Review - "Hell by the Acre: A Narrative History of the Stones River Campaign, November 1862-January 1863" by Daniel Masters

[Hell by the Acre: A Narrative History of the Stones River Campaign, November 1862-January 1863 by Daniel A. Masters (Savas Beatie, 2025). Hardcover, 17 maps, photos, illustrations, footnotes, orders of battle, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:xiii,615/671. ISBN:978-1-61121-712-4. $39.95]

Before now, Civil War readers have had three main options to choose from when it comes to single-volume narrative histories of the winter 1862-63 battle in Middle Tennessee between Braxton Bragg's Confederate Army of Tennessee and William Rosecrans's Union Army of the Cumberland. Each of them, in chronological order those from James Lee McDonough, Peter Cozzens, and Larry Daniel, have served us fairly well up to this point and all are roughly comparable in scale, with the latter two vying for recognition as the best of the trio¹. Still, far surpassing each of those earlier efforts in operational depth and level of tactical detail is Daniel Masters's newly published Hell by the Acre: A Narrative History of the Stones River Campaign, November 1862-January 1863.

With its bibliographical bounty of newspaper, manuscript, and unit history resources, the research underpinning Masters's study exhibits all the primary source variety and depth one would expect to find in a modern campaign microhistory of this grand a scale. In a fashion that invites favorable comparison to the celebrated work of the Civil War field's most able professional and non-professional military history practitioners (a group that includes consistently reliable authors such as Earl Hess and David Powell), Masters skillfully utilizes the research material at his disposal to weave together a comprehensively authoritative, yet still accessible, account of the Stones River campaign and battle. The lavishly descriptive text contained in every chapter is enriched on a consistent basis through the author's seamless integration of revealing firsthand quotes and passages left behind by participants of all ranks. That interlacement produces a profoundly revealing ground-level exploration of the intensity and character of the fighting at Stones River as well as the human cost that combat left behind.

Along the way, Masters quite evidently has gained a degree of expert knowledge about the contested ground between Nashville and Murfreesboro that few others possess, and that background allows him to thoroughly convey to his readers the ways in which key terrain factored into the course of the battle. The many places upon which the battlefield's unusual topography, in particular the area's numerous densely choked cedar groves and forests as well as its ubiquitous pockets of limestone outcroppings, restricted both fields of fire and maneuvering space for infantry and artillery alike are keenly observed throughout.

David Powell's acclaimed Chickamauga Campaign trilogy offers strong arguments in favor of that great western clash being deemed a three-day (rather than two-day) battle. Given Masters's description of the events of December 30, one might be tempted to similarly add another day of battle to Stones River. Masters himself doesn't quite reach that far, though, with the heading of his chapter relevant to the December 30 fighting labeling those events as "Almost A Battle." In this case, he's probably right in resisting revisionist tendencies.

Regardless, the main Stones River fighting on December 31, 1862 and January 2, 1863, those days bookending the battle's interrupted three-day span, has already been documented in strong detail among several works, but Masters embarks on an even deeper dive. His volume is roughly twice the length of its strongest predecessors. Additionally, those with a particular interest in gaining more information about the movements and events leading up to the beginning of the Battle of Stones River should find themselves well satisfied with Masters's expansive pre-battle operational history, which comprises well over a third of the book's content. Indeed, it is fast approaching page 250 before the Confederate army's December 31 dawn attack on the Union right is finally launched.

The clashes between infantry are front and center, but the battle narrative also devotes an appropriate degree of attention to the support arms. Masters's text clearly shows where and how Union qualitative and quantitative superiority in artillery deployed on the defensive proved critical in helping slow and ultimately stop the massive series of Confederate assaults against the Union right and center on December 31. The Union long arm also proved instrumental in shattering the subsequent January 2 Confederate attack initiated on the east side of Stones River. On the other hand, as it would throughout much of the war, the Army of Tennessee's artillery arm, saddled with a high proportion of antiquated smoothbore tubes, struggled at Stones River to both adequately support their infantry comrades on the tactical offensive and deliver effective counterbattery fire. With batteries assigned individually to brigades, organization also played a part in hindering concentration of fire.

A comprehensive description and analysis of the mounted forces of both sides and what part they played in this campaign already exists², and Masters's own interpretation is more supportive than not of historian Dennis Belcher's central findings. Both authors credit General Rosecrans for effectively reorganizing and bolstering the Union cavalry in his department prior to the campaign, though that prodigious effort was far from complete by the time Stones River was fought. Both writers rate David Stanley's appointment as cavalry chief to be a faultless executive decision matching man with moment. Belcher and Masters are also on the same page when it comes to the cavalry not being assigned primary blame for the intelligence failures and/or miscommunication on the Confederate right on December 31, a situation that hampered timely reshuffling of forces between the wings of the army separated by the river. Unlike Belcher, Masters does not weigh in heavily on the matter of whether Joseph Wheeler's cavalry, instead of raiding the wagon trains of Rosecrans's army to mixed results, might have been better utilized in the role of providing direct tactical support to the December 31 Confederate attacks on the exposed Union right.

If anything can be criticized about the book's presentation, which is stellar overall, it is the uncomfortable gaps that exist in map coverage. Seventeen maps are often a sufficient number for studies of this general type, but within this particular densely detailed campaign and battle narrative (one that's over 600 pages in length) the rate of change in the progression of events that unfold in the text all too frequently outpaces corresponding map coverage. On the other hand, the quality of the cartography itself is first-rate, with the maps having everything one might wish for in both small-unit detail and terrain representation.

Stones River arguably doesn't possess the weight and number of endlessly debated what-if scenarios that other Civil War battles of similar significance provide as speculative fodder for conversation. One such matter that undoubtedly shaped Stones River to some degree or another was the Davis administration's insistence pre-campaign that Carter Stevenson's large infantry division (some 8,000 men) be transferred from Bragg's army in Tennessee to John C. Pemberton's command in Mississippi. Much like what happened earlier at Shiloh and Perryville, at Stones River the ferocity of the initial Confederate assaults shoved their Union opponents across the battlefield (at Stones River, some three miles) but lacked the reserves to break them. An argument can be made that the troops of Stevenson's Division could have added enough additional punch to Bragg's assaults on December 31 to successfully cut across the Nashville Pike and make decisive tactical victory possible, but Masters elects to not weigh in strongly on either side of that debate. In his very brief overview of the matter, he does cite one historian's grave doubts that Bragg possessed the battle management acumen to utilize Stevenson for decisive effect (an argument along similar lines has long been raised in regard to the consequences of the Army of the Potomac's First Corps being withheld from General McClellan on the Peninsula), but the text is not clear as to where on that interpretive spectrum Masters's own views reside.

The Civil War battle historiography is replete with late-day drama surrounding how certain actions and decisions robbed attacking armies of clear opportunities for achieving complete victory . Much of that brand of speculation is unrealistically conceptualized, one of the oldest examples being persistent claims from Confederate partisans that total victory was in their grasp at the end of the first day's fighting at Shiloh (if only General Beauregard had not halted the attack). There is also the other side of the coin, with particular units or individuals hailed as exceptional saviors of their armies during key defensive actions. The ability of the battered Army of the Cumberland to maintain its hold on the Nashville Pike during the waning daylight moments of December 31 has often been represented as a near-run thing. While Masters does title his chapter corresponding to that defining event the "Miracle at the Three-Mile Marker" and singles out the spoiling attack of Bradley's Brigade as providing saving grace to Rosecrans's shaken army, it is at the same time also strongly suggested that the heavy assembly of artillery concentrated along the pike raised significant doubts that the Confederates, nearly fought out by that point in the battle, could have closed the deal. It was along this sector that the absence of Stevenson's Division was most keenly felt. Of course, the numerous Union army defensive stands that preceded it, among them the stout resistance of Philip Sheridan's division in The Cedars and the determined defense of the Round Forest by the brigades of William Hazen and George Wagner, are fully addressed and their significance duly appreciated.

In contrast to the volume's very extensive coverage of pre-battle events, the aftermath of Stones River, including discussion of those factors that went into Bragg's final decision to retreat as well as the retreat itself (Polk's corps to Shelbyville and Hardee's to Manchester), is handled in a single chapter at the end. At several places in the book, the plight of the wounded of each side receives due attention. The casualty levels suffered by both armies at Stones River (some 27% of Bragg's army and 31% of Rosecrans's) were stunning losses by any measure, and Masters cites the literature's standard numbers. He reports no evidence that would suggest the need for major revision of those figures in killed, wounded, and missing, though perhaps with the caveat that the prisoner hauls might have been higher than those typically accepted.

True to its author's name, Hell by the Acre displays mastery of every major element that goes into creation of the best type of modern Civil War campaign and battle history narrative. When it comes to single-volume treatments of Stones River, this study has indisputably become the new standard. With the high-level research and writing skills amply on display here, Masters joins the upper echelon of talented avocational historians who have contributed so much to the Civil War literature over recent decades. Hopefully, we will get even more of this brand of fine work from him in the future³.

Notes:
1- These traditional battle narratives are James Lee McDonough's Stones River: Bloody Winter in Tennessee (1980), Peter Cozzens's No Better Place to Die: The Battle of Stones River (1989), and Larry Daniel's Battle of Stones River: The Forgotten Conflict Between the Confederate Army of Tennessee and the Union Army of the Cumberland (2012). In structure and form, Lanny Smith's massive two-volume set [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)] is a different animal entirely.
2 - See Dennis Belcher's The Cavalries at Stones River: An Analytical History (2017).
3 - For a collection of the author's short-form writings, visit his regularly updated blog Dan Masters' Civil War Chronicles.