"Somehow the values change in a war, maybe after the first man died" -- Gregory Peck, Pork Chop Hill (1959).
In the July 2009 Reader's Digest, there was a brief Best Historical Comeback (Page 78-79) about how 112 acres of land was acquired back from commercial and other interests in 2004, and set aside by the Civil War Preservation Trust, to commemmorate a battlefield whereon was played out the Second Battle of Franklin, Tennessee, on the afternoon of November 30, 1864.
Like two other Civil War battlefields I've stood upon, (Chickamauga, outside of Chattanooga, and Fredericksburg, in Virginia), I found the place eerie, and yet, curiously calm, serene, even reverent.
Granted, I can't know what it feels like to stand in the shoes of a combat soldier. But when I stand on such sites, it is both chilling, and at the same time, I am filled with a sense of historical reverence. Just as is the battlefield of Gettysburg, these grounds are "hallowed". Hallowed in blood that was spilled for ideals, right and wrong.
Being a bit of a Civil War history buff, I know a bit of the significance of the Second Battle of Franklin, in the overall scope of the Civil War; and it really didn't have much in the bigger scheme of things. The outcome of the, at times, fratricidal war -- the bloodiest war in American history, piling up more casualties than all of our other wars prior to and since, combined -- was not decided there. In fact, by this stage of the war, the eventual outcome was becoming, to all but the most dedicatedly ardent in the South, an ever-increasingly foregone conclusion.
But to those who fought there, it mattered enough.
Generals Grant and Lee were locked in attrition warfare in northern Virginia, near Richmond; General Sherman was underway on his "March to the Sea", after the fall of Atlanta; and elsewhere, lesser campaigns ebbed and flowed, but the end was becoming clearer to those with a strategic sense of reality and reason.
Still, a shrinking minority of Southern generals had a modicum of hope that the tide of events could be turned by one strategic, albeit desperate, action. One such general was John Bell Hood, now commanding the Army of the Tennessee, 35,000 strong, after the failure of first General Johnston, and then Hood, to prevent Sherman from taking Atlanta.
At first, Hood had tried to fret and distract Sherman by attacks on Sherman's lifeline back to Nashville; but Sherman, with a different view of what was to be done -- and his "war is Hell" philosophy of how to do it -- would not be drawn into endless pursuit of a rebel army, a third the size of his own, and in a direction that Sherman believed counterproductive to ending the war. With Grant's approval, he pared his own forces down to the 60,000 men he would lead to the sea, and dispatched the remainder of what had been a force of more than 120,000 men to other fronts and tasks. 34,000 of these men would depart under the command of General John Schofield, to join other forces being gathered near Nashville by General George Thomas, for defense of western Tennessee, in case Hood were of a mind to attempt some kind of disruptive mischief in that direction.
Mischief that Hood, indeed, had in mind.
It would be Hood's contention, then and to the end of his life, that a successful attack against the Yankee bastion of Nashville, would disrupt not only Sherman's post-Atlanta plans, but those of Grant as well, perhaps allowing Lee to execute some of that tactical wizardry he had achieved against other Northern commanders, relieving the pressure on Richmond, and returning it to President Lincoln's front door, north of the Potomac River.
So as Sherman plunged southeastward toward Savannah, Hood took his 35,000 men into northern Alabama, and prepared for his intended "change the course of the war" strike northward. Along the way, he intended to intercept, and destroy if possible, his old West Point classmate Schofield, and his 34,000 reinforcements for Nashville, before investing and taking Nashville itself, and the wealth of supplies that were stored there. Thus refreshed -- and imagining that volunteers would flock to Hood's banner with the fall of this Yankee bastion -- Hood intended to cross the Ohio, and then move east, to an eventual reunion with his revered commander, Robert E. Lee.
Franklin stood as the last major river crossing south of Nashville, and it figured in the minds and plans of both Generals Schofield and Hood as such. Though, neither had in mind how it would ultimately play out there.
Hood made a plan, typical of Hood's military career, to intercept and destroy Schofield's forces: he would feint at Schofield's forces before Columbia, Tennessee, along the Duck River, while sending flanking forces around to cut off and block Schofield's retreat at Spring Hill, further north along the Columbia (Turn)Pike. The gambit -- "the best of my career", Hood would say later --failed, as Schofield's forces weren't as fooled by the Columbia feint as Hood had hoped, and the interception of Schofield's advance elements near Spring Hill, was not decisively pushed by some of Hood's subordinate commanders. Thus, Schofield escaped the trap that Hood meant to catch him in.
This led Hood to claim that his army had lost it's edge, for which he blamed his predecessor, General Joseph Johnston, and made up Hood's mind about the tactics and strategy he would employ if he could make contact with Schofield at the last bottleneck short of Nashville that Hood could catch him at: Franklin, Tennessee, and the Harpeth River.
Arriving at Franklin well ahead of Hood, Schofield was forced to dig in and prepare defenses on the south side of the town, because of damage to the bridges on the Harpeth -- damaged by flooding -- and at the urging of General Thomas, if it became necessary to do so. Schofield dug in his army, anchoring both flanks on the Harpeth River, with a reserve division across the Harpeth, and placed cavalry to patrol the north bank of the river, above and below Franklin, in case Hood tried to maneuver Schofield out of his defensive works. In the meantime, Schofield made good use of the time, after repairing the crossings, by sending his supply trains and support units north, toward Nashville, to less clutter the roads when it was time for him to pull out and follow with his combat force.
In the mid-afternoon of November 30, 1864, Schofield saw a brigade of General George Wagner's division that had been left on Winstead Hill as a lookout -- about 3 miles south of Franklin -- moved smartly off the hill, and pull back into Schofield's defensive perimeter, just as they had been ordered to do if the enemy was sighted. And not long afterward, serpentine columns of Hood's army marched over and around the base of Winstead Hill.
Curiously, Wagner's other two brigades -- in shallow defensive positions astride the Columbia Pike, half the distance between Franklin and Winstead Hill -- did not follow their companion brigade into the Franklin perimeter, as originally instructed to do. They held fast, awaiting events.
The wait wasn't long.
As Hood's forces began to assemble and behold the Federal defensive works of Franklin, Hood arrived and made a careful study of what he could see from the elevation of Winstead Hill.
John Bell Hood had a reputation as a fighter, one earned in many of the Civil War's decisive battles. He'd led his division against the impenetrable position on Turkey Hill during the Seven Days' maelstrom near Richmond, breaking General Porter's triple line that had firmly repelled all previous assaults against it; Hood's division, in a savage counterattack, had turned back General Hooker's corps assault at the bloody day-long nightmare of Antietam, the single bloodiest day in American history; and Hood had charged furiously into the Devils' Den at Gettysburg, shattering General Sickles' ill-advised salient in front of Cemetery Ridge, before his forces bogged down and Hood was carried from the melee, badly wounded. Again, at Chickamauga -- south of Chattanooga -- Hood's forces were again involved in the charge that shattered General Rosecran's right flank defenses, before Hood was again seriously wounded, losing a leg. Despite these experiences and losses, lost not was the audacious savagery that Hood fought with.
Schofield -- one of Hood's pre-war West Point classmates -- knew Hood well, and knew that "he'll hit you like hell, before you know it". But even Schofield didn't expect what came next.
After a careful review of the field -- more than two miles of unprotected, wide-open ground between the base of Winstead Hill and the Federal defensive positions, well-covered by Yankee artillery and a larger infantry force than Hood had available -- Hood made his decision known to his staff and division commanders: "We will make the fight". "The fight" meant an all-out attack against the Federal positions on the southside of Franklin.
Hood's division commanders were stunned as they viewed the proposed field of "the fight". One of them -- General Benjamin Cheatham -- nerved up to say " I don't like the looks of this fight; the enemy is entrenched and well fortified". Another general with an equally fierce reputation -- Nathan Bedford Forrest -- asked Hood to give him one good infantry division along with Forrest's cavalry, and he'd flank Schofield out of his works.
Hood refused to reconsider his plan, his mind made up, his tactics dictated by his history and reputation. Hood agreed that it was a desperate thing to attempt, but that it must be attempted here and now, and not before Nashville, "where the Yankees have been fortifying for three years".
All of Hood's division commanders -- many of them well-proven and respected by their Northern counterparts -- knew what was being ordered of them. With heavy hearts, they nevertheless steeled themselves for the task at hand.
At 3:45pm -- with the word from his field commanders that they were formed and ready -- Hood sent forward the bulk of his forces that were available: 18,000 men, with 3,500 in reserve. Their objective: the bridges over the Harpeth River.
The two brigades of General Wagner's division that had failed to follow orders -- remaining a mile in front of the Federal defenses -- emptied a pair of volleys into the charging mass, before breaking in panic for the defenses a mile behind them, with the rebels literally on their heels. About 1,000 of them became casualties in that bloody failure to follow orders; worse, from Schofield's point of view, the mixing of Wagner's fleeing brigades with the charging rebels, prevented key elements of his 60 pieces of artillery from tearing into the attackers, well in advance of the main line.
Thus it was -- where the Federal defenses met the Columbia Pike -- that the rebel divisions of Generals Brown and Cleburne managed a breech through the defensive works, knocking Yankee regiments posted there back, and opening a way for Hood's forces to cut off the bridges on the Harpeth, and Schofield's retreat.
Perhaps Hood had been right after all.
But he wasn't: Wagner's third brigade, commanded by Colonel Emerson Opdyke, launched a furious bayonet charge against the breach, and after moments of savage hand-to-hand fighting, drove the rebels back, driven to the south side of the palisade by the counterstroke. But instead of retreating, there the rebel forces made their stand, at point-blank range, with both sides firing into each other over the bloody palisade.
On the rebel left, well-placed artillery bled and held back various units from contact; on the rebel right, efforts to come to grips with the Yankees came acropper, but not without repeated attempts that failed in the face of savage cannister and massed musket fire.
Technically, the battle was over when Opdyke's countercharge threw Brown's and Cleburne's men back across the Columbia Pike palisade; but the killing went on until after dusk, when finally, those rebels who were able to, fell back to Winstead Hill, or surrendered in place.
Schofield -- who hadn't wanted to fight at Franklin, but had that choice taken from him by Hood's aggressiveness -- is credited with winning the Battle of Franklin, losing 2326 casualties in the process. By noon the next day, his surviving forces were fully inside the Nashville defenses, boosting General Thomas' command therein to nearly 70,000 men.
And Hood? In the words of historian Shelby Foote, "Hood wrecked his army, top to bottom". In this mad, head-long charge against a solid defensive position, Hood's army suffered roughly 6200 casualties: over 1750 of them killed. And of Hood's command structure, 54 division, brigade, and regimental commanders were killed, wounded or captured, fully 50% of his total on hand at the time he sent his army forward.
And the horrors weren't just limited to Hood's army. One Franklin family -- an experience many times repeated over the last three years in small towns all over the South and North -- a Mr. Carter and his two daughters, emerged from their home the morning after the battle, next to the Columbia Pike, and at the point where Opdyke's furious bayonet charge had turned back the rebel breakthrough. And there, almost on the steps of their home, they discovered the body of their son and brother, Captain Tod Carter, a brave and ill-fated member of Brown's shattered division, dead almost at their doorstep.
Nonetheless, Hood pushed on, and outnumbered over 3-to-1, confronted Thomas' 70,000 before Nashville. There, in mid-December, the roles were reversed, and Hood stood and fought, just as Schofield had; but with much differing results.
Weeks later, after Hood's army completed its withdrawal into northern Alabama, it numbered only 9,000 men.
In the 1960s, a British visitor to Tarawa Atoll in the Gilbert Islands -- scene of a bloody, three-day battle between US Marines and the Japanese in November, 1943 -- wrote "It is a familiar irony, that old battlefields are often the quietest and gentlest of places. It is true of Gettysburg. It is true of Cannae, Chalons, Austerlitz, Verdun. And it is true of Tarawa".
Having stood there, I can say that so, too, do these words hold true for the 112 acres at Franklin, Tennessee.
145 years later, the values really haven't changed, once the first man died.
Labels: Civil War, Franklin TN, historical preservation, history, Reader's Digest
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