The Lancaster County Regiment at Stones River

An overdue post on the 79th Pennsylvania at Stones River. Be sure to also read accounts of the battle on the "Battle Files" page.

Kurz and Allison illustration of the Battle of Stones River (Source)

After successfully checking the Confederate invasion of Kentucky at the Battle of Perryville, the Union army pursued the Confederates south and celebrated Christmas in Nashville, Tennessee.  Under pressure from Washington to create positive headlines after the disaster at Fredericksburg, Gen. William S. Rosecrans, the new commander of the Union army which was renamed the Army of the Cumberland, led his army out of its camps at Nashville on December 26, 1862.  The 79th Pennsylvania found itself towards the rear and center of the army as part of Col. John C. Starkweather's brigade of Maj. Gen. Lovell Rousseau's division of Maj. Gen. George H. Thomas's center wing.

The Lancaster County Regiment experienced its first excitement of the campaign on December 30 when Confederate Gen. Joseph Wheeler's cavalry brigade attacked the wagons of Starkweather's brigade.  The Fortunately for the Pennsylvanians, luck and Quartermaster Lewis Zecher's good management saved the regiment's wagons from capture, and Starkweather ordered a countermarch and formed his brigade to drive off the Confederate cavalrymen.

Starkweather then proceeded to the battlefield the next day--December 31, the first day of the Battle of Stones River--passing bands of Union soldiers retreating from the battlefield who spoke of disaster.  Sergt. Sigmund E. Wisner wrote that although the Lancasterians were skeptical that the battle was lost, the men marched silently and "despondency was depicted upon each countenance."  The brigade arrived on the battlefield in the evening, taking a position in woods in the center rear of the Union lines where they would spend the night without blankets or fire.

New Years Day passed without either army making a move.  Starkweather's position changed little, occupying wooded terrain between General Johnson's division and the Nashville and Murfreesboro turnpike.

Map of Battle of Stones River, Jan. 2, 1863
The 79th Pa was part of Thomas' Corps positioned
at the Union center near the Nashville Turnpike.

Shortly after dawn on January 2, Rousseau's artillery came under fire and Confederates began to stir across from the Union center.  Starkweather's brigade was ordered up to the front lines to support the artillery. While moving forward to this position, a rebel artillery shell tore through Company G, killing Corp. Mark Erb and wounding Pvts. Samuel Pickel and Isaac Quigley. 

The 79th Pennsylvania spent the rest of the day lying in deep mud behind Battery A, 1st Michigan Light Artillery.  Blankets and rations were scarce, and almost every account of the battle mentions how they survived the couple days on meat from the dead horses.  Several of the accounts even reviewed the meat as surprisingly good.  Elsewhere on the battlefield, Confederates attacked the Union left but were decisively repulsed by a line of artillery and Union counterattack.

Companies C, E, H, and I, 79th Pennsylvania, spent a quiet but nervous night on the picket line, enduring cold and rain without fires.  As dawn broke on January 3, the Lancasterians were surprised to find that Confederate infantry and artillery had advanced overnight, and began to open fire on the 79th Pa pickets at an uncomfortably close distance of 300 yards.  Three men from Company E were wounded in the retreat back to the main line, which now occupied (along with knee-deep mud) trenches dug by army engineers.  

Later that day, as one of the last actions of the battle, Starkweather's brigade supported an effort led by Rousseau to clear the woods to their front of annoying sharpshooters.  As the 79th Pa advanced toward one group of sharpshooters, Pvt. John Shroy of Company A was killed.

That night, Confederate Gen. Braxton Bragg withdrew his Confederate army from the battlefield, fearing additional Union reinforcements and the threat of a rising river that could split his command.  Rosecrans moved his victorious army into Murfreesboro, where it camped for most of the rest of the winter and spring.

Nationally, the battle provided sorely needed good news after the Army of the Potomac's setbacks.  For the 79th Pennsylvania, it served as an introduction to the miseries of trench warfare, even if the regiment suffered much lighter casualties than it had at Stones River.  Several weeks after the battle, Lieut. W. Wilberforce Nevin (bio) documented this new type of warfare:

The space between the town [of Murfreesboro]and our lines was won inch by inch, crawling now, and now charging through a sheet of flame.  Many a brave men fell merely in gaining a few furrows.  All the area of strife was covered by sharpshooters, and in the din of conflict their rifles were unseen and noiseless messengers of death.  A convulsive plunge, and a stretched corpse with a little red spot in the forehead told the tale.  Somebody had fallen, as unconscious as his neighbors of the direction of the fatal ball.  All the fighting ground, for the most part ploughed fields, was ancle deep in mud, or worse.  Charging was no more an impetuous dash, but just a steady march into the jaws of death.  On this slippery, swimming ground, we had to eat and sleep.  In the centre the approaches were covered by trenches dug secretly, and occupied by night.  These, of course, under the rain became knee deep in a few  hours with cold and dirty water, but in them night and day lay our indomitable troops, relieving each other, regiment by regiment, in the night.  Too low to stand up in, to wet to sit down in, the wretched occupants had to remain bent and strained, or to kneel over thighs in water.  A single peep over the embankment was a signal for a dozen bullets.  In our eyes, scientific warfare is simply torture. 

79th Pennsylvania Casualties at Stones River

Alleged image of William K. Patton
Sold in 2007 by Heritage Auctions

Killed in Action

Corp. Mark Erb, Company G (1/2/1863)  Erb is listed in the 1860 census as a 19 year-old laborer on the farm of Emanuel Landis near Soudersburg, East Lampeter Township. 
Pvt. John Shroy, Company A (1/3/1863)  John F. Shroy is listed in the 1860 census as a 16 year-old plasterer living with Samuel and Elizabeth Shroy (presumably his parents) in Lancaster Township.

Mortally Wounded

Pvt. William K. Patton, Company H (1/3)--Died 1/13/1863
Pvt. Michael Brandt, Company E (1/3)--Died 1/20/1863

Wounded

Pvt. Samuel Pickel, Company G (1/2)
Pvt. Isaac Quigley, Company G (1/2)
Pvt. Benjamin Bones, Company E (1/3)
Sergt. J. H. Friday, Company E (1/3)
Corp. E. W. Hollinger, Company E (1/3)

Died of Disease

Pvt. William R. Kochel, Company E

One of Penn State's First Grads at the Battle of Stones River

Farmers High School of Pennsylvania, 1859 (?)
(Penn State Archives, Source)

In 1861, the Farmers' High School of Pennsylvania graduated its first class, which consisted of eleven students who studied there three years to earn a Bachelor of Scientific Agriculture degree.  Among them was John W. Eckman, whose father Joseph ran the St. Charles Furnace in Columbia.  The founding of Farmers' High, which was renamed the Agricultural College of Pennsylvania a year later and eventually Penn State University, reflects a growing interest in scientifically managing agriculture and industry--a trend alive and well in Civil War era Lancaster County considering the founding of the Linnaean Society and the publication of The Lancaster Farmer by Simon Snyder Rathvon.

On August 28, 1862, Eckman joined a special cavalry unit known as the Anderson Troop--a company recruited at the war's outbreak to serve as bodyguard to Gen. Robert Anderson of Fort Sumter fame--as it expanded to a full regiment, the 15th Pennsylvania Cavalry.  The unit continued its special relationship with the commanding officer of the Army of the Ohio and then Cumberland, and served as headquarters guards and orderlies.  Another of Eckman's classmates, Milton S. Lytle (whose diary is in PSU Special Collections), also joined the "Anderson Cavalry."

Maj. Adolph Rosengarten
15th Pa Cavalry
(Source)

In the days after Christmas 1862, the 15th Pennsylvania Cavalry--actually about 300 of them, as the rest refused to go due to a lack of officers--was among the lead elements of the Union army as it advanced towards Murfreesboro.  On December 29, the regiment attacked Confederate infantry near Wilkinson's Cross Roads, gallantly charging but suffering many casualties including its two commanders, Majors Rosengarten and Ward.  In his letter published in the January 16, 1863, Daily Evening Express (link), Eckman wrote,

On the 29th we had a severe fight with infantry.  We made a charge (150 of us only) through a piece of woods, and the rebels, 2000 strong, were posted behind the fence.  The only way we could get at them was by riding close to the fence and firing down on them--which we did, and I know my carbine sent a man reeling into eternity.  We took several prisoners, but how many we killed I can't say.  But we paid dearly for it: both Majors fell--one dead, the other mortally wounded, who has since died; ten others fell dead, and many wounded.  We fell back discouraged and disheartened, leaving the dead, and all the wounded who could not get away, in their hands.  Two of my mess wounded, one taken prisoner, a fourth had his horse killed, and two escaped unhurt, I being one of them.  That fight brought on the battle of Murfreesboro, which I think will prove one of the severest that has yet occurred.

After the war, Eckman continued in his father's footsteps and ran the Montgomery Furnace in Port Kennedy  near Norristown, PA.  His name also pops up for serving as Treasurer for the Valley Forge Centennial Association, a delegate to the Republican National Convention, and as an alternate delegate at national Grand Army of the Republic encampments.

St. Charles Furnace, Columbia
(Ellis and Evans, 1883)

Like several Lancaster soldiers I've encountered, business ventures took Eckman back to the South near where he had marched as a soldier.  In the 1880s, Eckman moved (although he might have maintained residence in Pennsylvania) to Pulaski, Virginia, a town deep in the Shenandoah Valley near Blacksburg known for being rich in minerals.  He became general manager of the Pulaski Iron Works, which was known as southwest Virginia's first modern pig iron blast furnace and worked there until 1912.  There's even a funny story you can read in the regimental history on page 533 about how courthouse records there were lost when the 15th Pennsylvania Cavalry came through in 1865, and how the locals took advantage of this to bury Eckman in lawsuits over land ownership when he tried to run Pulaski Iron Works there decades after the war.  

Related Links:

• Post on 1861 letter from soldier in Anderson Troop from Strasburg
• Regimental history of the 15th Pennsylvania Cavalry, containing several accounts of the Battle of Stones River
• In 1911, Eckman returned to Penn State for Commencement Week and a celebration of fiftieth anniversary of the school's first class, of whom seven including Eckman were present. 
• A January 14, 1863, article in the Express lists seventeen Lancasterians in the Anderson Troop and also mentions Jacob B. Garber, Jr., son of a "distinguished agriculturalist" of Lancaster County and Class of 1862 graduate of the Agricultural College of Pennsylvania.