Please take a look at this month’s issue of North and South Magazine. My article on the Battle of Franklin appears there. I hope you like it. It’s a privilege and an honor to have my work appear in this excellent magazine. Please feel free to post here regarding the article. It is perfectly fitting that Nathan Bedford Forrest should appear on the cover.

Had Forrest’s advice to General Hood at Franklin to cross the Harpeth River and flank the Union army out of their entrenchments been heeded, the nightmare at Franklin might not have happened. It is one of the many controversies surrounding this brutal battle in which 5 hours of vicious fighting brought 7,000 casualties in some of the most brutal and savage fighting of the entire Civil War. Perhaps the most astounding aspect of the battle is just how close the Confederate Army of Tennessee came to success at Franklin. Lacking a common implement not much larger than a key at the critical moment may well have cost the Confederates the battle and the entire Nashville campaign.

Dan