Why Fight Here?

In the quiet fields and forests along Stones River outside Murfreesboro, two great armies fought one of the most costly battles of the Civil War because this area lay near the vital transportation links that controlled campaigning in the states west of the Appalachians. The Cumberland River wharfs of Nashville and the Nashville and Chattanooga Railroad were essential for moving armies, supplies, and food by riverboat and rail. General Halleck pressed Major General William S. Rosecrans to act, warning that the government demanded action and might replace him if he remained in Nashville. For the Union Army of the Cumberland, Nashville was a secure base where steamboats and trains could deliver the thousands of tons needed to keep an army ready, but victory required Rosecrans's 43,000-man army to march southeast toward the rail yards of Chattanooga and Atlanta. By Christmas 1862, General Braxton Bragg's Confederate Army of the Tennessee was resting in winter quarters spread across more than 65 miles of central Tennessee farmland until scouts reported the enemy advancing. Murfreesboro, a hub of country roads where the Nashville Pike and the railroad ran side by side, was the best place for Bragg to concentrate his 38,000 men because the Federals would have to come that way.

Murfreesboro, Tennessee · United States