Tooley, James I

James Tooley

NPS Photo

Quick Facts

Significance:

9th Kentucky Infantry

Place of Birth:

Monroe County, Kentucky

Date of Birth:

1842

Place of Death:

Murfreesboro, Tennessee

Date of Death:

January 2, 1863

Place of Burial:

Murfreesboro, Tennessee

Cemetery Name:

Stones River National Battlefield

In 1842, Arthur Bradford Tooley and his wife Leah Conkin Copass Tooley welcomed their son James I. Tooley into this world. James enlisted in the pro-Unionist Monroe County Home Guards along with his Gamaliel School classmate and friend, Marcus Woodcock. Woodcock kept a detailed diary of his Civil War experiences that was later published as A Southern Boy in Blue: The Memoir of Marcus Woodcock 9th Kentucky Infantry (U.S.A.).

James and many of his comrades in the Monroe County Home Guards enlisted in the U.S. Army and mustered as a Private into Company B of the 9th Kentucky Infantry on November 20, 1861. James' enlistment papers described him as 5' 10" tall, fair complexion, blue eyes with light hair. He and the 9th Kentucky marched south in the spring of 1862. They fought in the Battle of Shiloh on April 7, 1863 then besieged Corinth, Mississippi before marching across northern Alabama toward the key railroad junction on Chattanooga, Tennessee.

The Confederate invasion of Kentucky drew James and his comrades back to their home state and the Battle of Perryville. Following the Kentucky Campaign, James and the 9th Kentucky marched to Nashville, Tennessee where they stayed until the start of the Stones River Campaign on December 26, 1862. James helped fend off attacks by Confederate Gen. Patrick Cleburne's division on December 31, 1862. That desperate fighting along Asbury Lane secured the right flank of the Army of the Cumberland's defense of the Nashville Pike. On January 1, 1863, James crossed the icy Stones River to take up position on a hill overlooking the river and much of the battlefield. Confederate Gen. John C. Breckinridge's division attacked that strategic position at 4 PM the next day.

The U.S. forces fell back in the face of the Confederate bayonet charge only to surge back and retake the lost ground after 57 of their cannons blunted the enemy advance with heavy losses. The fighting sealed the Us. victory at Stones River but cost James I. Tooley his life. His friend Marcus Woodcock recalled the scene. "Among the dead was my most intimate friend, Jas. I. Tooley. He was shot through the body before we commenced retreating, and after going a few steps to the rear, had dropped dead. The conversations I had with him just before we entered the fight now came with a peculiar force on my mind and caused me to renew my thanks to the Great Ruler of the Universe that we had gained the battle and that I had come out unhurt."

Pvt. James I. Tooley rests in plot K-4336 of Stones River National Cemetery.

Tags: stones river national battlefield, stones river national cemetery, battle of stones river, american civil war