Today in History:

809 Series I Volume XX-I Serial 29 - Murfreesborough Part I

Page 809 Chapter XXXII. THE STONE'S RIVER CAMPAIGN.

three wounds, but did not relinquish the command until the conflict was ended; Colonel Cunningham [commanding the Twenty-eighth Regiment] was killed while gallantly leading his regiment in the main assault.

Major C. H. Wadley, of the Forty-fifth Tennessee Regiment, is missing, and is supposed to be a prisoner in the hands of the enemy.

Lieut. Col. J. L. Bottles, of the Twenty-sixth Regiment, was wounded by the splinter of a shell, in the hip. MajorR. M. Saffell, of the same regiment, was severely wounded in the thigh.

In the Eighteenth Regiment, Captain [John] Dick was killed, and seven other captains in the same regiment were wounded.

I transmit herewith list* of the killed, wounded, and missing of the brigade.

My field battery, commanded by Lieut. R. W. Anderson, performed most important service. In this service Sergeant Brown was wounded by a shell, and is reported to me as acting most gallantly.

I ordered Colonel Palmer to report the participation of his regiment in this engagement, but he was reported to be suffering so severely from his wounds that he was unable to prepare a report. He was left in the neighborhood of Allisonia.

I am, respectfully,

GID. J. PILLOW,

Brigadier-General, C. S. Army.

[Colonel] T. O'HARA,

Acting Assistant Adjutant-General.

P. S.-I transmit herewith the colors of the Ninth [Federal] Kentucky Regiment of Infantry, taken on the field by Colonel Cunningham's [Twenty-eighth] Tennessee Regiment in the battle of the 2nd. It was much torn and mutilated, and stained with blood in the fights, and has many ball holes on it.

HDQRS. VOL. AND CONSCRIPT BUREAU, ARMY OF TENN., Huntsville, Ala., April 11, 1863.

SIR: I my verbal interview with General Bragg at Tullahoma, the battle of Murfreesborough on Friday being the subject of conversation, giving him an account of what occurred in that battle, I told him my brigade was, by General Breckinridge's orders, placed on the extreme right of our line. The line of battle was formed as directed by the general and on the ground indicated by him. My line advanced, and from the position of its formation necessarily leaving a thicket of timber and undergrowth on its right. When my line reached and was passing the thicket of woodland, the enemy's force, concealed in this thicket, opened a galling flank fire on my right wing, which so interrupted my advance and annoyed the command that I was forced to suspend the advance until the force of the enemy was dislodged from the thicket by artillery. A proper position of the line of battle would have required the line to have extended about 300 yards farther to the right, so as to have embraced this piece of woodland in its advance, and thus by a front advance to have driven out this force of the enemy from the thicket. Another consequence of this error of the position in which the line of battle was placed was, that, as we advanced, the space for General Hanson's brigade was so rapidly diminished by the course of

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*Embodied in No. 191, p.678.

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Page 809 Chapter XXXII. THE STONE'S RIVER CAMPAIGN.