Booknotes: Hell by the Acre

New Arrival:

• Hell by the Acre: A Narrative History of the Stones River Campaign, November 1862-January 1863 by Daniel A. Masters (Savas Beatie, 2025).

Stones River was an incredibly costly bit of concentrated mayhem, its level of bloodiness even more pronounced given the relatively small size (by major Civil War battle standards) of the two armies involved and the compactness of the battlefield.

From the description: "The opposing armies—44,000 men under Rosecrans and 37,000 under Bragg—locked bayonets on December 31, 1862, in some of the hardest fighting of the war. Bragg’s initial attack drove the Federals back nearly three miles, captured 29 cannons, and thousands of prisoners. Somehow the Union lines held firm during the critical fighting along the Nashville Pike that afternoon against repeated determined attacks that left both armies bloodied and exhausted. The decisive moment came two days later when, in the fading afternoon of January 2, 1863, Bragg launched an assault on an isolated Union division on the east bank of Stones River. The Confederates once again enjoyed initial success only to be repulsed by 58 Union guns combined with a daring counterattack. This repulse broke Bragg’s hold on Murfreesboro. He retreated the following night, leaving Rosecrans and his Cumberland army victors of the field."

Serious students of the Stones River/Murfreesboro campaign and battle are fortunate to have a number of major modern works at their fingertips. The first edition of James Lee McDonough's Stones River: Bloody Winter in Tennessee was published in 1980. That was followed in 1989 by Peter Cozzens's No Better Place to Die: The Battle of Stones River. In 2012, prolific western theater specialist Larry Daniel made his own contribution with Battle of Stones River: The Forgotten Conflict Between the Confederate Army of Tennessee and the Union Army of the Cumberland. The Cozzens and Daniel titles are roughly similar in depth. In terms of following the actions of every unit involved (down to each regiment and battery from both sides) throughout the course of the campaign and battle, nothing is more detailed than Lanny Smith's two extraordinary self-published tomes The Stone's River Campaign 26 December 1862 - 5 January 1863: The Union Army (2008) and The Stone's River Campaign 26 December 1862 - 5 January 1863: Army of Tennessee (2010). The other books referenced above are easily found, but both Smith books are long out of print and likely unobtainable today outside of a very lucky eBay/used bookstore find. Most recently, the mounted forces of both sides are placed at the forefront in Dennis Belcher's The Cavalries at Stones River: An Analytical History (2017).

Fast forward to today and readers just might have in Daniel Masters's Hell by the Acre: A Narrative History of the Stones River Campaign, November 1862-January 1863, which offers detailed perspectives of the campaign from the strategic level down to the views of those on the ground, the new standard when it comes to comprehensive single-volume treatments. At over 600 pages of main narrative, Masters's book is positively David Powellian in scope. Its bibliography displays strong breadth and depth of source materials consulted, and the 17 maps from Edward Alexander are filled with meticulously rendered small-unit and terrain details. My first impressions are very positive, and I'm looking forward to reading this.