Civil War Today

Franklin, for shear blood thirsty action this has to be the place. Gen John Bell Hood CSA marched his men there and smashed them against a well dug in Union force until much of his army was destroyed. When it was over Hood had lost 6,300 out of 22,000 men engaged that day, including 13 Generals and 65 regimental commanders. Some have argued that Hood did it on purpose, that he wished to punish his men for not performing better at the Battle of Springhill the day before. I don’t know I have a hard time accepting that anyone except a WW1 French General would do such a thing.

The Union commander, Gen. John Schofield, was encumbered with the defense of 800 supply wagons that he was trying to shepherd to Nashville. The outnumbered Schofield had been ordered to hold on to Franklin for 3 days, but did not like the position and had no plans to stay there any longer than he had to.

Franklin was an unusual night battle; it started in earnest at approximately 4 pm with a grand assault by 22,000 Confederates and finally ground to a halt around 9 pm.  The brunt of the Confederate attack fell on the E.B. Carter Farm which lay at the center of the lines. The Confederates broke into the Union lines at the Carter House but were repulsed when Union reserves charged on their own volition and drove the Confederates back out of their line in vicious hand to hand fighting. The Confederate charge at Franklin has been called the Picket’s Charge of the west, but was in fact much bigger and longer than Picket’s Charge and resulted in higher casualties.

Sometime around midnight the Union forces pulled out of their position and marched to Nashville. The Union casualties had been relatively light, about 2,500 as compared to the loss of 6,300 Confederates but the Union commander Schofield did not think that the position was worth holding, so once he had gotten his wagons over the river, so he left.