Hazen Brigade Monument

• 1. Battlefield Heroism And Casualties

  ›

  On the 31st of December 1862, Confederate General Braxton Bragg launched a surprise advance that drove the Union army of Major General William S. Rosecrans back three miles. The line of Union forces stood nearly at right angles to its original position when it reached a clump of cedars known locally as the Round Forest. A brigade led by Col. William Babcock Hazen defended this salient just east of the Nashville Pike and on both sides of the Nashville & Chattanooga Railroad. Hazen's men, supported by artillery massed on high ground in their rear, successfully repulsed four separate Confederate assaults. Soldiers called the place Hell's Half-Acre because so great was the slaughter. Hazen's regiments sustained 409 casualties, which represented 29% of the entire brigade strength. Forty-five men died during the fighting while Hazen himself was wounded in the shoulder. He received promotion to brigadier general for his gallantry under fire. The determined resistance of Hazen's brigade arguably prevented the Confederate Army of Tennessee from breaking the Union line.

• 2. Soldier-Built Memorial Construction

  ›

  During the summer of 1863, members of Hazen's Brigade returned to Stones River to build a monument honoring their fallen comrades. The project carried official sanction and was probably authorized by Hazen himself and Col. Isaac C. B. Sunman of the 9th Indiana Volunteers. A construction detail under Lt. Edward Crebbin placed the monument on private property within the middle of the brigade cemetery in Round Forest. A Union army captain described the structure as a quadrangular pyramidal shaft ten feet square at the base and eleven feet in height. A dry-stacked stone wall four feet high and two feet thick enclosed both the monument and the surrounding cemetery. Three low steps breached the wall's south side to allow access into the sacred ground. In 1864 two experienced stone cutters from the regiment carved inscriptions including names of officers killed at Stones River and the earlier Battle of Shiloh. On the south face the stone cutters wrote HAZEN'S BRIGADE TO THE MEMORY OF ITS SOLDIERS WHO FELL AT STONES RIVER DEC. 31ST 1862 THEIR FACES TOWARDS HEAVEN THEIR FEET TO THE FOE.

  34

• 3. Administrative History And Preservation

  ›

  The War Department acquired the 0.84-acre site containing the monument in 1875 for preservation purposes. Before 1930, administration fell under the authority of the superintendent of the Stones River National Cemetery. During this period the monument suffered periods of neglect and deterioration that threatened its structural integrity. In 1930, administration of the Hazen Memorial and the National Cemetery officially consolidated into the Stones River National Military Park. The following year in 1933, administration of the Military Park transferred from the War Department to the National Park Service. This transition marked a shift toward federal stewardship of Civil War battlefields across the nation. The Hazen Brigade Monument remains the oldest American Civil War monument still standing in its original battlefield location today.

  7

• 4. Ambrose Bierce Literary Connection

  ›

  In 1907 short-story writer and journalist Ambrose Bierce visited the Hazen Brigade Monument for a second time after having known Hazen well as a staff officer. Bierce had survived fighting at Stones River unscathed while serving as a topographic engineer with ample opportunity to view the monument when it was first completed in 1863. He published an eerie psychological tale called A Resumed Identity in 1908 where the Hazen Monument plays a critical role in the story's twist ending. The protagonist describes the monument as it probably appeared in 1907: brown with age weather-worn at the angles spotted with moss and lichen. Between the massive blocks were strips of grass growing through the cracks. Critical examination suggests that Bierce's macabre sense of humor led him to create a fake gravestone in the brigade cemetery for a possibly nonexistent soldier named A. Louse. Gordon Berg noted this curious element in America's Civil War magazine during November 2004.

  89

• 5. Archaeological Time Capsule Discovery

  ›

  In 1985 workers repairing the Monument discovered objects buried within its fill of limestone and soil including two bullets eight buck and ball shot and a lead disk. They also found a freshwater mussel shell two bone fragments six horse teeth and two small wood fragments embedded in the earth. Archaeologists concluded these items had been placed in the soil used for fill during construction. About five feet above ground archaeologists found nine other artifacts including two 12-pound cannonballs one 6-pound cannonball three rifled artillery shells and two rifled musket barrels. A cedar staff completed the collection of items found at that elevated level. Because all these items sat at a single level the National Park Service believed their inclusion had been purposeful. There was no agreement about the meaning of this presumptive time capsule despite the careful placement of each object.