Battle of Stones River: Another respected Union general dies

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Battle of Stones River:
Another respected Union general dies
By MIKE WEST Managing Editor

It was 8 a.m. when Phil Sheridan’s division came under fire at Stones River.

His division was on the left of the Army of the Cumberland’s right wing when the Rebels attacked at daylight on Dec. 31, 1862.

The Third (formerly 11th) Division of the Union forces had been reorganized in the middle of November with three brigades of four regiments each commanded by Brig. Gen. Joshua W. Sill, Col. Frederick Schaefer and Col. Dan McCook. While the unit was still encamped at Mill Creek outside of Nashville, Col. George W. Robert’s brigade was substituted for McCook’s, who, incidentally, was the brother of Gen. Alexander McCook.

Sill had requested transfer to Sheridan’s division.

“General Sill was a classmate of mine at the Military Academy, having graduated in 1853,” Sheridan wrote in his memoirs. “I knew him well, and was glad that he came to my division, though I was very loath to relieve Colonel Greusel, of the Thirty-Sixth Illinois, who had already indicated much military skill and bravery, and at the battle of Perryville had handled his men with the experience of a veteran.”

Sill was third in the class of 1853; Sheridan was 34th in his class of 52 cadets.

Greusel is an interesting figure in the Union Army. He was a “Forty-eighter,” an immigrant from Germany where he had participated in the Baden Insurrection of 1848, which pushed the idea of unifying the 38 states of Germany under a national assembly. The revolutionists also called for basic rights including freedom of assembly and the press.

As for Sheridan, he was Irish. While he claimed to have been born March 6, 1831 in Albany, N.Y., it is said he was born at sea during the voyage from County Cavan, Ireland. He grew up in Somerset, Ohio. A scrapper, he was sometimes called Little Phil (not to his face) because of his small stature.

Abraham Lincoln described him as "A brown, chunky little chap, with a long body, short legs, not enough neck to hang him, and such long arms that if his ankles itch he can scratch them without stooping."

By the end of the Civil War, the 5-foot-5 Sheridan was termed one of the three greatest Union generals along with U.S. Grant and William T. Sherman. Just like Sherman, Sheridan was later to have a series of tanks named in his honor.

Sheridan’s efforts at Stones River won him his second star.

From the Confederate viewpoint, Sheridan was the devil incarnate just like Sherman. After a series of promotions, he burned his way through the Shenandoah Valley, his troops killed Southern icon J.E.B. Stuart and he blocked the retreat of Robert E. Lee’s army at Appomattox.

In 2006, when the city of Murfreesboro attempted to assign Civil War names to streets in the Gateway Center, the suggestion of Sheridan Street quickly resulted in citizen protest.

Sheridan was a rough, foul-mouthed fighter, who had been suspended for a year at West Point for threatening to run a cadet sergeant through with a bayonet. Sill, following graduation, served in the ordnance corps until 1861, then taught math and civil engineering at Polytechnic University of New York.

When the war began, Sill was named colonel of the 33rd Ohio Volunteers. Born in Chillicothe, Ohio, he was the son of attorney Joseph and Elizabeth Sill. As a military man, he was intelligent and alert. In fact, Sill was the first to notice that Confederate Gen. Braxton Bragg was preparing to attack the Union right on Dec. 31.

“At 2 o'clock on the morning of the 31st General Sill came back to me to report that on his front a continuous movement of infantry and artillery had been going on all night within the Confederate lines, and that he was convinced that Bragg was massing on our right with the purpose of making an attack from that direction early in the morning,” Sheridan wrote.

Sheridan and Sill then went to talk to corps commander Alexander McCook. “He said that he thought Johnson's division would be able to take care of the right, and seemed confident that the early assault which was to be made from Rosecrans' left would anticipate and check the designs which we presaged,” Sheridan said.

The two generals then returned to Sheridan’s camp and Sill expressed his continued concerns. Talking to McCook hadn’t changed his mind about the Confederate battle plan.

When Sill left Sheridan’s camp, he inadvertently switched frock coats with his friend. The battle would soon begin.

Unlike Gens. R.W. Johnson and Jefferson C. Davis, Sheridan and Sill prepared for early action.

“Long before dawn my division breakfasted, and was assembled under arms, the infantry in line, the cannoneers at their pieces, but while we were thus preparing, all the recent signs of activity in the enemy's camp were hushed, a death-like stillness prevailing in the cedars to our front. Shortly after daylight General Hardee opened the engagement, just as Sill had predicted, by a fierce attack on Johnson's division, the extreme right of the Union line,” Sheridan wrote.

Johnson’s division soon gave way with two of Davis’ brigades following.

The Confederate attack on Sheridan’s division been delayed by the inaction of Brig. Gen. Benjamin F. Cheatham, who may have been drunk. The brigades of Col. A.M. Manigault and Col. J. Q. Loomis had been detached from Maj. Gen. Jones Withers’ Division and assigned to Cheatham.

Instead of attacking in division strength, Cheatham — for whatever reason — orchestrated his men in piecemeal fashion.

Loomis moved on Col. William Woodruff’s brigade, one of the few units of Davis’ division that hadn’t folded back yet. Sheridan’s division supported the Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin troops with Sill’s Brigade on the front line with Woodruff’s men. They were positioned behind a split-rail fence at the edge of a cedar woods.

Loomis’ Alabamians had to advance some 300 yards across open cornfields, which were defended in part by three cannons from the Eighth Wisconsin Battery led by Capt. Stephen Carpenter.

While the odds were against Loomis, the Union infantry once again ran. Col. Thomas Williams of the 25th Illinois tried, unsuccessfully, to get his faltering men to hold the line. Grabbing the regimental colors, Williams yelled: “We will plant it here, boys, and rally the old Twenty-fifth around it; and here we will die.”

Williams, holding the colors, was struck in the chest and died instantly. His men ran.

But the enfilading fire from Union artillery and other supporting regiments did their damage to Loomis and his brigade. Loomis himself was badly wounded.

“In the meantime the enemy had also attacked me, advancing across an old cotton-field in Sill's front in heavy masses, which were furiously opened upon by Bush's battery from Sill's line, and by Hescock's and Houghtaling's batteries, which had an oblique fire on the field from a commanding position in rear of my centre,” Sheridan wrote.

“The effect of this fire on the advancing column was terrible, but it continued on till it reached the edge of the timber where Sill's right lay, when my infantry opened at a range of not over fifty yards. For a short time the Confederates withstood the fire, but then wavered, broke and fell back toward their original line,” he said.

Then came the fateful moment.

Sill, still wearing Sheridan’s frock coat, ordered his brigade to charge at the retreating Confederates.
“In this charge the gallant Sill was killed; a rifle ball passing through his upper lip and penetrating the brain,” Sheridan said.

The story persists that Confederate riflemen mistook Sill for Sheridan and shot him.

Sill’s men, falling back, attempted to retrieve their leader’s body from the battlefield, but had to abandon him. His body was found by Confederate troops who buried him near where he died at age 31.

Sheridan didn’t forget his friend. He sent Sill’s coat back to his family in Ohio and after the Civil War was responsible for naming Fort Sill in his honor. Today as the U.S. Army Field Artillery Center, Fort Sill remains the only active Army installation of all the forts on the South Plains built during the Indian wars. Geronimo, the It was 8 a.m. when Phil Sheridan’s division came under fire at Stones River.


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I had relatives in the 22nd Alabama of Loomis' Brigade and 28th Alabama of Manigaults Brigade. Who knows a diffrent time and place and they may have all been friends.