DK - The American Civil War

Franklin and Nashville

General John Bell Hood’s daring but ultimately doomed Tennessee campaign in the fall of 1864,

culminated in two battles, one at the town of Franklin and the other before the city of Nashville,

which spelled the end for the once-proud Confederate Army of Tennessee.

GRANT, SHERMAN, AND TOTAL WAR 1864

At 4 p.m., 18 brigades—nearly 20,000

men—moved out, lines dressed, flags

flying, drums beating, and bands

playing. Before them stretched those

2 miles (3.2km) of open, undulating

fields browned by recent frosts. Rabbits

bounded away as the tramping feet

of this last great Confederate charge

of the war approached.

Southern slaughter

General John Schofield’s Union men

watched spellbound as the Rebels

approached. Crouched behind strong

fieldworks fronted by felled trees, they

shouldered impressive firepower; and

massed artillery, some of it positioned

to fire into the attacking

columns from the flanks,

backed them up. When

the onslaught was

within a hundred

paces of the main

O

n the afternoon of November

30, 1864 General Hood was

still angry that the night before,

through a series of blunders, his Army

of Tennessee had somehow allowed

30,000 Union troops to slip past it.

The Federals had dug in near the

town of Franklin, Tennessee, which

Hood’s commanders could see 2 miles

(3.2km) away from their temporary

headquarters on the hilltop.

Although most of Hood’s artillery and

an infantry corps had still not arrived,

the impetuous general had decided to

attack the positions at Franklin anyway;

his commanders were

filled with foreboding.

BEFORE

After Atlanta’s fall General John Bell Hood
embarked on an invasion of Union-held
Tennessee, but Union generals George H.
Thomas and John M. Schofield were waiting.

THE ROAD TO FRANKLIN
Hood hoped he might cut Union supply lines
or maybe join General Lee at Petersburg
❮❮ 274-75, but General Thomas, in the city
of Nashville with 40,000 men, lay in his path.
General Schofield and his army of 30,000
were near Pulaski. Hood hoped to defeat them
before they could join Thomas, setting a trap
for them on November 29,
some 15 miles (24km)
south of Franklin.

line every Union trigger was squeezed.

With a deafening roar a deadly hail of

shot, shell, and canister tore through

the Confederate ranks, shredding all

formation and turning the regiments

into blood-spattered mobs. Many troops,

trapped in the tangle of felled trees,

were caught in a murderous crossfire of

small arms and artillery. Others could

be glimpsed, through the pall of smoke

that soon descended, regrouping and

charging again and again—several

Federals counted up to 13 charges.

But in some places, the Confederates

poured across the Union line, the battle

surging back and forth around a barn,

outbuildings, and brick farmhouse that

Combat at Franklin

The Battle of Franklin was sometimes called the “Pickett’s

Charge of the West,” so quickly did the Rebels advance.

Though moving “with the speed of an avalanche,” the

Army of Tennessee was all but devastated in five hours.