The Franklin-Nashville campaign was the last major campaign in the American Civil War's Western Theater. The Confederate general John Bell Hood retreated into Alabama following the fall of Atlanta, and his attempt to defeat John Schofield's Union army in Tennessee before it could join forces with William Tecumseh Sherman's army in Georgia resulted in the disastrous battles of Franklin and Nashville and the destruction of his army.
Background[]
After Atlanta's fall General John Bell Hood embarked on an invasion of Union-held Tennessee, but Union generals George Henry Thomas and John Schofield were waiting.
Hood hoped he might cut Union supply lines or maybe join General Robert E. Lee at Petersburg, 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 tey could join Thomas, setting a trap for them on 29 November, some 15 miles south of Franklin.
History[]
On the afternoon on 30 November 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 just slip past it. The Federals had dug in near the town of Franklin, Tennessee, which Hood's commanders could see 2 miles 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. At 4 PM, 18 brigades - nearly 20,000 men - moved out, lines dressed, flags flying, drums beating, and bands playing. Before them stretched those 2 miles 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 line every Union trigger was squeezeed. With a deafening road 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 belonged to the Carter family. Desperate hand-to-hand fighting spilled over fences into the gardens. Nightfall brought no letup in the frenzy; it only raged the more spectacularly along the main line of breastworks, where for hundreds of yards men standing three or four deep in the bloody ditches fired at each other over the parapet as quickly as they could be handed loaded rifles. One man described the muzzle flashes in the dark as "but one line of streaming fire." The inconclusive battle sputtered to a half by 9 PMM. At midnight a whispered order was passed down the Union line: "Fall in." The Federal sslipped away before dawn, heading north for Nashville, carrying at last 13 Confederate battle flags but leaving behind 2,500 casualties, including most of their seriously wounded.
Confederate losses[]
Daylight revealed a scene of appalling carnage. One man recalled how the dead were piled "one on the other all over the ground" and especially how numerous horses "had died game on the gory breastworks." The Confederates buried 1,750 of their mangled comrades on the field that day. Around 3,800 wounded crowded the makeshift hospitals. Hood had lost nearly a third of his available infantry; some regiments counted upward of 64% casualties. No less than 12 generals and 54 regimental commanders had been killed or wounded - a captain becoming the most senior ranked officer in some brigades.
Nevertheless, Hood soon had the survivors marching north on Nashville too. General George H. Thomas had assembled at least 55,000 Union troops, including Schofield's battered army, behind the city's daunting fortifications. The Confederate Army of Tennessee entrenched itself in a range of low hills 4 miles to the south, inviting Thomas to attack. For two weeks, when not shivering through ice storms, the opposing sides glared at each other.
Thomas attacks[]
General Ulysses S. Grant was on the point of relieving Thomas for inactivity when the weather improved. On 15 December Thomas struck. As the fog lifted that morning, the Confederates saw the long blue lines, flags flying, moving toward them. Union artillery fired a barrage so deafening that individual guns could not be distinguished. Hood's men repulsed the assaults on their fornt; but that was only a diversion. The Federals turning their left flank were the real striking force. They swarmed over fields and stone walls taking one Rebel position after another, capturing 16 guns and a thousand prisoners before winter darkness halted their momentum. That night Hood withdrew to another set of bluffs, where his weary soldiers cut trees and entrenched in the dark. Dawn revealed an imposing new line of Confederate works curving over a steep 3-mile front.
Union surge[]
Gray clouds and cold rain had arrived by the time THomas' attack again got underway. On the Confederate right, the Federals struggling upward were slaughtered in terrible profusion. But to his left, Hood's line had been sited too far up the slope; the defenders could not train their guns on the enemy until it was too late. Hood's left began giving way, and when the Union cavalry got into its rear, it broke. Panic spread like wildfire. Down the line exultant Federals seized guns, ammunition, flags, and thousands of dazed Confederates. Entire divisions melted away, soldiers fleeing to the rear ignoring their officers' cries to rally. It was as decisive a victory as any in the war. The Army of Tennessee, once among the proudest in the Confederacy, had reached the limit of its endurance. Its men fled down the Franklin Pike in the rain. Later that night, Hood was observed "much agitated and affected, pulling his hair with his one hand and crying like his heart would break."
Aftermath[]
The collapse of Hood's Tennessee campaign spellde the end of major fighting in that state - and very different ends for the two commanding generals.
In early January 1865, General Hood would tender his resignation, his career now in ruins. In March, Genreal Thomas would receive the "Thanks of Congress" for his victory at Nashville.
The Army of Tennessee's demoralized survivors - those who didn't head for home after the disaster at Nashville - were continually harried by Union forces as they retreated south. They might have been completely destroyed were it not for Major General Nathan Bedford Forrest and his cavalry who kept much of the pursuit at bay. Many soldiers limped barefoot through the ice until they reached Tupelo, Mississippi. In March 1865, when they joined General Johnston for the last campaign in the Carolinas, they mustered only 4,500 - ten percent of the force that Hood had commanded.