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eve of battle opposite plans The weather continued dismal on Tuesday, December 30. It rained nearly all night, and a morning mist obscured observation. In the early morning Breckinridge reoccupied Wayne’s Hill with three regiments of Hanson’s brigade and Cobb’s battery. At 8:00 a.m. Cobb found himself in a spirited duel with the 10th Indiana Battery in the Round Forest and the 6th Ohio Battery. Seeing Cobb outgunned, Major Graves ordered two sections of rifled guns, one each from the Washington Artillery and Lumsden’s battery, to his support. Despite protest from Cobb, Graves directed Lumsden to fire two shots from each of his guns. Unfortunately, Cobb received the return fire. A shot completely gutted all six horses of a limber parked below the crest of the ridge, but the riders miraculously escaped injury.1 Rosecrans stood in front of his headquarters, some 1,500 yards from Wayne’s Hill, as the duel commenced. One of Cobb’s shells suddenly ricocheted in the pike. A second shot exploded dangerously near the general. A third shot carried away the head of an orderly. The general and his sta≠ hurriedly mounted and rode up a slope out of range, re-establishing headquarters to the left of the pike. As it began to rain, sta≠ o∞cers set up a makeshift shelter of blankets stretched between two trees so that orders might be written. Crittenden soon arrived at army headquarters, as the 4th U.S. Cavalry stood in line behind a crest 300–400 yards in the rear. As an occasional shell burst, the band of the 4th struck up to the “Star Spangled Banner.”2 McCook reported that his corps did not take up the march until 9:30, which, given the three-mile gap that existed between his and Thomas’s corps, made him liable to censure. Yet he clearly erred about the starting time. Sheridan’s division roused at 4:00 a.m., formed in line of march at 60 battle of stones river 6:00, and Colonel George W. Roberts’s lead brigade crossed Overall Creek Bridge at 7:00, passing the General Smith House (“Fairfield”), still in existence today. The congestion at the bridge delayed the next brigade, that of Brigadier General Joshua Sill, until 9:00. “As we marched out the pike [Wilkinson,] Genls. McCook & Sheridan sat on their horses looking at us, McCook burly & robust with a full red face indicative of plenty of good beef & brandy, Sheridan with a small diminutive figure presenting a strong contrast to McCook,” one of Roberts’s men recalled.3 At 9:00, as Roberts pushed east down the Wilkinson Pike, light skirmishing commenced, with the shooting intensifying as the Confederates fell back. To relieve the hard-pressed 19th Illinois, Sheridan threw forward the 22nd Illinois as skirmishers to the left of the Wilkinson Pike and the 42nd Illinois to the right, resulting in an approving cheer from the men. At noon, in the midst of a drizzling rain, Roberts connected with Negley’s right. Having been given no orders to halt, the 22nd continued to advance far beyond Negley’s line and nearly to Patton Anderson’s breastworks before being recalled. The 51st and 27th Illinois formed line of battle in a cornfield in the rear, while Battery C, 1st Illinois Light Artillery, took a position in a point of timber on high ground a little farther to the right of the road.4 By noon Sill’s brigade had advanced as far as the Harding House. At 3:00 Sheridan ordered Sill across a cottonfield to come up on Roberts’s left. The blue infantry came under the fire of Waters’s Alabama Battery, sheltered in woods 600 yards distant. “We . . . had gone about half way across when a masked Rebel Battery opened on us with shot and shell,” Lieutenant Howard Greene of the 24th Wisconsin related. The fragments came “so thick, that it was almost useless to cross in face of the fire, so we were ordered to halt and lie down.” Captain Asahel Bush’s 4th Indiana galloped to a wooded hill 450 yards distant and engaged the enemy guns, with Sill posting five companies of the 24th Wisconsin in support. No sooner had the Badgers come to attention, wrote Greene, than a shell “came crashing toward us striking a man about 20 pcs [paces] from me in the forehead taking the top of his head completely o≠ & scattering his Brains...

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