Battle of Franklin II
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The Second Battle of Franklin (more popularly known simply as The Battle of Franklin) was fought at Franklin, Tennessee, on November 30, 1864, as part of the Franklin-Nashville Campaign of the American Civil War. It was one of the worst disasters of the war for the Confederate States Army. Although the Union Army of the Ohio, commanded by Maj. Gen. John M. Schofield, left the field after the battle, the Confederate Army suffered devastating losses in its unsuccessful frontal assaults against the Union defenders, sometimes called the "Pickett's Charge of the West." A further loss at the subsequent Battle of Nashville in December marked the end of Confederate Lt. Gen. John Bell Hood's Army of Tennessee as a fighting force.
Background
Franklin followed the Battle of Spring Hill of the previous day. Hood's Army of Tennessee had failed to destroy part of the Union force in Tennessee, allowing the Schofield's Army of the Ohio to escape. Hood had hoped to destroy Schofield before he could link up with the Army of the Cumberland, commanded by Maj. Gen. George Henry Thomas, farther north in Nashville, Tennessee. That combined Union force would be over 60,000 men, almost twice as large as Hood's army. When the armies met at Franklin, however, Hood had approximately 38,000 men to Schofield's 32,000.
Schofield's advance guard arrived in Franklin at about 6:00 a.m., after a forced march north from Spring Hill. Brig. Gen. Jacob Dolson Cox, a division commander temporarily commanding the Union XXIII Corps (and later governor of Ohio), immediately began preparing strong defensive positions around breastworks originally constructed for the First Battle of Franklin in 1863. The defensive line formed approximately a semicircle around the city, from northwest to southeast; the other half of the semicircle was the Harpeth River.
Schofield's decision to defend at Franklin with his back to a river was because he had insufficient pontoon bridges available to cross the river; the bridges had been left behind in his advance to Spring Hill because they lacked wagons to transport them. Now he needed time to repair the permanent bridges spanning the river and calculated that the breastworks were well positioned and adequate to delay Hood's inevitable assault.
By noon the Union line was ready. Counter-clockwise from the northwest were the divisions of Maj. Gens. Nathan Kimball (IV Corps), Thomas H. Ruger (XXIII Corps), and Cox (XXIII Corps). Two brigades of the IV Corps division under Brig. Gen. George D. Wagner were forward, screening the Confederate approach. Brig. Gen. Thomas J. Wood's division of the IV Corps was posted north of the Harpeth. Schofield planned to withdraw across the river by 6:00 p.m. if Hood had not arrived by then.
Hood's army began to arrive around 1 p.m. Hood was noted for his aggressive, sometimes reckless battlefield leadership. Over
the objections of his top generals, he ordered a
Battle
Hood's attack initially enveloped Wagner's forward brigades, which fled back to the main breastworks. Blue and Gray troops were intermingled, which made the Union soldiers defending the line reluctant to fire on the approaching masses. This caused a weak spot in the Union line at the Carter House. The Confederate divisions of Maj. Gens. Patrick Cleburne, John C. Brown, and Samuel G. French converged on this spot and a number of their troops broke through the solid Federal defenses. A heroic counterattack, led by the brigade of Emerson Opdycke and fortified by rallied elements of Wagner's men, newly mustered regiments such as the 44th Missouri, 175th Ohio, and 183rd Ohio, and two Kentucky regiments, managed to seal the gap after brief but vicious hand-to-hand combat.
The Confederates continued efforts to break the Union line at many points. On the east side of the battlefield Maj. Gens. William W. Loring and Edward C. Walthall saw their troops torn apart. Maj. Gen. William B. Bate on the west side of the field fared no better. After dark, around 7 p.m., the division of Maj. Gen. Edward "Allegheny" Johnson attacked and had no more luck than its predecessors. By 9:00 p.m. the fighting had mostly subsided. The overall attack had been awesome, described by some as a tidal wave, and known as the "Pickett's Charge of the West." But it was actually much larger than the famous charge at Gettysburg. In the East, 12,500 Confederates crossed a mile (1.6 km) of open ground in a single assault that lasted about 50 minutes. In Franklin, some 19,000 marched into the guns across nearly two miles (3.2 km) and conducted assaults in multiple waves that lasted over five hours.
Across the river to the east, Confederate cavalry commander Maj. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest attempted to turn the Union left flank, but the Union cavalry under Maj. Gen. James H. Wilson repulsed his advance.
Schofield, who spent the battle in Fort Granger (just across the Harpeth River, northeast of Franklin), ordered an overnight withdrawal to Nashville, starting at 11:00 p.m. Although there was a period in which the Union army was vulnerable, straddling the river, Hood was too stunned to take advantage of it. The Union army reached the breastworks at Nashville on December 1.
Aftermath
The devastated Confederate force was left in control of Franklin, but its enemy had escaped again. Typically, a Civil War battle is deemed a victory for the army that forces its opponent to withdraw, but here, Hood's "victory" came at a frightful cost. More men of the Confederate Army of Tennessee were killed in five hours at Franklin than in two days at the Battle of Shiloh. The Confederates suffered 6,252 casualties, including 1,750 killed and 3,800 wounded. Their military leadership in the West was decimated, including the loss of such skilled generals as Patrick Cleburne. Fifteen Confederate generals were casualties (6 killed, 8 wounded, and 1 captured), and 65 field grade officers were lost. Union casualties were 189 killed, 1,033 wounded, 1,104 missing.
The Army of Tennessee was all but destroyed at Franklin. Nevertheless, Hood immediately advanced against the entire Union Army of the Cumberland, firmly entrenched at Nashville with the Army of the Ohio, leading his battered forces to further, and final, disaster in the Battle of Nashville.
In his Pulitzer Prize-winning book Battle Cry of Freedom, historian James M. McPherson wrote,
| “ | Having proved even to Hood's satisfaction that they could assault breastworks, the Army of Tennessee had shattered itself beyond the possibility of ever doing so again. | ” |
Battlefield today
The Carter House, which stands today and is open to visitors, was located at the center of the Union position. The site covers about 15 acres. The house and outbuildings still show hundreds of bullet holes. The Carnton Plantation, home to the McGavock family during the battle, also still stands and is likewise open to the public. Confederate soldiers swept past Carnton toward the left wing of the Union army and the house and outbuildings were converted into the largest field hospital present after the battle. Adjacent to Carnton is the McGavock Confederate Cemetery, where 1,481 Southern soldiers killed in the battle are buried. Adjacent to the 48 acres surrounding Carnton is another 110 acres of battlefield, which is currently being converted to a city park. Much of the rest of the Franklin battlefield has been lost to commercial development. The spot where Gen. Cleburne fell, for instance, was covered until late 2005 by a Pizza Hut restaurant. Although the restaurant was purchased by a preservation group and demolished, the Civil War Preservation Trust continues to rank the Franklin battlefield as one of the ten most endangered in the U.S. City officials and historic-preservation groups have recently placed a new emphasis on saving what remains of the land over which this terrible battle raged.
See also
- Franklin II Confederate order of battle
- Franklin II Union order of battle
- First Battle of Franklin, 1863
References
- Eicher, David J., The Longest Night: A Military History of the Civil War, Simon & Schuster, 2001, ISBN 0-684-84944-5.
- Esposito, Vincent J., West Point Atlas of American Wars, Frederick A. Praeger, 1959.
- Foote, Shelby, The Civil War, A Narrative: Red River to Appomattox, Random House, 1974, ISBN 0-394-74913-8.
- McPherson, James M., Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (Oxford History of the United States), Oxford University Press, 1988, ISBN 0-19-503863-0.
- National Park Service battle summary
Notes
Further reading
- Jacobson, Eric A., For Cause & For Country: A Study of the Affair at Spring Hill and the Battle of Franklin, O'More Publishing, Franklin, Tennessee, 2006, ISBN 978-0971744448.
- Sword, Wiley, The Confederacy's Last Hurrah: Spring Hill, Franklin, and Nashville, William Morrow & Co., 1974, ISBN 0-688-00271-4.
External links
- The McGavock Confederate Cemetery - Franklin, TN
- The Battle of Franklin - For Cause & For Country
- Save the Franklin Battlefield, Inc.
- Carter House Museum
- Information on visiting the Carter House from Pastigo.com
- Carnton Plantation
- Civil War Preservation Trust report on Franklin
- Battle of Franklin by Allen Parfitt
- Battle of Franklin - massive web site/blog
- West Point Atlas map, Battles of Spring Hill and Franklin
- Historic Map of Franklin
- Maps and aerial photos for Coordinates:
- Maps from WikiMapia, Google Maps, Live Search Maps, Yahoo! Maps, or MapQuest
- Topographic maps from TopoZone or TerraServer-USA
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