Though our victory was dearly bought, yet the importance of gaining the day at any price was very great, particularly when we consider what might have been the result had not the gallantry of the army and the manoeuvring during the early disaster saved us from ultimate defeat.  We had started out from Nashville on an offensive campaign, probably with no intention of going beyond Murfreesboro’, in midwinter, but still with the expectation of delivering a crushing blow should the enemy accept our challenge to battle.  He met us with a plan of attack almost the counterpart of our own.  In the execution of his plan he had many advantages, not the least of which was his intimate knowledge of the ground, and he came near destroying us.  Had he done so, Nashville would probably have fallen; at all events, Kentucky would have been opened again to his incursions, and the theatre of war very likely transferred once more to the Ohio River.  As the case now stood, however, Nashville was firmly established as a base for future operations, Kentucky was safe from the possibility of being again overrun, and Bragg, thrown on the defensive, was compelled to give his thoughts to the protection of the interior of the Confederacy and the security of Chattanooga, rather than indulge in schemes of conquest north of the Cumberland River.  While he still held on in Middle Tennessee his grasp was so much loosened that only slight effort would be necessary to push him back into Georgia, and thus give to the mountain region of East Tennessee an opportunity to prove its loyalty to the, Union.

The victory quieted the fears of the West and Northwest, destroyed the hopes of the secession element in Kentucky, renewed the drooping spirits of the East Tennesseans, and demoralized the disunionists in Middle Tennessee; yet it was a negative victory so far as concerned the result on the battle-field.  Rosecrans seems to have planned the battle with the idea that the enemy would continue passive, remain entirely on the defensive, and that it was necessary only to push forward our left in order to force the evacuation of Murfreesboro’; and notwithstanding the fact that on the afternoon of December 30 McCook received information that the right of Johnson’s division. resting near the Franklin pike, extended only to about the centre of the Confederate army, it does not appear that attack from that quarter was at all apprehended by the Union commanders.

The natural line of retreat of the Confederates was not threatened by the design of Rosecrans; and Bragg, without risk to his communications, anticipated it by a counter-attack of like character from his own left, and demolished his adversary’s plan the moment we were thrown on the defensive.  Had Bragg followed up with the spirit which characterized its beginning the successful attack by Hardee on our right wing—­and there seems no reason why he should not have done so—­the army of Rosecrans still might have got back to Nashville, but