he first
fruits fell to the Army of the Cumberland, which had not only held the
field but had compelled the retirement of its adversary and the
relinquishment by the latter of strategic positions and domination over
considerable areas. But as the weeks passed without developments of other
striking results, the Northern people felt that the victory had been
little more than technical, and that the battle was another of the
practically indecisive contests so frequent at that period.

On the other hand, the Southern people were mortified and chagrined at a
defeat suffered when their cause was prospering in almost all other
quarters. They were not more given to analyzing strategic and tactical
features than their Northern enemies, but they were able to realize that
their second army in size and importance had lost thousands of soldiers,
and that it has been driven out of Middle Tennessee, and away from the
vicinity of the State capital, the recovery of which had always been a
cherished object of their hearts. The opposition to Bragg, both in and out
of the Army of the Tennessee, became intensified from the time the
retirement from Murfreesboro was ordered.

It was perhaps natural that the outcome was thus viewed in the two
sections, for it is in the light of what it might have been,--rather than
what it was,--that Stone's River must be judged. Union victory upon that
field did not, it is true, reveal results of transcendent importance, but
Confederate victory,--at one time so near,--would have been followed by
the weightiest and most far-reaching consequences. Had Bragg been able to
drive his infantry across the Nashville pike on the last day of 1862, or
had he been able to crush the Union left on the second of January, 1863,
the capture or destruction,--whole or partial,--of his enemy would have
been one of the least of these consequences. For the way to the Ohio would
then have been open, and Cincinnati and other opulent Northern cities
would have been at the mercy of Confederate arms. Vicksburg would not have
been an historic name, for overwhelming forces could have been turned
against Grant to crush him, or drive him from Mississippi.
Tennessee,--second State in population below Mason and Dixon's line, and
first in such food as armies consume,--would have been held to furnish the
vital recruits and supplies to the Confederacy. East Tennessee would have
waited in vain for the relieving Northern forces. Kentucky and Misso