Scenes at the Gresham House Hospital During the Battle of Stones River
The Gresham House located
along a single lane dirt road known as Gresham Lane became the one of the
primary field hospitals for the right wing of the Union army during the Battle
of Stones River. Casualties from the divisions of Richard H. Johnson, Jefferson
C. Davis, and Philip Sheridan were brought back from the front lines and
provided medical care in this house and the grounds surrounding it. Private
Charles Barney Dennis of the 101st Ohio described the hospital as “a
large plantation house surrounded by groves of maple, hickory, oak, and black
walnut.” [i] An existing photograph
from 1928 shows the Gresham House to be a two-story Greek Revival plantation
house featuring a nearly full length front porch, two-story high columns around
the front door, and two second story porches and chimneys at the north and
south ends of the house.
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| Gresham House in Murfreesboro, Tennessee as seen in 1928. If these grounds and walls could speak, the stories that could be told: General Joshua Sill's body being deposited on the porch the morning of December 31st and ransacked by Confederate troops eager to lay claim to the prize. Otis Strong scrambling to the second story to put out fires caused from Union and Confederate shells; Surgeon Blount shutting the front door as shells and bullets patted against it. Private Charles B. Dennis walking the grounds writing tags to be attached to the toes of the dead. The dead and wounded men scattered around the maples, hickories, and walnut trees as the yellow hospital flag fluttered overhead. The visits of Generals Hardee, Cheatham, and Cleburne during the battle during the passage of General James Rains' body towards Murfreesboro. The trees in this picture do not appear to date from the war, they are far too small and most likely the original trees present during the battle were chopped down for firewood during the lengthy stay of the Army of the Cumberland after Stones River. The house is long gone and this entire area is now an expanse of restaurants and stores. Progress has not been kind to the grounds where the Federal Right Wing fought during Stones River. Nary a sign exists marking what occurred here. (Photo courtesy of Middle Tennessee State University) |
Otis W. Strong was
serving as a private in Co. D of the 44th Illinois Infantry when on
the afternoon of December 30, 1862, he with ten others from his company, were
detached from the divisional provost guard detail and assigned to guard the Gresham
house hospital. He described the how the
Battle of Stones River developed from his perspective behind the lines. “All
apparently was quiet until daylight when, oh that I might forget it forever.
During the night, the enemy had concentrated their whole force upon our center
and at daylight 5,000 Rebels came rushing on us like demons. Our forces fell
back in the greatest confusion and here a regular Bull Run scene was enacted,
placing our hospital in a critical position directly between the fire of the
two armies. Canister pierced the hospital in every direction. Three times I
volunteered to ascend to the top of the building and extinguish the flames that
had caught from the bursting shells.” [ii]
 |
| Lieutenant O.R. Dahl of the 15th Wisconsin Volunteers drew this detailed topographical map of the Battle of Stones River. This shows the Gresham House (misspelled as Griscom) located along Gresham Lane and just south of the Wilkinson Pike at the center of the picture. The Jenkins House to the west of Gresham was torn down in 2006, one of the last remaining antebellum structures near the battlefield. The spot labeled as 34 marked the graves of 80 Union soldiers who died at the hospital while spots 35, 36, and 37 to the east of Gresham House indicated individual graves of Union officers and men. The red line marked B indicates the route that Lt. Dahl's brigade (Carlin's) retreated during the battle. Charles B. Dennis of the 101st Ohio was also in Carlin's brigade and was wounded near the B on the map and was brought by wagon to Gresham House. |
“The provost guard of
each division was ordered to the rear with pointed bayonets and loaded rifles
with orders from General Rosecrans to bayonet or shoot every straggler that
made his appearance. Being mostly new troops, and the battle raging with all its
fury, back they would come and back they would forced into the fight. One poor
fellow came back upon the full run and it became my duty to halt him, asking
him about the same time if he was wounded. “Let me go, let me go,” he shouted.
“I’m demoralized as hell!” [iii]
 |
| Members of the ambulance corps demonstrate the techniques used to remove the wounded from the battlefield. Private Charles B. Dennis of the 101st Ohio was hauled to Gresham House in a wagon he described as a "Prairie Schooner," or a Conestoga wagon. A rush of wounded men from Johnson's and Davis's divisions descended upon the Gresham House and the yard in front was soon covered with men. According to a map drawn by Lieutenant O.R. Dahl of the 15th Wisconsin, more than 80 dead Union soldiers were buried just south of the hospital adjacent to Gresham Lane. Those bodies were later removed to Stones River National Cemetery where they rest today. |
Strong continued, “Our
troops continued to fall back and the surgeon told us to take care of ourselves
the best we could, and we were compelled to leave our poor wounded comrades to
the mercy of the fiery element, which soon left but a smoldering pile of embers
to tell their fate.” [iv]
Surgeon Joseph Blount of
the 25th Illinois Infantry was the surgeon in charge of the hospital
and described the scenes as the hospital was attacked then overrun by the
Confederates. “Soon our army passed the hospital and the Rebels came forward- I
heard the whiz of bullets, the quick messengers of death. I stepped into the
house and closed the door. I had taken two or three steps when I heard the pat
of a musket ball against the door and at the same instant a pat against the head
of a man by my side. He fell dead at my feet. Other balls passed into and
through the house and wounded others while some were killed. The line of the
enemy advanced until even with the house and were firing at our men while
standing under the cover of the hospital. I stepped out and remonstrated with
General [St. John R.] Liddell of Louisiana for such cowardly conduct. He gave
me an awful cursing and said if he could have his own way, he would kill every
one of us and much other abusive language.” [v]
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| General St. John R. Liddell of Louisiana |
General Liddell provides some explanation
for this harsh treatment of Surgeon Blount in his memoir: he was heartbroken
over the news he had just received that his son Willie had been killed in
battle. “Then the third enemy line engaged us at the hospital. Firing from the
window caused Colonel Govan to fire on all of the men mounted near the hospital
enclosure. The enemy’s line of battle at this hospital stretching far to the
left, sustained our attack only a short time before giving way. Someone now
told me that my son Willie was killed. I felt deeply distressed. I knew that it
was a fact of war, consoling myself with the reflection that he could not have
fallen on a more honorable occasion.” [vi]
Federal prisoners swarmed around the
Gresham House, and General Liddell soon started ordering them to the rear.
“Many prisoners were brought to me. The prisoners seemed troubled and ask what
they should do. I told them that no one would molest unarmed men. In marching
to the rear, they would find the officer in charge of this business. But if
they wished to escape and thought the thing practicable, I had no objection
provided they promised never to fight us again/ This pleased them. One man
seized my hand saying, ‘We agree, you are the man for me.’ The hospital yard was
full of them, whither they had gone to escape the fire of the line. Wharton’s
cavalry and other commands took them all in charge.” [vii]
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| General James Edward Rains of Tennessee. This talented brigadier lost his life within sight of the Gresham House during the late morning of December 31, 1862. Following the battle, his body was brought under guard into his hometown of Nashville where he was buried at Mount Olivet Cemetery. |
The Gresham House hospital already
contained the body of slain General Joshua W. Sill, who Charles Dennis
remembered being set out on the front porch of the house. (General Hardee
visited it the next day). But the Gresham House hospital also had the body of
Confederate General James Rains pass through on December 31, 1862. “He fell
nearly in front of our hospital,” Blount recalled. “He was brought in through
the yard. I was talking with Generals Cheatham and Hardee as he passed. General
Cheatham asked who it was. On being told, he alighted from his horse and wept
over his body for some time. General Rains was a favorite general.” [viii]
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| Major General Benjamin F. Cheatham of Tennessee. Stories were rampant that Cheatham was drunk during the Battle of Stones River, a charge that General Bragg used against him in the controversy that followed the battle. Perhaps seeing the dead body of General James Rains at Gresham House helped sober him up? Or perhaps made him drink all the harder? The stresses of combat upon both the leaders and men affected everyone differently. |
Quoting again from Charles B. Dennis of
the 101st Ohio: “The scene within the hospital grounds was anything
but cheerful, although the best possible care had been given the wounded, there
was much that could have been done for their comfort, and many a poor chap died
from lack of proper nursing. The ground outside were covered with badly wounded
men, some of them mangled horribly, waiting for room to be made in the
operating rooms. Before they reached there many of them died. In a place
screened off by brush, there was a row of more than a hundred dead that had died
after being brought to the hospital."
"I concluded that I would ask the surgeon
in charge (Dr. Blount) if he could not give me some light work that I could do-
anything that would distract my attention from the gruesome sights of the
hospital and grounds, and incidentally get me a little nearer the culinary
department. The surgeon put me writing
tags that were pinned to every dead man; the tag was his record so far as it
could be obtained. Passing around the grounds the next day [January 1, 1863] I
found the body of a man and raised the blanket to see his face. It was our own
Lieutenant Colonel Moses Wooster. He had died the night before and had been
laid out there in his uniform, a card pinned to him but the name on it was as
far from Wooster as Wooster was from life. I got another card, wrote his name
on it together with his rank and home address of Norwalk, Ohio. His remains
were sent there later on for burial.” [ix]
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| Scene of a Union field hospital in Virginia during the summer of 1862. The grounds of the Gresham House no doubt looked like this during the Battle of Stones River. "In a place screened off by brush, there was a row of more than a hundred dead that had died before being brought into the hospital," Charles Dennis remembered. (Library of Congress) |
Dennis continues: “In the afternoon of
January 1st, quite a large cavalcade of horsemen rode into the west
gate headed by a man of fine stature and sitting his big, gray horse like the
soldier he was; his face was a grim but not unkindly one, his hair and full
whiskers trimmed short and just touched with gray, and the head surmounted by a
soft, black felt hat that gave him a very decided resemblance to our own Pap
Thomas. He rode to the porch of the house and asked if the body of General
[Joshua W.] Sill was still there. A hospital sergeant pointed it out to him and
riding over, the man dismounted, and approached the body. The body lay on the
porch covered with a blanket. The man took off his hat, lifted the blanket, and
looked into the dead face for quite a time, and finally recovering, he said to
the sergeant, ‘Poor Sill. He was one of God’s noblemen.’ This big, fine looking
man was General [William J.] Hardee of the Confederate Army.” [x]
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| General Joshua W. Sill, "one of God's noblemen" in the words of General William J. Hardee. Then Lieutenant Sill served as an instructor at West Point when Hardee was superintendent in the late 1850s. Sill had resigned from the army just before the outbreak of the war and was working as a professor of mathematics in New York. He quickly offered his services to the state of Ohio and became colonel of the 33rd Ohio Volunteers; eventually he was promoted to brigadier general and led a division during the Perryville campaign. At Stones River, he was gunned down while galloping along his lines directing a counterattack. His body was brought back to the Gresham House where the Confederate advance soon convinced his aides to leave his body before they were captured themselves. Confederate soldiers captured the hospital and spying the dead general upon the porch, soon took his gauntlets and boots, cut the buttons from his coat, and even carried off his trousers. The coat that Sill was wearing when he was killed actually belonged to his friend General Phil Sheridan; they had inadvertently swapped coats during the night and Sheridan's family later donated the coat Sheridan wore during the battle to the Ross County Historical Society in Chillicothe, Ohio. |
Surgeon
Blount gave more details on the visit of General Hardee to Gresham House on
January 1, 1863. “In the morning General Hardee with General Cleburne and
others called to see me. General Hardee shook hands very cordially and
expressed much sympathy for us. He asked after General [Alexander] McCook; said
he had heard that he had been killed, hoped it was not so and that McCook was
an old friend of his. And now, said I, you are trying to kill him. ‘No,’ said
he, ‘I am not fighting General McCook but the Northern invading army.’
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| General William J. Hardee |
“Their soldiers treated our wounded very
kindly. They brought a great many to our hospital and others they carried them
into little squads of three to six, and built fires at their feet to keep them
warm and sometimes stayed with them all night. They robbed the dead of
everything, however, though their officers did not encourage it. They offered
as high as $20 in gold for a pair of boots. They are very destitute of shoes.
They took General Sill’s boots and pants and General Hardee was very angry for
it, and if he finds the man who did it, he will punish him severely. As he (Hardee)
was leaving, he again extended his hand and with a warm, friendly shake, said
‘good morning’ and at the same time touching his cap as did the other generals
as they turned to go away. I felt that they were my personal friends and to the
last day of my life I will remember the kind feeling they manifested to me and
through me, to our wounded.” [xi]
Charles
B. Dennis again: “In the evening of the same day there came in to the ground
from the east side a mounted man of small stature (compared to the big Hardee).
He was attended by an aide and an orderly. He rode up to the fire that had been
built in the center of the ground, dismounted, and asked if he could see the
surgeon in charge. One of our men ran in and brought Dr. Blount out. He stepped
up to the little man who asked how things were going in the hospital, if
supplies were plentiful, especially medical supplies, anesthetics, instruments,
etc. Dr. Blount told him that the Confederate surgeons had taken most of his
anesthetics, whereupon the little man turned quickly to his aide and told him
to ride to Murfreesboro at once and get from the surgeon general of Bragg’s
army a supply of ether. As the aide started for his horse, the little man asked
him if he knew what ether was and told him he better write it down, which the aide
did and departed.
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| General Patrick R. Cleburne |
“The
little man appeared to be in a talkative mood and not averse to conversing with
the enlisted men. The talk was mostly about the war, which the little man said
was to be deeply regretted. He seemed either nervous or diffident, his voice
while clear was not heavy and he had a habit of rubbing his hands together as
he talked, as I have often seen diffident men do. He said he was wounded once
at Richmond and showed us the scars on his cheeks where he said some careless
Yankee shot him, not doing much harm, though, only making two little holes and
taking along two molars. But he said a man can’t tell when ‘Finis’ will be
written. He was General Patrick Cleburne, a major general of the Confederate
Army. He had been an officer in the British army and when his time was out, he
came to America and settled in Arkansas. When the war broke out he joined the
rebel side. He was a fierce fighter, a good general, and had the reputation of
being a kind-hearted man.” [xii]
[i] https://dan-masters-civil-war.blogspot.com/2019/12/charles-barney-dennis-at-stones-river_61.html,
Accessed May 9, 2020, hereafter referred to as Dennis account
[ii]
“The Battle near Murfreesboro, a letter from a soldier in an Illinois
regiment,” Adrian Daily Watchtower (Michigan), January 21, 1863, pg. 1
[iii]
“A Soldier’s Letter to his Parents,” Adrian Daily Watchtower (Michigan),
February 14, 1863, pg. 2
[iv]
“The Battle near Murfreesboro,” op. cit.
[v]
“Letter from Dr. Blount,” Rockford Register (Illinois), January 1863
[vi]
Hughes, Nathaniel C. editor. Liddell’s Record. Baton Rouge: Louisiana
State University Press, 1985, pg. 109
[vii] Liddell’s
Record, op. cit., pg. 110
[viii]
Ibid.
[ix]
Dennis account, op. cit.
[x] Dennis
account, op. cit.
[xi]
“Letter from Dr. Blount,” op cit.
[xii]
Dennis account, op. cit.
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