BooksFilmandMusic

The Responsibility of Command - John Bell Hood and the Nashville Campaign with the John Bell Hood Society

by Daniel Mallock

There is no question that John Bell Hood is one of the great tragic heroes of the Civil War. His story is full of pain, frustration, victories and defeats, advances and finally retreats. A hero at Gettysburg, Antietam, Chickamauga, Gaines Mill, and other hard fought fields Hood was promoted to command the Army of Tennessee in July, 1864 as Joe Johnston’s strategic withdrawal strategy and refusal to work with Jefferson Davis finally got him removed from command.

Hood’s short but monumental career as commander of the Army of Tennessee is covered in violence and controversy with the culmination of both at Franklin, Tennessee, November 30, 1864. Besmirched in modern Civil War history by the slanted and agenda-laden approach of Wiley Sword’s “Confederacy’s Last Hurrah” General Hood’s reputation has suffered intensely in recent years. It is time for a re-examination of General Hood’s career, and most particularly the nature of the decisions that were made at Spring Hill, Franklin, and Nashville by General Hood.

There is a small but intense group of defenders of the truth, historians and students who search for the truth about Hood. It was my pleasure and privilege to tour Spring Hill and Franklin with them and my entire family with kids in tow this weekend. They are the John Bell Hood Society ably led by Sam Hood, a true defender of Hood and a true historian. Walking the ground is the only way to really understand a battle and to understand the decisions that were made based on terrain, local conditions, etc. Reading the records and memoirs is a start, but real understanding can only come when the ground is seen, the killing ground over which the blue and gray heroes fought at Franklin, Spring Hill and Nashville.

With a ruined arm from Gettysburg and a lost leg at Chickamauga, John Bell Hood is an unlikely army commander. But so it was, and under the command of Hood (unfortunately for him), the fortunes of the Confederacy in the western theatre came to a painful end under his tenure and leadership.

It has been said that the battle of Nashville was the only true decisive victory of the War. This may be so as due to losses of the campaign culminating in the battle of Nashville, the Army of Tennessee was no longer a feared army or formidable fighting force afterwards. Yes, there would be Bentonville later, and Joe Johnston would again be in command to oversee a bitter victory followed by a bitter surrender. But the Army of Tennessee was shattered at Franklin then crushed at Nashville. Bentonville saw an amalgamated Army very different from the army that crossed the Tennessee River in November, 1864 to free Nashville and assail Louisville and even Cincinnati.

General Schofield of the Union army says as much in his memoirs as does George Thomas - that the Army of Tennessee was shattered during the Tennessee Campaign and was no longer feared afterwards. It was still respected, but it could readily be dealt with - the Army of Tennessee would no longer command the ability to shift the balance of the war - anywhere.

But two weeks before Nashville there was Franklin - an astoundingly brutal battle even by Civil War standards. The violence at Franklin is on a par with few if any battles in that War and most all of its survivors have ranked it as likely the very worst experience of their entire lives. Franklin happened because General Hood gave one order: “We will make the fight.”

The origins of this order, the options that he had, the high cost of the order itself and the incredible bravery of the men on both side who fought at Franklin were discussed this weekend on a tour of Franklin and Spring Hill that my family and I (yes, including wife and kids!) were fortunate and honored to have enjoyed. Sponsored by the John Bell Hood Society, this tour was thorough, fascinating, and educational. Hood has not recently received such a fair hearing as he got on this tour.

Before the bitter fighting at Franklin there was Spring Hill. Some 18 miles south of Franklin this small town could have been the site of one of the greatest victories of Southern arms in the entire War. But due to confusion of orders and difficult terrain a masterful flanking and envelopment movement directed by General Hood came to not with the following day being the battle of Franklin. The frustration that the failure to bag Schofield and his army at Spring Hill created in the Confederate army cannot be overstated. To understand Franklin, one must understand the events of the previous day at Spring Hill. It has been described variously as the greatest error, controversy, and lost opportunity of the War. There is no one more studied on this battle and its maneuvers than Mr. Eric Jacobson. Lucky for me Mr. Jacobson led the tour at Spring Hill and to Winstead Hill- the jumping off point of the great Confederate charge at Franklin.

Eric Jacobson is the lead historian at Carnton Plantation in Franklin. His recent book “For Cause and Country” certainly is the most authoritative study of Spring Hill in print. I recommend this book highly. Eric Jacobson is a superb guide- he is engaging, thoroughly knowledgeable of the terrain, the battle and the campaign. Spring Hill is one of the most confusing engagements/battles of the War. Mr. Jacobson’s explanations make it all come into focus. Standing on the hilltop nearby to the Columbia Pike it becomes clear how the entire Union army under Schofield (some 25 thousand men with horses, mules, wagons, artillery, etc.) could walk literally under the very noses of the Confederate army in the darkness of November 29, 1864. As Mr. Jacobson mentioned in passing, one cannot really understand Spring Hill without actually traversing the ground. We did. It has always been difficult for me personally to get a great feel for the ground and the events that happened at Spring Hill on the 29th of November, 1864. Now I “get it”- thanks to Mr. Jacobson.

Moving on from Spring Hill we made our way to Carnton and the Carter House. Carnton is lovely and haunting. Four CSA generals were laid out in death on its outside porch. Hundreds of Confederate soldiers were there suffering and dying as the MacGavock family cared for the wounded in their home and on their property. Blood stains from wounded Confederate soldiers still can be seen in the wood floors of the home. The horrific conditions there after the battle have been documented and written about but can truly only be imagined. Seeing the blood stains and hearing of the sufferings of everyone there, one can begin to see it.

There is a clock in the main parlor at Carnton that was there during the battle and after. We all fell silent and listened to the clock ticking just as it did that day as men suffered and died within hearing distance of it. It was a special moment, and can transport one to the past if one allows oneself to imagine it all - all the misery and horror of it. The appalling sites and events that occurred at Carnton around that clock that we heard ticking can only be imagined and all with a shudder.

After Carnton we made our way to the Carter House where David Fraley the chief Military Historian there gave an excellent tour starting in the yard where hundreds of Union and Confederate soldiers fought in ugly bloody hand to hand combat on November 30, 1864 there on the Carter property. Mr. Fraley has a wealth of knowledge of the people who fought at Franklin on both sides, the tactics and military issues involved and the very high cost to all involved that the battle exacted. Touring the house which was Union General Jacob Cox’ headquarters during the battle is to be transported back in time a bit.

Still covered in bullet holes and battle damage the Carter House at Franklin is one of the most historically significant homes in the entire United States. Standing in the yard one can almost imagine the brutal combat that took place there. It’s hallowed ground and a very special place that every Civil War student and every American should visit. There may be no place in the country where combat more vicious and brutal occured.

The charge of the Confederate Army of Tennessee that opened this brutal battle was double the distance of Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg; had more participants, and was not preceded by artillery as the brave men at Gettysburg were. The events at Franklin are off the charts of grandness, brutality, violence, bravery, etc. And how lucky to have had a tour of the area by Mr. Fraley.

Decisions made at Franklin and Spring Hill by General Hood and then at Franklin and Nashville that would lead to the almost complete destruction of the Army of Tennessee have been analyzed often. Mr. Sword’s book on the subject has skewed the debate against the General unfairly. It is time to approach this battle and the entire Tennessee Campaign not from sadness and anger at the resulting brutality and apparently avoidable losses but more from an objective perspective whose only purpose is to determine the truth. This is certainly the historian’s duty.

There are no greater seekers of the truth about General Hood than the John Bell Hood Historical Society. Mr. Sword’s book “Confederacy’s Last Hurrah” is not the final word on these battles and the Tennessee campaign of 1864. It is important to give General Hood a fair hearing and to understand his motives, his abilities, his mood and thoughts during those difficult times of decision in middle Tennessee.

(Photo of Brigadier General John C. Carter’s grave, Columbia, TN. Mortally wounded at Franklin, Carter would die ten days later [the General is not a relative of the Carter House Carter Family]. Not believing that he was to die, and ignoring the assurances of doctors that he was mortally wounded and could not survive, General Carter would ask for his wife repeatedly. His grave would be unmarked for over 50 years. Photo of General Carter courtesy of Generals and Brevets.)

General Hood is a tragic hero who suffered greatly for his country. “He did the best he could under the circumstances” was heard often during this event. And it is so. I think that he did. While I disagree with some of the decisions that he made and wish that he hadn’t made them, I wasn’t on Winstead Hill as the sunlight was dimming on November 30, 1864; I didn’t marching down country backroads in the dark at Spring Hill the previous day.

However, men’s lives are not to be thrown away in order to do “something” rather than nothing. The commander has a responsibility to take calculated, reasonable risks. The attack at Franklin was contrary to all understood military theory and planning. It is difficult for an objective historian to defend the attack at Franklin as ordered by Hood. Frank Cheatham, Corp commander of the Army of Tennessee said to a Union survivor after the War that had Wagner’s two divisions not been in his advanced exposed position south of the Carter House, Schofield’s army would likely have killed everyone in the Army of Tennessee.

The battle of Franklin was a savage affair that was not pre-ordained nor determined by circumstances as some historians and defenders of General Hood have suggested. It occurred because Hood gave the order to advance - despite reasonable objections based upon sound judgments and reconnaissance by his subordinates particularly Cleburne and Forrest. These men are no longer alive to give explanations as to why they made their decisions. This is one of the reasons why historians exist.

General Hood will always be held accountable for his decision to attack at Franklin then to move forward to Nashville despite the heavy losses for not at Franklin. The devastating costs of both battles demand attention and explanation. Only the students and the historians can begin to understand how these nightmare battles came to be, as the commanders and the soldiers are gone now so long ago. There is no inevitablity about Franklin’s frontal assault or the advance to Nashville in my opinion. General Hood as the commander of the Army of Tennessee had the responsibility and privilege to make the momentous decisions during the campaign. The lives of his men are literally in his hands. Because the campaign failed and because so many lives were lost as a result of it, General Hood must be understood and held accountable by history for the decisions that he made. All men and women who make momentous decisions are thus held to account by history. This is no disservice to the General commanding but a duty accepted by the true student and historian.

The Union lines (three of them) at Franklin were fully manned and fully covered by artillery and were complete, so said Cleburne. The Union main line could be flanked if the requisite manpower were provided, so said Forrest. If Forrest can get across the Harpeth so can infantry - if Forrest asks for two hours to flank the position when the alternative is a potentially suicidal frontal assault without artillery support then Forrest should be given his chance. If Fort Granger is mounted with artillery it must be attacked or flanked and the divisions supporting it. Truly, had Forrest’s attack been fully backed with a complete compliment of cavalry and the additional division of infantry as requested by Forrest, Wilson well could have been driven back and defeated. This issue is worthy of more posts and articles and even a book. Dismissal of Forrest’s flank attack is not reasonable particularly by suggesting that the Harpeth was running too high to get infantry across. Forrest had a ford and got his horseman across, he would have got infantry and guns across too had he been given the opportunity.

But Hood would not wait, it was a race against time for him - and he must be held accountable as the results were so utterly devastating - even for him. After the battle of Franklin he sat on his horse viewing the carnage and loss and cried… anybody with a heart would do the same. Yes, he was concerned that Schofield would escape him again just as he had slipped the trap the previous evening at Spring Hill, but this is not justification for ordering a frontal advance unsupported by artillery and with the cavalry main force across the river. This race against time concept causes men to make rash decisions and ignore good council. There are options, even in war and even 18 miles south of Nashville. An army destroyed in a risky adventure is not likely to fight well or at all the following day.

For Hood, the advance to Nashville was little more than an act of honor and psychology as he knew, and essentially stated so in his memoirs, that little could be done at Nashville after the horrors and losses of Franklin. These decisions must be understood in their context. This is not a matter of excoriating anyone or of criticizing unnecessarily men facing the most extreme stress possible, it is rather about the need and desire to really understand what happened. This is what history is all about.

Great history is not about analyzing events with modern eyes it is best done when we can put ourselves “in the shoes” of the people involved. Understanding best comes when we can learn what the people involved understood - history with 20:20 hindsight isn’t real.

For analysis we should include everything we learned after the events… but for true understanding we need to in some way, as best we can, become the actor himself/herself and use the information that they had available to them (and perhaps much that they did not) to try as best we can to come to understand why decisions were made and how events came to occur. This is an honest approach to history - as honest as perhaps we can be - and removes our biases and prisms and agendas as much as possible.

It is important for Civil War students and those interested in these important events to try their best to understand General Hood. He has been dealt with unfairly by recent historians, most particularly Mr. Sword. The John Bell Hood Society and Mr. Sam Hood are leading the way in correcting the errors of some historians and showing those interested in our nation’s history that John Bell Hood was not perfect but was a hero nonetheless.

(Several photos courtesy of Mr. Graeme Goetz)

Your email:  
Subscribe Unsubscribe  

The Workings of a Kind Providence in Life
by Daniel Mallock

Today I was laid off.

This is not particularly extraordinary. I am a Systems Analyst and IT fellow-I’ve been through this before. The most astounding thing happened 10 minutes after I left my company and ventured forth into the unknown.

I’d like to share it with you.

It was a lovely day in Franklin, Tennessee today. Puffy, scattered clouds all about the sky and a favorable breeze blowing at 64 degrees. Perfect weather for early March in the Mid-South.

I stopped at a local gas station several miles from my now former company to throw a few dollars in the tank. As I walked into the station, I saw an older fellow sitting on a beautiful new motorcycle. This brought to mind my frustration that I was driving my car rather than my own motorcycle.

I got to chatting with this fellow and found out he was from near my home town in New England. We talked of bikes, Franklin, etc. I told him about my own bike and my little misadventure in Maine some years ago on a Yamaha. Recently retired, and a long time resident of Franklin I asked him if he was interested in local history.

“Are you interested in the Battle of Franklin?” I asked him.

“No, I was never interested in the Civil War, but I can see that you are,” he said pointing to my Battle of Franklin/Carter House bumper sticker.

“Yes,” I said. “I’ve been a student of this battle for many years - since I was a child, actually.”

And then something amazing happened.

He said, “I have some maps that a friend gave me many years ago of the Battle of Franklin. I would like you to have them. Follow me on my bike and I will give them to you.”

We traveled to his house nearby he leading the way on his motorcycle, me following in my 4-wheel ride.

The maps he gave me are unpublished. They are produced by a local historian in impeccable detail showing most particularly the locations of Confederate artillery batteries during the battle. These maps are the finest and most detailed maps of the Battle of Franklin I have ever seen. They are a treasure, a miracle to me. They open a new world of study for me in my pursuit of knowledge on this very savage and brutal battle of November, 1864. In addition, they confirm my researches regarding the bitter fighting over captured Union artillery pieces at the Carter House and Cotton Gin early in the battle.

Needless to say I was humbled and astounded at this turn of events. My new friend said then, “I see you like the maps. Let’s go over to the house of the fellow who drew them.”

Again, I followed him through the back streets of Franklin. We arrived at the historian’s house completely unannounced. My friend hadn’t seen him in over 5 years, though they live only 2 miles from one another. The two were old friends separated by loss, illness and the passing of time as it moves so swiftly forward.

I was introduced very kindly, and thanked the historian for his hospitality. I complimented him on his maps and told him how very happy I was to have them. I told him that these are the finest maps of the battle I have ever seen, and told him I would send him my writings on the subject. The historian is old and in ill health but met me, a complete stranger, as a new and welcome friend.

What a pleasure to meet two people so thoughtful and friendly and kind. Who can know how or why these things occur? The fact that they do occur makes life so very special and continues to reinforce my belief that a kind Providence sometimes takes a moment to guide me on a path that can bring me to more knowledge of history, of myself, and of the kindness and deep caring of others - otherwise strangers now friends.

One might suggest that a lay off is extraordinary. It is. But I’ve seen this before. Sometimes it’s an ugly business, business. But we always move forward as best we can, with a good and positive attitude that the right will find its course, or we will be led upon it. There is little so stable in life as change. But beyond this matter of business and career the matter of scholarship, of new friendship and most importantly of the entirely selfless kindness of others is what is so extraordinary.

-Daniel

Allen Tate’s Failed Poem “Ode to the Confederate Dead”

Introduction by Daniel Mallock

“The Horror, the Horror” - Joseph Conrad

So much of modern American poetry is self-indulgent; semi-obscure, purposely confused, overly complicated, essentially tonal, and mood pieces rather than art involving substance and depth. Perhaps this is why there is an ever-shrinking audience for it and why the only lively and enthusiastic discussions on such matters take place in staid and boring academic literary journals and poetry magazines that nobody reads, or in back rooms and dark corners of downtown book stores.

This approach to poetry by poets is often a hidden disdain for the readership, and their more common place yet elegant self-referential excess of construction, imagery, metaphor and message perhaps make poetry now the art form of the elite “artistes” of academia and folks amongst the great hoi polloi who - so wanting to like poetry so wanting to see it revived and reinvigorated wait patiently for another Whitman or Poe or the like - to the poets themselves, just don’t “get it” and never can or will.

Say that you like poetry, and the response will invariably be “but, why?”

Poems that tend to drive wedges between the reader and the form itself and that are so confused in their approach that loyal fans think it means one thing while the auteur believes it means quite something else in the opposite direction - is the mark of an art form in decline. There continues a small coterie of poetry fans who still buy poetry books and talk about poets and keep the flame alive like the readers in Fahrenheit 451 who hid their books at risk of imprisonment and worse. So we wait for a Poe, another John Ashberry, and others of superb quality, but we get Allen Tate’s “Ode to the Confederate Dead” instead with its pompous odius misdirection disguised as tribute.

Tate’s “Ode” is really neither about Confederates nor really about the dead. Additionally, it is also not “original” in the literal sense. Henry Timrod, sometimes described as the “Confederate Poet laureate” wrote an “ode” poem that actually was a tribute to the Confederate dead unlike Tate’s which was not, whether by accident, malfeasance, or design we’ll never know. Titled “Ode: Sung on the Occasion of Decorating the Graves of the Confederate Dead at Magnolia Cemetery, Charleston, S.C., 1867″ Timrod’s poem is short, emotional, sad, honest, and most likely deeply meaningful to any audience hearing it read (or for those reading it themselves). It is not at all obscurantism like Tate’s homage to Timrod written much later, and foisted upon us as a tribute to the Confederate dead rather than simply a appalling failed poem by a famous poet.

Tate’s Ode is not a tribute, it is simply a failure. Oft-read by caring folks as a tribute to Confederates long gone, it is a mistake. According to one Williamson County, TN website, “It remains, the works of Robert Hicks and Madison Smartt Bell notwithstanding, the most important piece of literature to come out of Williamson County.” This is utterly absurd. Randall Jarrell, and David Donaldson, both Vanderbilt colleagues of Tate’s are superior poets. As a partisan for southern remembrance, having written several biographies of Confederate heroes (Jackson and Davis) Tate seems to have the requisite qualifications to have penned a great tribute poem for the Confederate dead, appropriate for graveside readings. But if he did, this is not the poem. Great artists can create bad art, happens all the time.

According to the Williamson County website mentioned above, Tate was inspired to write the Ode after a 1926 visit to the McGavock Confederate Cemetery at the Carnton Mansion which played itself an important role during the Battle of Franklin. There are almost 1500 Confederate dead in that cemetery many in mass graves that are marked only with a state designation as “125 Texas soldiers buried here” etched into a granite column. It is no insult to Tate personally to say that this is a bad poem. Contrast it with “Lee in the Mountains” or Lowell’s “For the Union Dead” and you will see why. Or read Timrod’s original “Ode “. Timrod’s rings and sings true, Tate’s Ode does neither basking in its own glow and of little moment outside of its own internal context.

Tate’s poem is overdone and internally confused so that his use of powerful words that ring to everyone with any sense of respect and affection for Confederate heros would think that they are reading or hearing a tribute - but it just isn’t so. Even great poets from Vanderbilt’s famous “Fugitives” can misfire now and then. Tate’s Ode is a clear miss, much more than a misfired poem.

Mention of battle names and “Stonewall” in several lines does not a Civil War poem make. Tate clearly took this poem exceedingly seriously and that adds to the shame of it as it is simply exceedingly bad. Folks hungry for meaningful poetry about the Civil War have long heaped praise upon this conglomeration of unfortunate metaphors and falling leaves outside graveyard crypts. It’s the use of the Civil War “code words” that have made this poem so famous, and so mistakenly lauded as brilliant.

I am not the only one who feels this way. Certainly in the minority on this issue, it is good to know that I am in good company. Donald Davidson, a colleague of Tate’s at Vanderbilt and the author of the beautiful and authoritative “Lee in the Mountains” used harsh words to describe Tate’s “Ode to the Confederate Dead”. In a letter to Tate, Davidson didn’t mince any words when he said, “Your poetry, like your criticism, is so astringent that it bites and dissolves what it touches.” But this is just the beginning. Great poets can be savage critics, and when they criticize each other - yipes, watch out!

“You have decided that the opposite sort of poetry (say, an expansive poetry) can no longer be written in an age where everything is in a terrible condition. But this attitude does not merely lie behind the poetry; it gets into it, not in the form of poetry but of aesthetics, so that poem after poem of yours becomes aesthetic dissertation as much as poetry. … [W]hen you deal with things themselves, the things become a ruin and crackle like broken shards under your feet. The Confederate dead become a peg on which you hang an argument whose lines, however sonorous and beautiful in a strict proud way, leave me wondering why you wrote a poem on the subject at all, since in effect you say (and I suspect you are speaking partly to me) that no poem can be written on such a subject…

The poem is beautifully written. … But its beauty is a cold beauty. And where, O Allen Tate, are the dead? You have buried them completely out of sight – with them yourself and me. God help us, I must say. You keep on whittling your art to a finer point, but you are not whittling yourself. What is going to happen if the only poetry you can allow your conscience to approve is a poetry of argument and despair. Fine as such a poetry may be, is it not a Pyrrhic victory?”

I’ve often found myself asking the same question that Davidson did so many years previously, why did Tate write this poem nominally about the Confederate dead when they are so glossed over? Why choose the Confederate dead as the title? It’s a bait-and-switch, typical of bad art.

There are so many failures in this poem that discussing them all could fill a book, which is not my desire. As a poem it’s a mish-mash confabulation of unfortunate images and metaphors utterly out of sync and described confusedly, without context and with little respect of history or reality. This poem doesn’t sing, it scrapes itself across the blackboard of the mind making that abysmal irritating screeching sound so familiar to every school child all the while!

Observe the poem as a Civil War historian, as someone who appreciates the sacrifices of American soldiers in past wars; think about how this poem would sound read over the graves of heroes - and be appalled…

“Unfortunate” is merely the most kind word to use here, but not at all the most accurate. Read the following section from Tate’s Ode, and ask yourself if the imagery is all wrong, confused, negative, insulting, grotesque.

“What shall we who count our days and bow
Our heads with a commemorial woe
In the ribboned coats of grim felicity,
What shall we say of the bones, unclean,
Whose verdurous anonymity will grow?
The ragged arms, the ragged heads and eyes
Lost in these acres of the insane green?
The gray lean spiders come, they come and go;”

The above bizarre cacophony of images of the rotting dead, and gray spiders (Confederate spiders… huh?) and unclean bones is but only part of the many assaults upon the reader by Tate. How can Confederate bones in a poem supposed by so many to be a tribute be unclean? The bones of our American war dead, Confederate and Union, cannot be unclean! Tate’s imagery is vile.

These are not the words of commemoration of loss or sadness or of appreciation. This is no veneration appreciation of the sacrifices of the Confederate dead! These are words that reduce the dead to their very bones and shiver their accomplishments out of context from their lives so that the only thing remaining in the poem to mark their lives are the Confederate gray spiders to be trodden under foot and screamed at by little girls and old women.

Observe the Civil War code words in the following lines in this also muddled and bizarre section, these are the source of this poem’s longevity and also the source of so much misunderstanding:

“Turn your eyes to the immoderate past,
Turn to the inscrutable infantry rising
Demons out of the earth they will not last.
Stonewall, Stonewall, and the sunken fields of hemp,
Shiloh, Antietam, Malvern Hill, Bull Run.
Lost in that orient of the thick and fast
You will curse the setting sun.”

There is false mystery here, and fake sentiment. Confederate infantry is not “inscrutable”. The dead at Franklin are there because of a specific historic event, the battle of Franklin, November 30, 1864. Confederate infantry are not demons. “Demons”? Did Tate actually suggest here that Confederate infantrymen are “demons”?? This is misery and absurdity rolled all together into an abysmal ball thrown at people on dark and sad occasions thinking that they are giving tribute/paying tribute to lost heroes but are instead indulging a poet his awful and unfortunate mistake of a poem. Why on earth would “I/you” curse the setting sun? Should I curse the setting sun for all the horrible Confederate losses during the war or do I curse the setting sun because I am sad at the deaths of brave men resting in the cemetery? No, in Tate’s twisted-up version the men are not resting at all in the cemetery, they are “rising” - oh, you know, like gray spiders.

“Turn your eyes to the immoderate past,
Turn to the inscrutable infantry rising
Demons out of the earth they will not last.”

Can anyone listening to a recitation of this abysmal monstrosity of a poem truly believe that it is a tribute to dead Confederate soldiers when they are described as “gray spiders”, and “demons”? No!

Never has a more unfortunate mess been foisted upon a caring public so desperate for ways to honor the bravery of their forebears. Tate’s poem “ode to the Confederate Dead” is not the way. This poem should be rendered asunder and banished into the black holes of obscurity where it belongs. Mind you, this is not a condemnation of all of Tate’s work merely this one poem so wrongly portrayed as an appropriate commemoration of Confederate dead (even read at Confederate cemeteries!) while it is not all such a thing.

A poem can fail for so many reasons. Davidson was so right when he wrote, “The poem is beautifully written. … But its beauty is a cold beauty. And where, O Allen Tate, are the dead? You have buried them completely out of sight – with them yourself and me.” The poem reads “well” as do most poems written by an accomplished poet such as Tate. But it is cold, and heartless.

There is no care for the Confederate dead here, in fact they don’t even appear in the poem but as demons and spiders. The heroes are converted to the ugliest of images, and the sacrifices and losses ignored, while the poet plays his literary games with metre and rhythm and names of battles - clearly meaningless to him, but hooks for the audience like a bad ABBA tune’s irresistible hook.

But I do not care a whit about Tate’s internal poetics or his “music”, I want a Civil War poem that is an Ode to the Confederate Dead, a tribute and appreciation. This is the manner that this poem has always been sold to me through my life, having been read at Civil War events with the direst and humblest of tones. But I’ve been sold a bill of goods and been cheated throughout my life and now the truth needs to be told so that future generations are not so abused as I have been by this wretched poem.

Ode to the Confederate Dead
by Allen Tate

Row after row with strict impunity
The headstones yield their names to the element,
The wind whirrs without recollection;
In the riven troughs the splayed leaves
Pile up, of nature the casual sacrament
To the seasonal eternity of death;
Then driven by the fierce scrutiny
Of heaven to their election in the vast breath,
They sough the rumour of mortality.

Autumn is desolation in the plot
Of a thousand acres where these memories grow
From the inexhaustible bodies that are not
Dead, but feed the grass row after rich row.
Think of the autumns that have come and gone!–
Ambitious November with the humors of the year,
With a particular zeal for every slab,
Staining the uncomfortable angels that rot
On the slabs, a wing chipped here, an arm there:
The brute curiosity of an angel’s stare
Turns you, like them, to stone,
Transforms the heaving air
Till plunged to a heavier world below
You shift your sea-space blindly
Heaving, turning like the blind crab.

Dazed by the wind, only the wind
The leaves flying, plunge

You know who have waited by the wall
The twilight certainty of an animal,
Those midnight restitutions of the blood
You know–the immitigable pines, the smoky frieze
Of the sky, the sudden call: you know the rage,
The cold pool left by the mounting flood,
Of muted Zeno and Parmenides.
You who have waited for the angry resolution
Of those desires that should be yours tomorrow,
You know the unimportant shrift of death
And praise the vision
And praise the arrogant circumstance
Of those who fall
Rank upon rank, hurried beyond decision–
Here by the sagging gate, stopped by the wall.

Seeing, seeing only the leaves
Flying, plunge and expire

Turn your eyes to the immoderate past,
Turn to the inscrutable infantry rising
Demons out of the earth they will not last.
Stonewall, Stonewall, and the sunken fields of hemp,
Shiloh, Antietam, Malvern Hill, Bull Run.
Lost in that orient of the thick and fast
You will curse the setting sun.

Cursing only the leaves crying
Like an old man in a storm

You hear the shout, the crazy hemlocks point
With troubled fingers to the silence which
Smothers you, a mummy, in time.

The hound bitch
Toothless and dying, in a musty cellar
Hears the wind only.

Now that the salt of their blood
Stiffens the saltier oblivion of the sea,
Seals the malignant purity of the flood,
What shall we who count our days and bow
Our heads with a commemorial woe
In the ribboned coats of grim felicity,
What shall we say of the bones, unclean,
Whose verdurous anonymity will grow?
The ragged arms, the ragged heads and eyes
Lost in these acres of the insane green?
The gray lean spiders come, they come and go;
In a tangle of willows without light
The singular screech-owl’s tight
Invisible lyric seeds the mind
With the furious murmur of their chivalry.

We shall say only the leaves
Flying, plunge and expire

We shall say only the leaves whispering
In the improbable mist of nightfall
That flies on multiple wing:
Night is the beginning and the end
And in between the ends of distraction
Waits mute speculation, the patient curse
That stones the eyes, or like the jaguar leaps
For his own image in a jungle pool, his victim.

What shall we say who have knowledge
Carried to the heart? Shall we take the act
To the grave? Shall we, more hopeful, set up the grave
In the house? The ravenous grave?

Leave now
The shut gate and the decomposing wall:
The gentle serpent, green in the mulberry bush,
Riots with his tongue through the hush–
Sentinel of the grave who counts us all!

Tate poem courtesy of Poets.org

Your email:  
Subscribe Unsubscribe  

Unraveling a Civil War Mystery

Whereby Sloppy Generalship Leads to Near Disaster for the Union Army in the West

Oh my God! This awful awful day!

by Daniel Mallock

In the shade of a linden tree at the crest of Winstead Hill, General Hood, commander of the Army of Tennessee, made the fateful decision to assault the Union lines at Franklin, TN., November 30, 1864. The Confederate army, shattered by staggering losses of officers and men, including 5 generals killed on the field would the next day incredibly march north to Nashville and dare General Thomas commanding that place to face them in open battle. This is exactly what Thomas did and the shattering that began in Franklin was finished there on the south side of Nashville with the survivors of the now broken and defeated Confederate army retreating past the graves of their comrades hastily buried in the cold fields of Franklin just two weeks previously.

Controversy over the decision to attack at Franklin has been ongoing since the end of the War with partisans for General Hood, a hero of many battlefields who suffered grievously for the Confederacy, defending him and lauding him for what would have been an astounding victory had he been successful. One of the more shocking aspects of the Battle of Franklin is how close Hood actually came to breaking Schofield’s lines at the Carter House and driving the Union army into the swollen Harpeth River two miles in their rear.

Among Hood’s defenders is none other than his former West Point classmate and opponent at Franklin, General John S. Schofield. Writing in his memoirs “Forty-Six Years in the Army” Schofield could not have been more complimentary to his former enemy and nemesis:

General Schofield , commander US army at Battle of Franklin

“Hood must therefore attack on November 30, or lose the advantage of greatly superior numbers. It was impossible, after the pursuit from Spring Hill, in a short day to turn our position or make any other attack but a direct one in front. Besides, our position, with the river in our rear, gave him the chance of vastly greater results, if his assault were successful, than could be hoped for by any attack he could make after we had crossed the Harpeth. Still more, there was no unusual obstacle to a successful assault at Franklin. The defenses were of the slightest character, and it was not possible to make them formidable during the short time our troops were in position, after the previous exhausting operations of both day and night, which had rendered some rest on the 30th absolutely necessary.”

Schofield was not mincing any words here. Hood was justified, Hood had no other reasonable options, etc. Schofield’s clarity here as compared with his vagaries regarding the placement of Wagner’s division in the advanced position prior to the battle’s opening are more difficult to come to terms with. Schofield is a verbose writer. To say that his is a self-serving memoir may be too harsh, but not altogether inaccurate. Many of the post-war memoirs can be characterized thusly. It is a gentlemanly thing to compliment the beaten foe for his bravery and skill, it is quite another however to strongly censure subordinates without proof, as shall be seen later.

General George Wagner, commanding Union rear guard at Franklin

It is important to note that the works that Schofield describes as “slight” were considered extremely formidable by most every Confederate officer who did a reconnaissance on them including Forrest, Cheatham, and Cleburne. Some later said, on both sides, it was the best defensive position they had ever seen in the war. Moscow Carter, a paroled Confederate Colonel residing at the Carter House, described the works as “formidable”. According to Isaac Shannon, of the 9th Tennessee, General Cleburne observed the Union lines through a telescope and said aloud, “They have three lines of works, and they are all completed.” The consensus in both armies was that the positions at the Carter House line were formidable and complete, offering protection to the defenders and certain hazard to any force attacking them. Schofield in his memoirs does not share this view, having scant confidence in the works as they are, as he states, of the “slightest character”.

This negative opinion by the Union commander of his defenses at Franklin as stated in his memoirs is likely the same one he had on the day of the battle. A prudent general with his back to a river facing a determined foe would do exactly what Schofield then likely did - he tried to give himself and his men more time to improve the defensive line.

Is there some confusion here on Schofield’s part, a lapse of memory? No, this is unlikely. Schofield’s rear guard was commanded by George Wagner, a veteran of many battles, but not a West Pointer. Wagner’s division consisted of three brigades. Is it likely that Schofield ordered his rear guard under Wagner to give the army at the works more time? There is evidence that Schofield was panicked and had lost his composure at Franklin. There was a very real possibility that he could not hold the Carter line and Hood would have the town, and destroy his army.

General Schofield, absent from the front lines during the entire Battle of Franklin

But at the time Schofield was confident that Hood would make a flank attack and not risk a direct assault. This is why he felt the best place for him would be at Fort Granger, some two miles behind the Carter line. If Schofield was right, Wagner’s advanced position could be the forward line of a flank strike of his own against Hood as he wheeled his army to the right to cross the Harpeth below Franklin. And if he was wrong, and Hood wrecklessly charged straight down the Columbia pike to the “slight” works at the Carter house line, Wagner and his division would be there to blunt the charge and buy more time for the defenders on the main line. For the commander, this was a reasonable decision, but for Wagner and his men, it was a total disaster and almost led to the defeat of Schofield’s army at Franklin.

Everyone knew, on both sides, that Wagner’s forward position was untenable

The placement of Wagner’s division is the central mystery of the Battle of Franklin. It is agreed by participants and students of the battle that this was a blunder, and opprobrium and blame quickly fell on Wagner as the responsible party. But it is more likely that he was following direct orders from the army’s commander to take an advanced position and hold it, to provide more time for the construction of the main entrenchments that Schofield believed were “slight”. The historical record is muddled on this matter and likely for explainable reasons - careers and reputations were at stake.

With bands playing, one hundred and more flags fluttering and the setting sun highlighting bayonets and banners, the scene could not have been more thrilling, and awe inspiring. S. A. Cunningham, later the editor of Confederate Veteran magazine perhaps said it most succinctly when he said to a friend years later, as they walked together along the now disappeared line of Union works at the Carter House, “The whole scene was the most thrilling that I ever saw in war.”

General John Bell Hood, commander of Army of Tennessee at Franklin

“Franklin was the last opportunity he (Hood) could expect to have to reap the results hoped for in his aggressive movement. He must strike there, as best he could, or give up his cause as lost. I believe, therefore, that there can be no room for doubt that Hood’s assault was entirely justifiable. It may have been faulty in execution, in not having been sufficiently supported by a powerful reserve at the moment of first success.”
(Schofield, 46 Years in the Army, - p.184)

Most everyone involved in the events of that day who saw the Army of Tennessee form up at the foot of the Winstead Hills and march forward in battle array were more than impressed. The Confederate advance was like an irresistible wall, a moving storm. And directly in the path of this seeming unstoppable human wave arrayed for death, destruction and killing were 2/3 of General George D. Wagner’s division digging their trenches furiously, mindful of the sergeants with their bayonets keeping them in place. Some three thousand men were there some 500 yards in advance of the Union main line, swearing, yelling, screaming that a terrible mistake had been made, and that their lives would be thrown away for someone’s stupidity and incompetence.

Wagner’s advanced position is flanked on both sides, the position will be overrun creating the crisis that culminated around the Carter House

Just as Hood must take responsibility for the outcome of his battles so must Schofield as the commander of the Union army. Having gone to Fort Granger several hours prior to the opening assault, expecting a flanking attack across the Harpeth which would place the critical point of the battle in the front of that artillery emplacement high on Figuers Bluff which commanded the approaches to the town and the road to Nashville with its guns, Schofield was not in tactical command during the battle. James Cox was in command at the line. His own memoirs on the battle are also vague when responsibility for Wagner’s forward position and disposition of his division is discussed.

General Jacob Cox, 23rd Corps commander and in actual command on the field at Franklin in Schofield’s absence from the front

Cox does not say who issued the orders to Wagner, nor does Schofield. Resigning from the army due to the controversy of his actions at Franklin, before Thomas could cashier him, Wagner left no record as to whose orders in particular he was following, and the specifics of those orders. So, what have we left to make a determination? We have eyewitness accounts, and the vagaries of memoirists who, on other occasions, are extremely detailed in their recollections. When great errors are made, and disasters narrowly averted and lives stupidly wasted - as the men of Wagner’s division surely were - somebody must be made to pay and justice done, and the investigations of course, stopped.

Schofield explained the disposition of Wagner’s division thusly:

“while Wagner’s division, which had acted as rear-guard from Spring Hill, was ordered to remain far enough in front of the line to compel Hood to disclose his intention to attack in front or to turn the position, and was to retire and take its position in reserve at the proper time, if the enemy formed for attack.”
(Schofield, 46 years in the Army)

But Schofield does not say who issued the orders to Wagner, and what those orders specifically were.

Cox, in his memoirs, covers himself here:

“Meeting him (Wagner) in the road in front of the Carter house, he confirmed the information that the enemy was probably forming for an assault. I reminded him of his orders not to leave his brigades out too long, and warned him of the dangers that would come from a hurried retreat. I then rode off to the left.”
Cox, Battle of Franklin, Monograph, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1897

Again, Cox does not specify the original orders to Wagner. According to participants and survivors, Wagner’s forward line was in place for two hours with the men frantically digging in with spades they had stolen from a broken down wagon they had passed as they marched on the road to Franklin. Cox, according to his own statements, says that he was taking care of emplacements in front of the Carter House for a good part of that time. The sight line to Wagner’s forward line from the Carter House was unbroken at that time. If Wagner’s orders were to withdraw when the Confederates showed their hand, ie to attack in force, why didn’t General Cox send a courier to Wagner to have him withdraw to the works immediately? Cox, the general in command on the field as Schofield was almost three miles in the rear at Fort Granger, was responsible for ensuring obedience to Schofield’s orders. The fact that no courier was sent by Cox is instructive. Is it possible that Wagner was indeed obeying Schofield’s orders by holding the forward and terribly exposed position? In his monograph on the battle Cox quotes a letter from General Bradley, dated 11/13/1889, in which Bradley criticizes Wagner’s military judgment.

There has never been any doubt in my mind since then as to the responsibility for the exposed position of the two brigades of the Fourth Corps in front of the lines. It was one of the vagaries of Wagner’s mind that an assault in force should be resisted by the pickets in front of a fortified line, and I remember a difference I had with him at Columbia, where it was thought we might be attacked when I was in charge of the picket lines. I felt justified then in saying to him that if Hood’s army attacked, I should retire the pickets after giving information of the enemy’s movement.
General L.P. Bradley (letter of 11/13/1889) quoted in Cox, Monograph, 1897

Unfortunately, General Bradley by his own statement places himself in the town during the fighting - not on the battle line, so he may well have had no way of knowing at all who issued the order(s) to Wagner and of what the orders consisted. His statement that Wagner preferred to challenge advancing assaults with pickets is contrary to Civil War military doctrine and would not be countenanced for long by any officer commanding Wagner.

General Wagner would resign under threat of dismissal from General George Thomas in Nashville one week after the battle. He would die several years later.

The fact that Wagner was a division commander by his own efforts, ability and courage under fire tends to make one doubt the veracity of General Bradley’s criticism. But it does add to the muddle of the central issue of why Wagner was there with his division 500 yards in front of the main line at Franklin, and it adds to the criticism of character and performance of Wagner and casts a cloud of doubt upon him while diminishing any scrutiny of his superiors.

“I was not in the fight at Franklin, as you will remember, but was in the town when the battle was being fought.”
-Bradley (see above citation)

[Note: Bradley had been wounded at Spring Hill the previous day. Commander of one of Wagner’s three brigade’s he was in the town recuperating from his wounds while Colonel Conrad took temporary command of the brigade.)

Cox, building the case against Wagner, further quotes General David Stanley’s Official Report of 2/25/1865, another division commander at Franklin, “General Wagner was instructed to fall back before the advance of the enemy, observing them.”

Again, there is no mention of who gave Wagner his orders and the exact specifics in those orders.

General David Stanley, commander 4th corps at Franklin. Wounded during Opdyke’s counter-charge he would receive the Medal of Honor for his efforts at Franklin.

General Cox in his Official Report of the Franklin Battle stated of Wagner: “He informed me that … his orders then were to hold the enemy back until they developed a heavy force manifestly superior to his own, and then slowly retire within my lines.”
(OR, 1/v45/pt1, p.352)

It certainly does not appear from Cox that Wagner was repeating Cox’s own orders back to him, rather he was stating his orders as they came from Schofield, the only higher authority on the Union side at Franklin. As the army commander it is reasonable to assume that Schofield gave specific orders to Wagner who was acting as rear guard for the army, without specifically informing Cox or anybody else as to the specifics. This would not be unusual. However, if Schofield had ordered Wagner to hold his forward position as long as he could to give the army time to bolster a position in which Schofield had no confidence and described as “slight”, this would tend to put the entire matter in a more understandable light and explain the vagaries of every Union army writer on the matter. The disaster that befell Wagner’s men would have to be explained. If Schofield had given Wagner specific orders to hold… well, Schofield would be responsible for the clearly stupid mistake that almost cost the army its very survival.

Schofield made a point in his memoirs to use the Wagner situation at Franklin as a training point - the superiority of West Point trained officers to those without a military education in the classic sense. Wagner was not a West Point graduate. He had no formal military education. As an Indiana politician and agriculturist, Wagner was the classic “volunteer”. Again we need to review Schofield’s statement…

“…while Wagner’s division, which had acted as rear-guard from Spring Hill, was ordered to remain far enough in front of the line to compel Hood to disclose his intention to attack in front or to turn the position, and was to retire and take its position in reserve at the proper time, if the enemy formed for attack.”

Some have speculated that Schofield strongly believed that Hood would attempt a crossing of the Harpeth below the town (closest to the Confederate positions at Winstead) and attempt a flank attack towards the Franklin Pike to block the road, and Schofield’s retreat route, to Nashville. Some have suggested that Wagner’s advance line was a kind of reconnaissance in force, posted there to watch Hood and if the Confederates turned to the right or left to then attack the Confederates in flank. What indeed does Schofield mean when he states that Wagner’s division was to “retire and take it’s position in reserve at the proper time?

Schofield lavishly praises Wagner’s disobedient brigade commander Colonel Emerson Opdyke (later General) and for good reason. Opdyke’s charge likely saved the Union army at Franklin. Ironically, Opdyke’s brigade was in position only because Opdyke had directly disobeyed Wagner’s order to fall in with his men in the advanced (and soon to be overrun) line.

Colonel Emerson Opdyke (shown here as a general), commander of Wagner’s third brigade refuses orders to fall in and is thereby at the right place and time to save the battle for the Union

As he concludes his memoir’s discussion of Franklin and moves onto other aspects of his career in the army, Schofield acknowledges that some “idle” controversy was indulged in after the battle regarding the placement of Wagner’s division. But for Schofield, the matter was settled. Thomas had reviewed the case, doubtless interviewing all those officers concerned, and accepted Wagner’s resignation a week after Franklin. Wagner returned to Indiana and took up law. He would die several years later, some have said “heartbroken” by his broken reputation and lost career.

There is no record of Wagner’s having requested a renewed investigation, and source material on this case is not extensive. Schofield would go on to a brilliant career, retiring as General of the Army. Wagner would die early, at age 40 in 1869. Schofield says of the conclusion of the matter:

“The only proper way to settle such a question was by a court-martial. As the corps passed from my command the next morning, and had been under my orders only a few days, I have never made any effort to fix, even in my own mind, the responsibility for that blunder.”
Forty-Six Years in the Army, John M. Schofield, The Century Company, 1897

With a total lack of interest by Schofield, the resignation of Wagner, and the victory of Franklin itself as his firm foundation, Schofield would rise to the very top of the US Army itself. But many in the ranks would never forget Franklin, and Schofield’s role in it, and would see Wagner’s resignation (he resigned before Thomas could likely cashier him) in a more suspicious and unjust light.

More Controversy

Levi Scofield, no relation to the general in command wrote the following eyewitness account in his book The Retreat from Pulaski to Nashville:

“The writer was standing on the parapet of the 100th Ohio Regiment, urging the men to strengthen their works, and talking with General Wagner. The General was reclining on his elbow, with a staff or crutch in his hand: he had fallen with his horse and was lame. We remarked that the musketry firing was becoming more rapid, also from the two guns in front. By-and-by a staff officer rode fast from one of the brigades, and reported excitedly, ‘The enemy are forming in heavy columns. We can see them distinctly in the open timber and all along our front.’ Wagner said firmly ‘ Stand there and fight them,’ and then turning to me, said, ‘And that stubbed, curly-headed Dutchman,’ meaning one of his brigade commanders [General Conrad],’ will fight them too.’ ‘ But, General,’ the officer said,’ the orders are not to stand, except against cavalry and skirmishers; but to fall back behind the main line if a general engagement is threatened.’ In a short time another officer rode in from the right in great haste, and told him the Rebels were advancing in heavy force. He received the same order. The officer added,’ But Hood’s entire army is coming.’ Then Wagner struck the ground with his stick, and said ‘ Never mind: fight them!’ Soon we heard the Rebel yell and heavy firing.”
(as quoted in Bright Skies and Dark Shadows, Field, 1890)

According to Levi Scofield a staff officer reminded General Wagner of his orders, not to stand except against cavalry and skirmishers. Cox suggests that Wagner had been caught up in the excitement of the combat, and had lost his composure.

“…excited by the rapid approach of a crisis in the stirring events of the day, gave way to an impulse to fight the whole army of Hood upon the line of mere outposts. Such impulses, unfortunately, are not uncommon in officers who are brave enough, but who lack the power of calm self-control under fire.”
Jacob Cox, Battle of Franklin, Monograph, Charles Scribners’ Sons, 1897

Certainly this is excessive of General Cox. Wagner was no amateur though he was a volunteer and not a West Pointer. Having distinguished himself at previous battles he had been brevetted. Wagner was not known for “impulses”.

Cox continued that Thomas’ investigation proved that Wagner had been disobedient to his orders in instructing his brigades to stay and fight in the exposed forward line, 500 yards in front of the Carter House. According to Cox, Wagner’s orders to his subordinates were contrary to those given him by higher authority, apparently Schofield himself.

“General Thomas was forced to conclude that this loss of self-possession showed that he Wagner) was overweighted with the command of the division, especially as the brigade commanders had evidently lost confidence in his capacity.”
(Cox, see above)

But there is more, of course. Eisenschiml and Long in As Luck Would Have It (Bobbs-Merrill, 1948) report of the conversation between Opdyke commanding Wagner’s third division and the division commander.

As the final brigade of the Union rear guard Opdyke’s brigade was the last organized unit of Union soldiers to come down from the Winstead Hills into the valley of Franklin. Wagner’s first two divisions of Conrad and Lane had already deployed in the advanced and exposed line far in front of the main Carter House positions. Now it was Opdyke’s turn to fall in.

Opdyke, a vandyke bearded semi-balding highly capable Colonel of the 125th Ohio, now in brigade command had been over these fields before. The previous year Opdyke, like Forrest across the divide on the Winstead Hills, had fought in and around Franklin. He knew that Wagner’s exposed position was a suicidal one that could not be defended and would soon be overrun. This advanced line was nothing more than an impediment to the men in the main line from firing at the approaching Confederates. Essentially, Wagner’s position was in the way.

My Orders Are to Hold This Position

Flatly refusing Wagner’s command to man the position, Opdyke is now insubordinate and disobedient to a direct order, Long and Eisenschiml describe the exchange:

“You cannot mean that, General,” he (Opdyke) said.
“I do mean it,” Wagner shouted. “Please get into position.”
“Then I refuse to obey your order, sir,” Opdyke declared firmly.
The general’s face turned red. “You refuse to obey my order, Colonel?”
“I do. Your order, sir, is nothing short of suicidal….”
“You understand, Colonel, that I can have you court-martialed for this?”
“I do.”
The two men looked straight at each other.
“My orders are to hold this position,” General Wagner said after a few moments.

Opdyke did indeed disobey orders to man the forward position and instead marched his men behind the main Union line and rested them some 200 yards behind the Carter House and Cotton Gin. This was a momentous decision for the Union for when the Confederate breakthrough occured Opdyke’s men were roused from their rest by retreating men in blue and knew that things were going very wrong. Opdyke and his men spontaneously formed up, and charged - without orders to do so. But there were in the right place at the right time, and saved the day.

However for us, in this investigation, the critical question outstanding is who gave Wagner his orders to hold? The only likely answer is General Schofield.

Eisenschiml and Long believe that Wagner was “obeying an ambiguous order in the way that a brave man would interpret it. Poor fellow!”

In war mistakes are often made, and men die. That is the nature of war. Some are less forgiving than others, and less reluctant to take responsibility when the consequences of the taking can lead to unpleasant repurcusions.

As the Confederate wave broke over Wagner’s two advanced brigades, everyone in the Union lines knew that a terrible mistake had been made. Now, the men in the main line could not fire at the attacking Confederates without hitting their own men. And on they came til the advancing Confederates and retreating soldiers from Wagner’s forward line were mixed together so that in some sections of the main line, they came into the fortifications together.

This breakthrough was the moment of decision in the Battle of Franklin. Had Opdyke not disobeyed Wagner’s orders to man the foolishly exposed forward line his brigade would not have been in reserve to counter attack at exactly the right moment with a fury that would make Opdyke a hero and break the Confederate assault.

Where was Schofield?

While Hood was attacking from the front and so violently overturning Schofield’s closely held opinion that Hood would attempt a flank attack by crossing the river and trying another “run around” like the one at Columbia and Spring Hill, the Union commander was over a mile away from the front at the home of a Union sympathizer in the town. While at the Cliffe house in Franklin Schofield met with his corp commanders Stanley and Cox (Cox having tactical command of the army at the Carter House) with Wilson already in the saddle with his cavalry contingent, waiting for Forrest on the east bank of the Harpeth. During those meetings it would seem reasonable to assume that Cox informed Schofield of the massing of the Confederate army at the foot of the Winstead Hills, and the forward line held by Wagner’s understrength division. Yet no changes in the disposition of troops, specifically Wagner’s division, was ordered by Schofield.

When the sound of firing was heard, Schofield went across the river and made his headquarters at Fort Granger. This effectively took him entirely out of the battle so that all subsequent decisions on the Carter House line are made by Jacob Cox.

“When Stanley started for the front Schofield started for the rear, and the most charitable construction that can be placed upon his action, is that he interpreted the sound of the firing to mean that the expected flank movement had begun and that his duty called him across the river to provide against that flank movement.”
The Battle of Franklin By John K. Shellenberger, Capt, 64th Ohio, Paper read before the Minnesota Commandery of The Loyal Legion U.S., December 9, 1902.

Schofield’s personal absence from the field of battle is difficult enough to defend but his lack of composure can only be described as akin to panic.

“His disturbed mental condition at that time is disclosed by the fact that he abandoned in the room of Cliffe’s house where he had slept, his over-coat, gloves and a package containing the official dispatches he had received from General Thomas. These articles were not reclaimed until our army returned to Franklin after the victory at Nashville and in the meantime Mrs. Cliffe saved the coat from being taken by some needy rebel by wearing it herself and she also safely kept the gloves and dispatches.”
(Shellenberger, see above citation.)

But there was to be no general flanking attack by the Army of Tennessee against Schofield’s army that day at Franklin. They would assault right down the middle. Forrest had said to Hood before the assault, “Sir, Let me flank them out!” Whereupon Hood replied, “No, no, no! Charge them out!”

Nathan Bedford Forrest, commander of Confederate cavalry at Franklin suggests a flank assault but is refused

Shellenberger, a survivor of Wagner’s forward position certainly had good cause to be angry with the commanding general for the obvious mistake of posting Wagner in front of the main line. A captain of the 64th Ohio, he cites General Stanley as having vetted the accuracy of his observations (delivered as a lecture, then published as a monograph).

“His presence in the fort had no more to do with the repulse of Hood’s assault than if he had been the man in the moon looking down upon the battle field. The only order that he sent from the fort was the order to retreat after the army had won a great victory. ”
(Shellenberger, see above citation.)

Shellenberger is very clear, Schofield was not in the battle, was not in control, and was not issuing any commands during the battle relevant to the action at the main Union line around the Carter House. Most disturbingly Schofield was absent from the field during the two hour lead-up to the Confederate attack. Surely he was receiving reports of the activity in his front? It is known that Schofield grabbed an hour or so of sleep while at the Cliffe’s house in Franklin, perhaps he was exhausted from the previous day’s stress at Spring Hill, the flight to Franklin, the horrible shock of finding the expected pontoons missing, and the bridges across the Harpeth impassable without significant repairs-repairs that would take time which he did not have.

“What was Schofield doing those two hours? If he saw anything of Hood’s preparations he showed incompetence by his failure to promptly withdraw the two brigades from the blundering position to which he had assigned them. If he saw nothing of Hood’s preparations, it was only because of a criminal neglect of his duty at a time when the perilous position of his army, with a greatly superior rebel army in its front and a river at its back, demanded his utmost vigilance. It was said that General Stanley was sick but he spent the day with Schofield and he also, having had West Point experience of Hood’s character, concurred fully in Schofield’s belief that Hood would not assault (dan-down the center). So great was their delusion in this respect that it would not be shaken by the reports made by their subordinates, and nothing short of the loud road of the opening battle was able to arouse them into giving any personal attention to the situation. Then at last, when it was too late to do anything to remedy a blunder which already had gone so far that it must go on to its full culmination, Schofield and Stanley left the house of Dr. Cliffe.”
(Shellenberger, see above citation.)

Upon leaving the Cliffe house and riding quickly back to the main line, Stanley would find himself on horseback in the thick of Opdycke’s counter-charge. Wounded in the neck, he would recover to have a fine career in the military and would win the Medal of Honor for his efforts at Franklin. No disrepute would come to him from his performance at Franklin.

Later Stanley would besmirch Wagner by accusing him of drunkenness.

“Wagner was, to say the least, ‘full’ of whiskey, if not drunk… He was in a vainglorious condition, though it was not known at the time to General Schofield or myself.” (Eyewitnesses to the Battle of Franklin, Logsdon, Kettle Mills, 2000)

How then did he come to know this important fact later about his division commander of the forward line? He did not know it during the lead up to the battle? How can this be? Stanley was Wagner’s direct superior, how could he not know that his division commander was drunk while on duty commanding thousands of men about to go into combat? This makes little sense. Why has no other commentator said anything like this in the historical record - including Cox and Schofield. And so it begins to come into focus… Wagner is being “sacrificed” for the benefit of Schofield. This is an ugly business.

For Shellenberger, a survivor of the error that cost so many Union men their lives in the advanced line at Franklin wanted nothing less than Schofield’s court martial.

Schofield was still alive in 1902 when Shellenberger delivered his detailed account of Franklin to a likely astounded MOLLUS (Military Order of the Loyal Legion) audience in Minnesota. Schofield had only then recently retired as the commanding General of the US Army, following the footsteps of Sherman, and Grant in the same position having got the post after the death of Phil Sheridan. But injustice will have its due, in time, and 1902 was Shellenberger’s time. There is no mention in the histories of Schofield ever having been court-martialed for Franklin. But certainly Shellenberger and others put his later advancement in question on account of his mismanagement of the Battle of Franklin.

“schofield should be court-martialed…
Was it for the meritorious services he rendered by sitting idly in Cliff’s house and utterly ignoring the reports coming to him of Hood’s preparations for assault during the two hours that it
took Hood’s army to come up and get into position, and for the gallantry he displayed in crossing the river as soon as the fighting began, thereby abandoning to his subordinates
the conduct of the battle, that Schofleld claimed the promotion he got? If he had been accorded the reward which his conduct that day so justly merited it would have come in
the verdict of a court martial such as he declares in his book ought to have been given to Wagner, Lane and Conrad.”
(Shellenberger, see above citation.)

And What of Wagner?

We will likely never know the true contents of the orders that sent him 500 yards in front of the Union main entrenchments to have two of his brigades face the entire Confederate Army of Tennessee alone. It should be noted here that Wagner was not in the forward line himself but was at the nearby the Carter House with Cox much of the time. If Wagner was disobedient to the commanding general’s orders to withdraw why did Cox not order Wagner to withdraw? This is a mystery to which we will likely never know the answer, but we can speculate based upon the events of the battle and the comments from the participants.

Why would Schofield say that the entrenchments at Franklin were “slight” when all the Confederate senior officers recommended against a frontal assault against them because they were so formidable?

Was Wagner following specific orders to hold his advanced position because Schofield believed that no frontal assault was forthcoming or because he had such a lack of confidence in the Union works at Franklin that he was willing to sacrifice Wagner’s division to save the Army itself, to buy the army more time to dig in?

Why was no Union officer specific in their reports or later commentary as to who gave Wagner his orders and the specific contents of those orders?

Why was Wagner allowed to resign under threat of dismissal when others had ordered him to be where he was?

Why did Cox and Schofield besmirch Wagner’s character in their reports after Wagner had already since left the army?

Perhaps Shellenberger is correct, and perhaps so is W.W. Gist of the 26th Ohio, Lane’s Brigade, another survivor manning the forward line as the Confederate wave surges forward.

“Nearer and nearer the Confederates approached with the precision of dress parade, and our hearts beat rapidly. We wondered why we were not moved back to the works. It was plain that some one had blundered.”
(Eyewitnesses at the Battle of Franklin, Logsdon, Kettle Mills Press, 2000.)

When General Hood, commanding the Confederate Army was informed of the devastating losses of Cheatham’s Corp (50% losses) in the frontal assault on the Union lines his response is quoted by a Confederate artilleryman as, “o my god! this awful awful day!” Not only for the vanquished would Franklin be an awful awful day.

Epicenter of the Battle of Franklin, the Carter House. Moscow Carter would find 58 casualties in this yard early the next morning

This devastating battle still is the subject of controversy and the source of horrible conundrums. Never again would there be a grand charge on the north American continent such as the one first met by Wagner’s unfortunate brigades at Franklin. The fields of Franklin would bear the scars and the blood and wreckage of the battle for weeks and more, with the people of that lovely town struggling for generations to live in the shadow of the bloody carnage of the fight that dark night of November 30, 1864. We can only be awestruck still by the bravery of the men in blue and gray who fought and died in the thousands during those long long hours on those fields in the darkness.

Your email:  
Subscribe Unsubscribe  

“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

Your email:  
Subscribe Unsubscribe  

General Hood at Spring Hill and Franklin - The Peter Principle Embodied

Whereby the Disposition of Artillery and of Forrest’s Cavalry Illustrates Essential Flaws in the Commanding general’s abilities

by Daniel Mallock

“It is the blackest page in the history of the war of the Lost Cause. It was the bloodiest battle of modern times in any war. It was the finishing stroke to the independence of the Southern Confederacy. I was there. I saw it. My flesh trembles, and creeps, and crawls when I think of it today. My heart almost ceases to beat at the horrid recollection. Would to G-d that I had never witnessed such a scene! I cannot describe it. It beggars description. I will not attempt to describe it. I could not. The death-angel was there to gather its last harvest. It was the grand coronation of death.”
-Sam Watkins, Company Aytch

Following rapidly on the heals of the retreating Union Army from Spring Hill, TN in the early morning hours of November 30, 1864, Nathan Bedford Forrest’s cavalry engaged Union Maj. General Schofield’s rear guard at the top of Winstead Hill, two miles from the outskirts of Franklin. One of the greatest and savage battles of the entire Civil War would soon be fought, a stunning disaster to the Confederacy and a shocking horror to every soldier involved in it.

As Schofield’s men withdrew to their already prepared line of earthworks at the southern end of the little town of Franklin (population 2000), Forrest surveyed the Union lines. These were strong earthworks built the previous year currently being improved by union infantry as he watched. They were formidable, fully manned with infantry and artillery. Forrest knew of these entrenchments having fought in the area many times.

The way to Nashville was now effectively blocked by Schofield’s army of 25,000 busily improving the earthworks at Franklin, and digging in. But Hood’s goal was not now Franklin, nor Nashville, but Schofield’s army itself.

Angry and frustrated at the previous day’s confusion at Spring Hill where Schofield’s army escaped what Hood had thought would be his greatest triumph a solid trap (everyone thought, with a few exceptions) that should have had the Union army surrounded and destroyed. But through some still not fully agreed upon miscommunication and confusion among the commanding general and his top officers the Union army was allowed to march by the Confederate camps in the dark of night and make their escape. Many Confederates at their fires wondered why no order to attack the Union troops was given- they could hear them marching by just as the blue soldiers could see the gray camp fires and even hear their conversations. This “affair” at Spring Hill was a great victory for Schofield to have escaped Hood’s trap, and a disaster for Hood most importantly for what was soon to follow. Spring Hill would become known to historians as the greatest error and lost opportunity of the entire war.

Early the next morning as daylight broke the chill cold of late November in middle Tennessee, the entire Army of Tennessee knew that a terrible mistake had been made and a great opportunity lost. They marched quickly north, chasing Schofield hoping to right the awful wrong of Spring Hill - the prey so nicely trapped had flown.

Hood was apoplectic, screaming recriminations at Cheatham, Forrest, and Cleburne rather than accepting responsibility for the miscommunications as Hood’s former commander Robert E. Lee would most assuredly have done in similar circumstances. Great leaders do not spread blame in a crisis - they accept the truth of the error, take responsibility for those they command, and immediately work to ensure that no such mistake should ever occur in future. Hood did none of these things. Recent studies of Army of Tennessee management under Hood show that disorganization, bad planning, and poor or non-existent staff work were at the core of the army’s tribulations. These deep structural flaws would lead to a missed opportunity at Spring Hill, and horrible disasters to follow the next day in Franklin.

Lacking the character and top level leadership traits necessary for a great commander the hero of Chickamauga, Gettysburg, Antietam, and so many other fields had been elevated to command of the Army of Tennessee over others better qualified for the post in temperament, skill, and character (particularly Patrick Cleburne). Nobody could ever impugn Hood’s bravery or courage or skill as a fighter in a subordinate role. His fame prior to the fall of At