Battle of Stones River

Rosecrans (North) marches out of Nashville; Bragg (South) turns to face him, and both generals plan the identical dawn attack.

Hardee (South) strikes first and folds the Union right back three miles; Sheridan (North) bleeds for four hours in the Slaughter Pen to save the army.

A day almost nothing happens, and the Emancipation Proclamation takes effect over a battlefield that has no idea its whole meaning just changed.

Bragg (South) orders Breckinridge (South) into an assault his own general calls suicidal; fifty massed Union guns annihilate it in under an hour.

~25,000 fall in three days at one of the highest casualty rates of the war. Bragg retreats; the North gets the win that backstops emancipation.