Faces of the Civil War: An Album of Union Soldiers and Their Stories

Hell’s Half Acre

56 Hell’s Half Acre Along Stones River, Tennessee, on the last day of 1862, the break of dawn revealed masses of Confederate troops in motion against the Union Army of the Cumberland. The rebels swept into and crushed the federal right wing, and the stunned Union army fell back and scrambled to establish a defensive line, the strategic key of which was a four-acre grove of trees called “Round Forest,” dubbed “Hell’s Half Acre” after the battle. Near this point the Sixth Ohio Infantry received orders to launch an assault to protect the new line. In Company C, Cpl. Aloise Kalin worked with his line officers to prepare his men for the attack. The Sixth and another regiment advanced and saw Union troops “flying in wild disorder, and hotly pursued by the enemy.”89 Col. Nicholas Anderson90 formed the 383 men of the Sixth into a line of battle. Anderson recalled, “In a few minutes a terrible fire was opened on us, scarce one hundred yards distant, from a rebel line apparently four deep.”91 The Sixth fought desperately for forty minutes. Anderson ordered his men to “fix bayonets!”92 then abruptly changed the command to retreat after the rebels flanked the regiment on both sides. “A score of gory corpses—brave men but half an hour before—marked the line where the Sixth had fought, and five score more were suffering there, or wending their painful way toward the rear in search of the surgeon.”93 The assault bought time for the rest of the brigade to prepare for the oncoming rebels, who were ultimately repelled. A half-hour later, the Sixth was sent in again—this time to support troops fighting on Hell’s Half Acre. “The regiment was under almost constant fire, and many more brave men were there killed or wounded.” The Sixth suffered almost fifty percent casualties, including Kalin, who was desperately wounded. 57 Kalin was probably an immigrant from Eastern Europe.94 He made his way to a hospital in nearby Murfreesboro, but succumbed to his wound two days later, as Union troops repulsed the last attacks in the battle and won a strategic victory that secured central Tennessee for the Union. Cpl. Aloise Kalin, Company C, Sixth Ohio Infantry Carte de visite by John Henry Reinhold (life dates unknown) of Cincinnati, Ohio, August or September 1862 ...