This key battle of the American Civil War occurred on December 31, 1862, and January 2, 1863, and resulted in a strategic Union victory.

[4] The national battlefield was established through the efforts of both private individuals, the Stones River Battlefield and Park Association, the Nashville, Chattanooga and St. Louis Railway (which became part of CSX Transportation through several mergers), and a 1927 act of Congress authorizing a national military park under the jurisdiction of the War Department.

[5] During the early years of the twentieth century, the railroad emphasized the battlefield as a destination to increase passenger traffic.

[7] In 1912, the Association lobbied to have Congress "establish an accurate system of markers," but the measure failed, in part because of the testimony of former congressman and Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Park Commissioner Charles H. Grosvenor, who believed the landmarks had been "entirely obliterated.

In 1992, the park accepted a donation from the City of Murfreesboro of an intact segment of Fortress Rosecrans, the largest enclosed earthwork built during the Civil War.

Under the supervision of Chaplain William Earnshaw, the 111th Regiment United States Colored Troops disinterred bodies from the battlefields of Stones River, Murfreesboro, Franklin, Shelbyville, Tullahoma and Cowan.