!
Braxton Bragg, general commanding the Army of Tennessee, in a telegram to Confederate President Jefferson Davis.
On New Years's Eve the fighting had raged from dawn to dark. Here on the edges of this broad, open field the two exhausted armies stopped shooting. The Confederates formed a line in the trees you see in the distance. The Union Army stretched for two miles along Nashville Pike.
On New Year's Day 1863, 21,000 men did not answer their unit roll calls. The number of dead and wounded stunned battle-hardened veterans in both armies. Friend and foe spent that day mingled in the torn fields and shattered cedar woods, helping the wounded, looking for comrades lost in the swirl of battle, and burying the dead. Both sides dug hasty defenses for whenever the truce ended. The Confederates had pushed the Federals back over three miles, taking 3,000 prisoners. General Bragg started his new year sure that he had won a great - if costly - victory.