Remembering by Rail

This 1934 image shows the Nashville, Chattanooga and Saint Louis Railway station at Stones River National Cemetery. This station was a stop on special Civil War tours run by the railway.

NPS Photo

in June 1864, Capt. John Means of the U.S. Quartermaster Department chose the sloping ground between the Nashville Pike and the Nashville & Chattanooga Railroad as the site for a national cemetery. In 1865, Chaplain William Earnshaw led the men of the 111th United States Colored Infantry in the effort to move the remains of more than 6,100 Union soldiers into Stones River National Cemetery. Many of those remains arrived by rail at platform built for that purpose. Later the platform became station used by passengers traveling the Nashville, Chattanooga & Saint Louis Railway.

 

A tour guide for one the Nashville, Chattanooga, and St. Louis Railway's Civil War tours.

During the decades following the Civil War, the Nashville, Chattanooga and St. Louis Railway was the primary way that people traveled to the Stones River battlefield.

The railroad had a platform at Stones River National Cemetery. It also purchased and cared for property near the Stones River and Redoubt Brannan, one of the interior earthworks of Fortress Rosecrans.

The railway publicized special Civil War tours that included Stones River. In 1906, a monument designed by Major John W. Thomas, the president of the company and former Master of Transportation for the Confederate Army of Tennessee, was erected near the Stones River to commemorate the final attack of the battle.

 

Built by the Nashville, Chattanooga & Saint Louis Railway in 1906, the Artillery Monument marks the site where Union artillery helped inflict more than 1,800 casualties on the attacking Confederates on January 2, 1863.

NPS Photo

 

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  Protecting the Lifeline

  Discover how the Union army protected its ever growing rail supply line as it drove deeper south.

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