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| Confederates who fought the guns at Stone's river: men of the famous Washington artillery The Washington Artillery, mustered in at New Orleans, was one of the crack military organizations of the Confederacy. In this rare picture a Confederate photographer has caught a jolly group of them, confident and care-free, whiling away the hours in camp. The photograph was taken the year before the battle of Stone's River. Ere that conflict the youngsters had received their baptism of fire at Shiloh and had acquitted themselves like men. Their gallant force was attached to Anderson's First Brigade and then to General Samuel Jones's Corps, of Bragg's army. At the battle of Stone's River they fought in Breckinridge's division of Hardee's Corps. It was they who made the daring rush to plant their batteries on the hill, and suffered so severely from the galling fire of Mendenhall's Federal guns across the river. On that hard-fought battlefield they were differently occupied than in the picture. Their deeds in the swift moments of the conflict were not acted out to the accompaniment of a merry tune; each man played his part amid the roar of cannon and the clash of arms, and many paid the piper with his life for that awful music. Even in the confident poses and smiling faces of the picture are apparent all the dash and spirit which they displayed later at Stone's River. This brave Confederate organization distinguished itself on all the fields where it fought. Not till Chancellorsville did it ever lose a gun; in that engagement five pieces were captured from it, when Sedgwick's 20,000 wrested Marye's Heights from the 9,000 Lee had left there. |
