“It is the only trophy I have of the great war…”

Whereby a Wreckless Heroism Leaves an Immortal Record

by Daniel Mallock

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
-For the Fallen by Laurence Binyon

Have you forgotten yet?…
For the world’s events have rumbled on since those gagged days,
Like traffic checked while at the crossing of city-ways:
And the haunted gap in your mind has filled with thoughts that flow
Like clouds in the lit heaven of life; and you’re a man reprieved to go,
Taking your peaceful share of Time, with joy to spare.
But the past is just the same-and War’s a bloody game…
Have you forgotten yet?…
Look down, and swear by the slain of the War that you’ll never forget.
Aftermath by Siegfried Sassoon

So much is written about the Civil War, its events and participants in part because there are so many extremes – extremes of fighting, sacrifice, loss, failure, horror, waste, courage, and bravery. These are the things that legends are made of and form the foundations of American character and our national story.

There are too many stories of incredible bravery, and the utmost display of superiority of character and integrity in our Civil War that to do even a small number of these heroes the justice they merit is still an impossibility. The libraries of Civil War history are full of such stories, such tragedies and victories. In the few hours of one of the most sanguinary battles of that war on the outskirts of a small Tennessee town more stories of legendary nature were written to fill several volumes.

In this battle of only several hours, most of it in the falling light of an early winter evening and its following moonlit darkness obscured by battle smoke and blood an event of such extreme bravery, courage, and character occurred which astounded everyone who witnessed it.

Years later the actions of this brave soldier would be described in terms of awe by both Union and Confederate participants. The events of that late afternoon and early evening, the savagery of the fighting, the compassion shown to the wounded and the great respect that each side showed the other for their bravery and conduct would later help to re-unite the sections.

Years after the battle Confederate General Frank Cheatham (corp commander at Franklin) would say, “Anyone who was the Battle of Franklin is my friend.” It is a microcosm of the entire war, these few hours outside Franklin, Tennessee.

General John S. Casement, a Union brigade commander from Ohio would keep only one trophy, one relic from his entire war service. Later an important contributor to the construction of the Union Pacific Railroad Casement would return this trophy as a tribute to the family of the enemy officer killed in his brigade front at Franklin many years before. This is the story of bravery so extraordinary that for a time, over the screams of combat in this small sector of battle before the Carter Cotton Gin could be heard other screams, “Don’t kill him! Do not shoot that man!”

When the order to advance was given around 3:00pm on November 30, 1864 two miles south of the little town of Franklin, Tennessee, Brigadier General John Adams (b. 1825) was commanding his brigade of Mississippians from horseback. The last grand charge on the North American continent was beginning.

The Confederate bands were playing, 100 regiments marching in a line 2 miles across, 100 plus regimental, division and corps flags were fluttering. Few in the line recalled the last time that the bands had played during a charge. It was an awe inspiring site for the men in the lines, and for the men in blue two miles away who were preparing to defend their positions and kill them. The grandeur of it all is fleeting… they are all to a man, on both sides, regardless of the impressive martial display ready to get down to the business at hand as Forrest had said, “War is about fighting, and fighting is about killing”. [Wyeth, in his Life of Lieutenant-General Nathan Bedford Forrest describes this comment "as one of his (Forrest's) favorite maxims" but neglects to say if he originated it. Tanner in Retreat to Victory?: Confederate Strategy Reconsidered specifically gives Forrest credit for this disturbing yet obvious phrase.]

Adams’ brigade was on the far right of the line trudging across open country and farm fields. His Mississippi brigade reached the main Union line and found a barrier of thick Osage orange hedges barring their way. With their spiny thorns and the thickness of the brush combined, the momentum of the assault was stalled as the Confederates are unable to advance. They try desperately to open a way though the obstruction, under a withering fire from their front and from batteries on their flanks. Hundreds are killed and wounded here in this killing ground that is now a quiet neighborhood in Franklin. Though having been wounded in the upper arm during the approach to the main Union line Adams would not leave the field, telling an aide, “No, I am going to see my men through.”

Seeing the difficulty in passing through the Osage hedge, Adams rode his horse rapidly across his brigade front from right to left, instructing his men to oblique to the left and pass the worst of the obstructions to their right and assault a more readily assailable section of the Union line. Had a proper reconnaissance by the commanding general or his staff been undertaken, and General Hood patient enough to listen to such reports of the ground in his front, these obstructions would have been understood for the cruel and impassable barrier that they became, and a different attack strategy would likely have been developed. The Confederates attacked the most stoutly fortified and defended part of the entire Union lines (Confederate right/Union left) during the battle while the lesser sections on the Union right would have made a better point of assault.

A Union veteran of the battle talking with General Cheatham at a Southern Historical Society meeting in Louisville, Kentucky later said, “If General Adams had made the attack on your (the Confederate) extreme left, he would have carried the works and Nashville would have been yours without a battle.” (Civil War Times Illustrated, “The Familiar Road”, by Bryan Lane, 10/96.) This is an unlikely outcome as George Thomas in command in Nashville would certainly not have given up that city “without a fight”, but the sentiment is clear. The far right of the Union line was the weak point, not the center and left along the Harpeth where the assault was made. Not having done a proper reconnaissance of the ground, Hood could not have known this. And in responding to those who had surveyed the Union lines his response had been “We will make the fight!” straight down the Columbia Pike directly into the Union center and left, the Federal army’s strongest positions.

But such what-ifs are games and frustrations for the wargamer and arm-chair historian to ponder. Decisions made such as the order to charge at Franklin, cannot be reversed though the participants knew it to be likely a terrible mistake. Such are the caprices of the gods who rule the killing fields of war.

Shouting for his men to follow, inspiring them with his conspicuous bravery – Adams spurred his warhorse “Old Charley” directly for the Union works themselves. Federal soldiers in this section of the line, Casement’s men from Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois would report nine charges against their position.

General A. P. Stewart on General John Adams at Franklin:
“At Franklin there was not a more natural or sublimer display of true heroism than was made by Brigadier-General John Adams, a Tennessean, commanding a brigade in Loring’s division, Stewart’s corps. It was natural because it emanated spontaneously from one whose very nature was heroic and who, consequently, could not act otherwise than heroically.”
(Battles and Sketches of the Army of Tennessee by Bromfield Lewis Ridley (Member of Stewart’s staff), 1906.

In the battle lines, blue and gray, all eyes turned to Adams. Leaping “Old Charley” to the top of the works (6 feet high by most accounts, including headlogs) Adams yelled for his men to follow and take the entrenchments. Stunned by Adams’ bravery and audacity, some Union soldiers shouted, “Do not kill him! Do not shoot that man!” And in this still moment amidst the hurricane of bullets and shrieks Adams on his horse between the fighting lines he must have know he could not live. This was the supreme moment, from his Nashville upbringing and Pulaski early life to West Point, Mexican War battles and Minnesota frontier fighting, it had all come to this moment – on top of his horse, on top of the Union works in the midst of a savage battle so near his home. He could not live, it was clear. But there were the shouts – “Do not kill him!” They would capture him, and he would be sent to Johnson’s Island, or Elmira, or even Fort Warren- a prisoner in the dark.

Perhaps he thought that it just wasn’t right, it was no way to end. His men needed his leadership and example. They needed it now. From his horseback high above the Federals in the works, he lunged for the national flag carried by the 65th Indiana Volunteers. Grabbing the flag pole horse and rider are fired on by the color guard. He is shot 9 times and falls to the top of the Union works, his black warhorse falls dead on top of him, pinning him to the Union entrenchment.

A soldier named Stevens, of the 65th Illinois fighting on the Union line just to the left of their Indiana comrades and the right of the Carter House wrote of the scene:

“Our Colonel Stewart … called to our men not to fire on him, but it was too late. Gen. Adams rode his horse over the ditch to the top of the parapet, undertook to grasp the ‘old flag’ from the hands of our color sergeant, when he fell, horse and all, shot by the color guard.”
(Eyewitnesses at the Battle of Franklin, Logsdon, Kettle Mills Press, 2000)

Colonel Tillman Stevens of the 65th Indiana, in a letter to the Confederate Veteran magazine (1903) described what he saw:

“We looked to see him fall every minute, but luck seemed to be with him. We were struck with admiration… He was too brave to be killed. The world had but few such men. … We saw scores of officers fall from their mounts… but the one great spirit who appealed the strongest to our admiration was Gen. John Adams… He was riding forward through such a rain of bullets that no one had any reason to believe he would escape them all, but he seemed to be in the hands of the Unseen, but at last the spell was broken and the spirit went out of one of the bravest men who ever led a line of battle.”
(The Gallant Dead: Union and Confederate Generals Killed in the Civil War, by Derek Smith, Stackpole, 2005.)

As they continue to defend their position against repeated charges by the Confederates, Union soldiers take the mortally wounded general from under his dead horse, Old Charley’s forelocks hanging over the Union side and hind legs over the other. Adams cannot live long.

The Indiana and Illinois soldiers take him back behind their lines a short way, and lay him down. Made as comfortable as possible, he requested that he be sent back to the Confederate lines. But this was a luxury the Federal soldiers couldn’t afford to give as the ongoing Southern attacks against their line made any such transfer impossible in the extreme.

“As soon as the charge was repulsed our men sprang upon the works and lifted the horse, while others dragged the General from under him. He was perfectly conscious, and knew his fate. He asked for water, as all dying men do in battle, as the life blood drips from the body. One of my men gave him a canteen of water, while another brought an arm load of cotton from an old gin near by and made him a pillow. The General gallantly thanked them, and, in answer to our expressions of sorrow at his sad fate, he said: ‘It is the fate of a soldier to die for his country,’ and expired.”
Lieutenant-Colonel Edward Adams Baker, 65th Indiana infantry – (Battles and Sketches of the Army of Tennessee by Bromfield Lewis Ridley (Member of Stewart’s staff), 1906.)

Adams would lay dead behind the Union lines as his men charged again and again on the line, killing and dying. Hundreds would be killed here in this sector of the battle, often fighting hand to hand. But the ill-fated advance, and the desperate bloody charges would have no effect but the killing. The Union army would withdraw from their lines around 11.30, and march for Nashville in the chill darkness of the first day of December. 1864 was coming to a close and the Confederacy was further from victory than they had been only hours before. The mighty Army of Tennessee had broken itself on the earthworks south of Franklin. Once again the Union army would escape Hood just as it had the previous day at Spring Hill.

Adams’ body was recovered at the same time that Patrick Cleburne was found, some fifty yards away just in front of the Cotton Gin with one bullet hole in his chest. Placed in the same ambulance they were laid on the porch of Carnton, passing over the same ground that Adams had charged across on Old Charley just hours before. What a scene, the Confederate Generals Patrick Cleburne, Otho Strahl, John Adams, and Hiram Granbury laid out in a line on the back porch of Carnton, where hundreds of their comrades were fighting for their lives in this beautiful ante-bellum mansion, now a hospital its floors covered in blood and the amputated limbs of the wounded in piles thrown outside the first floor windows now operating theaters.

After the slaughter at Franklin, Hood led his gutted army to Nashville where two weeks later it was finally destroyed. Facing another Union army safely ensconced in their superb fortifications, particularly Fort Negley, Hood was out-manned, out-gunned, and out-generaled by his former West Point instructor, George Thomas. The campaign in Tennessee had been a total utter failure, Hood’s once bright reputation in tatters, his army ruined, they retreated back to northern Georgia. Hood would resign command of the army early in 1865. Later that year President Davis ordered him to recruit in Texas and raise a new army. But this was an absurd notion… Hood would be one of the last Confederate commanders to surrender, May 31, 1865.

Hood wrote his memoirs, as many of his comrades and former enemies had done. Advance and Retreat would appear posthumously after Hood and his wife succumb to disease in the 1879 yellow fever epidemic in New Orleans leaving their 8 children orphaned. It is a controversial book to say the least. Hood writes of the artillery, or lack of it, at Franklin, “During the day I was restrained from using my artillery on account of the women and children remaining in the town.” This is half true. Some Confederate artillerymen reported that they were ordered not to fire their cannon towards the town for fear of hitting civilians. Of course “towards the town” was the direction of the enemy, too, as they held the town. We know for certain from the civilian accounts of those in the town during the battle that cannon balls were falling into homes. It is not known which side fired these projectiles. Most of the Confederate artillery was still on the road when the waves of gray were immolating themselves on the Union lines south of Franklin. The few Southern cannon that were engaged were used to little effect. Proper use of the artillery at Franklin required the one thing that he did not have – patience. Impetuous, and hasty, the commanding general’s lack of patience would kill his army. Lack of haste and vigor at Spring Hill on the 29th would allow the quarry to escape a well-laid trap; lack of patience at Franklin on the 30th would break the core of the Army itself and prepare it for it’s final death two weeks later at Nashville.

In the months following Franklin the cannon all fell silent, the bodies inexpertly buried reburied at the Carnton Confederate Cemetery, and the Confederacy eradicated. The memory of Franklin was like a knife in the belly of the local population, they would survive the battle but not commemorate it. Carnton would become a symbol of American and Confederate compassion and respect for the dead, and the veterans of the battle would greet each other as friends regardless of the uniforms that they had worn.

The carnage at Franklin was particularly brutal, bloody, and costly. Though Franklin would often come up in veteran discussions, private and public, as being special in its own repellent way, there never would be a National Battlefield Park created there; there would never be a commemorative arch across Columbia Pike between the Carter House and Cotton Gin (as suggested by one writer to the Confederate Veteran magazine, 1903); the Union lines would be obliterated and homes built in their place; the killing ground of Franklin would revert back to a growing lovely small southern town. In recent times a new county library was built on the killing ground between the first and second Union lines demonstrating a seeming callousness to memory and to historical preservation on the part of current local authorities. However, other movements are afoot in Franklin to save the remaining portions of the battleground and properly commemorate the battle. We seem constantly at war with ourselves in America, pulled by the past yet propelled into the future.

The Confederates killed at Franklin repose at Carnton, the tourists come and go. Carnton, the lovely mansion of the MacGavocks is alive now in its own right continuing to honor the promise of Carrie by caring for the cemetary.

Carnton now even offers the rental of the home for wedding parties. The beauty of life is mixed with the violence and horrors of the past. The porch where Cleburne, Adams, Strahl, and Gist were laid out before their funerals is still there – now visitors stroll there, and musicians serenade wedding guests. Carnton is still alive just as Franklin continues to grow and prosper. There are Confederate flags on the graves at Carnton, but no where else in Franklin. Life continues quite stylishly in Franklin – almost a tribute the battle that almost destroyed the town.

In the years after 1864, the fall of the Confederacy and Reconstruction and a growing reconciliation between the sections, led for just a short time by Robert E. Lee, little remained of the battle but the hundreds of bullet holes in the Carter house and outbuildings which can still be seen today.

In 1896, Lt. Col Baker of the 65th Indiana wrote a letter to John Adams widow inquiring as to his character and providing her with his recollection of the general’s death at Franklin. The colonel wrote of the General’s bravery and the disposition of his personal effects including his saddle which had been given to General Casement, now living in Painesville, Ohio. Baker concluded his letter by inviting Mrs. Adams’ sons to visit him and informing her that he would communicate to General Casement regarding the saddle if she requested it. Baker’s letter is extraordinary. Casement’s continues the theme. It is of moment, and I include it here in it’s entirety, as follows:

Painesville, Ohio.,
November 23, 1891.
Mrs. Georgia McD. Adams.

Dear Madam: Major Baker, of Webb City, Mo., informs me that you have expressed a desire to obtain the saddle used by General Adams at Franklin, Tennessee, in his last and fatal ride on the unhappy day that caused so many hearts to bleed on both sides of the line. It was my fortune to stand in our line within a foot of where the General succeeded in getting his horse’s forelegs over the line. The poor beast died there, and was in that position when we returned over the same field more than a month after the battle. The saddle was taken off the horse and presented to me before the charge was fairly repulsed; that is why I have kept it all these years. It is the only trophy I have of the great war, and I am only too happy to return it to you. It has never been used since the General used it. It has hung in our attic. The stirrups were of wood, and I fear that my boys in their pony days must have taken them, for I cannot find them. I am very sorry for it. General Adams fell from his horse from the position in which the horse died, just over the line of the works, which were part breast-works and part ditch. As soon as the charge was repulsed I had him brought on our side of the works, and did what we could to make him comfortable. He was perfectly calm and uncomplaining. He begged me to send him to the Confederate line, assuring me that the men that would take him there would return safe. I told him that we were going to fall back as soon as we could do it safely, and that he would soon be in possession of his friends. It was a busy time with me. Our line was broken from near its center up to where I stood in it, and in restoring it and repulsing other charges I was too busy to again see the General until after his gallant life had passed away. I had his ring and watch taken care of; his pistol I gave to one of the Colonels of my brigade, and do not know what became of it. These are briefly the facts connected with the death of General Adams. The ring and watch were sent to you through a flag of truce and a receipt taken for them. The saddle will be expressed to you tomorrow. Would that I had the power to return the gallant rider! There was not a man in my command that witnessed the gallant ride that did not express his admiration of the rider and wish that he might have lived long to wear the honors that he so gallantly won. Wishing you and his children much happiness,
I am yours truly, J. S. Casement