v1.1.3 / chapter 81 of 93 / 01 sep 11 / greg goebel / public domain
* The reelection of Abraham Lincoln in November 1864 was another sign that the Confederacy's days were numbered. Nobody could have any doubt that the Union was going to fight the war to the finish. Still, the South struggled on stubbornly, if by increasingly desperate measures, including attempts at terrorism that luckily fizzled.
While Grant kept up the grinding pressure against Petersburg, Sherman marched through Georgia, encountering little opposition and spreading destruction, providing a vivid demonstration of the Confederacy's weakness. He paid little attention to Hood's march into Tennessee, where the Confederates fought a ruinous battle at Franklin that should have sent them back south again. Instead, Hood pressed on north to Nashville.
* With the string of Federal successes beginning in August, there was no doubt who would win the election of 1864. The citizenry went to the polls on 8 November, and Lincoln was reelected by 212 electoral votes to 21 for George McClellan. The popular vote was nowhere near as lopsided, but out of four million votes cast, Lincoln still had a majority of half a million. McClellan conceded defeat as graciously as he could.
The news of Lincoln's reelection swung the tide of opinion across the Atlantic decisively against the South. There had been a last push in Britain by Southern backers to obtain recognition; with Union victories and the popular endorsement by American voters of a war administration, the effort evaporated, never to return. PUNCH sourly commented on the matter with a cartoon showing a phoenix, a great bird with the head of Lincoln, rising from a bonfire fed by logs labeled UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION, FREE PRESS, HABEAS CORPUS, COMMERCE, CREDIT -- and with unintentional irony STATE'S RIGHTS, a slogan that had been taken so far into the extreme that many Northerners were perfectly happy to toss it into the flames. Even PUNCH could not deny, however, that the citizens of the North had emphatically declared their support for the war against the South, and that nobody could reasonably bet the Confederacy had any hope of survival.
There had been little doubt in the South as to the conclusion of the presidential election, but they too knew only too well it was still the sound of another nail being hammered into the Confederacy's coffin. Southerners were also not happy with the news a few weeks earlier, when on 13 October Maryland voters passed a referendum banning slavery in their state. Another domino in American slavery had fallen; all the other slave states still in the Union except Delaware and Kentucky would also liberate their slaves within months.
The day before Lincoln's reelection, 7 November, Davis addressed the Confederate Congress, calling for a last-ditch struggle and continuing the fight even if the Union overran all of the Confederacy. That meant guerrilla war; there were those in the South who recognized that it would be a gross mistake, with ambushes and terrorism reducing the noble Southern cause to no more than banditry, and provoking harsh reprisals from the Federals that would fall heavily on noncombatant civilians caught in the middle.
However, the Confederate government was already toying with the idea. In the spring -- partly in response to Ulric Dahlgren's raid into Virginia and the bloodthirsty document found on his corpse -- Richmond sent Colonel Jacob Thompson of Mississippi and Clement C. Clay JR of Alabama to Canada, where the two were to organize groups of Confederate agents to carry out acts of terror against the Union. The exercise was half-baked: Thompson was a man inclined to action without guidance by any deep store of judgement, and Clay was an ailing ex-Alabama senator who was neither particularly resourceful nor energetic.
Their primary objective was to organize a Copperhead uprising in Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio -- but they were wasting their time. The Copperheads might have hated the Lincoln Administration, but they were not prepared to take action. During the summer, one of Thompson's agents, Captain Thomas H. Hines, had set up shop with a group of his men in Chicago, where he spoke with Copperhead leaders about a scheme where the Copperheads would rise up and help free two prison camps containing 12,000 rebel captives to then raise hell in the Union rear. Hines couldn't get the Copperheads to commit to anything; he ultimately realized what a humbug the Copperhead movement actually was and gave up in disgust.
The Confederate agents did perform a few minor actions. A scheme to seize the gunboat USS MICHIGAN, the only Union warship on the Great Lakes, and use it to ransom Detroit, Cleveland, and Buffalo led to the seizure of a ferry, the PHILO PARSONS, in Lake Erie on 19 September. The idea was to let off the passengers and then sneak up on the warship, but the plan fell apart when the raiders approached the MICHIGAN and found it alert, with gun ports open and steam up. Although the Confederate officer in charge of the operation, Captain Charles Cole, wanted to go ahead, his men refused. When he dared them to put their refusal in writing, they did so with little hesitation. They beached the ferry, stripped it of valuables -- including a piano -- and fled.
The most prominent of their activities was a raid on Saint Albans, Vermont, on 18 October 1864, led by Lieutenant Bennett Young, a 21-year-old Kentuckian. The agents showed up in town in civilian clothes, checked into local hotels and boarding houses, changed into Confederate uniforms, then rounded up the citizenry with pistols and robbed the local banks, netting $200,000. Things turned violent, with the locals shooting at them from second-story windows, resulting in one dead Yankee and three wounded Confederates before the rebels retreated back into Canada. It was a sad day when the Confederate States Army was reduced to bank robbery. An attempt on 25 November to set firebombs in New York hotels and burn the city failed miserably, with one of the eight raiders involved captured and hanged.
One of the objectives of the raids, however, was to provoke tension between the US and Britain, and in that they succeeded to a degree. The governor-general of Canada, Lord Monck, took a very dim view of Confederates violating Canadian neutrality and was strongly pro-Northern anyway, so he did all he could to halt Confederate activities. Monck was particularly terrified after the Saint Albans raid, since he feared a Union incursion in "hot pursuit" across the border, which could have led to war. Canadian authorities were quick to arrest all the raiders involved they could get their hands on. The case for extradition of the raiders bogged down in court, but Canadian authorities were able to return at least part of the stolen money to the banks.
The raids strained ties to the utmost, with the US Congress repealing several Canadian-US treaties -- most significantly the Rush-Bagot Treaty, which had been established after the War of 1812 to demilitarize the Great Lakes. British officials increased efforts to improve the defense of Canada. However, that was effectively as far as it went. To an extent, the raids backfired; senior British government officials, reflecting on Southern violations of Canadian neutrality, were now increasingly looking forward to the extinction of the Confederacy. The South had become more of a nuisance to Britain than the North -- which was something of an accomplishment.
However, that was the only real Confederate accomplishment in the matter. Although Confederate agents in Canada succeeded in making a dangerous nuisance of themselves to both the Union and to Britain, they never amounted to any more than that, with plans for major operations coming to nothing and Union counterspies generally a step ahead of them. Such acts of terrorism did nothing but underline the desperation of the Confederate cause, though they must have given thoughtful Northerners in positions of authority some fears for what might happen in the future.
* While Northerners went to the polls, Federal military pressure on the Confederacy grew. Lee had been able to hold the line at Petersburg, blocking the Federal moves at Ream's Station, Hatcher's Run, Globe Tavern, and Fort Harrison, but with each move Lee's men found themselves stretched ever thinner to block the widening reach of the Yankees around Confederate lines.
Lee called for taking the teamsters, cooks, and mechanics in the army into the front lines and replacing them with slaves. There were calls to sweep the South and get all the deserters, the shirkers, and rear-duty soldiers into the front lines, but many of these people had no more faith in the struggle, and simply because matters were desperate didn't mean that stiff-necked States Righters' like Governor Joseph Brown of Georgia felt cooperative about helping Richmond find more warm bodies to continue the war.
Brown and his kind did have a point. There were certainly not enough men in the front ranks to carry on the battle, but there were also not enough men in the rear to support the troops by keeping food and supplies flowing to the battle lines. Many of the people in the front ranks were becoming discouraged, not just because of their poor prospects but because of the lack of food and supplies. There was little to eat, no shoes or blankets, the Confederacy was so short on metals that details were organized to collect shell fragments and sift lead out of the fronts of entrenchments -- but the rebels were still full of fight.
Although Grant didn't launch any major attacks on the rebel lines in front of Petersburg and Richmond all through November, he continued to extend his entrenchments, forcing Lee to build works in response and stretching rebel manpower accordingly. The lines extended for a distance of about 35 miles (56 kilometers), from White Oak Swamp, where McClellan's Peninsula campaign had come unraveled; down to the Confederate batteries lining the James to block the river against Union gunboats; then snaking across Bermuda Hundred; and finally weaving around in front of Petersburg to end near the Jerusalem Plank Road, south of the city.
The rebel lines were originally terminated by a large defensive work named "Fort Mahone", which faced its opposite number on the Union lines, "Fort Sedgwick". The two forts hammered at each other continuously, tossing mortar shells so often that wandering around exposed inside their walls was suicidal. The mutual harassment seems a little cartoonish in hindsight, but the people who had to suffer with it found the humor faint. Both sides quickly named Fort Mahone "Fort Damnation" and Fort Sedgwick "Fort Hell".
The Federals had been steadily extending their lines southward from Fort Sedgwick, forcing Lee to counter, spreading his manpower ever thinner. The suspension of serious Union attempts to push around his flanks was welcome, but they would resume once Grant managed to get his army refitted and drilled back into fighting shape.
Winfield Scott Hancock's II Corps had done very poorly in their assaults on Petersburg up to that time, and Hancock himself was demoralized. He finally left on 26 November, replaced by Major General Andrew A. Humphreys, who had been Meade's chief of staff. Humphreys was a hard fighter and a tough disciplinarian, mild-mannered until somebody dropped the ball -- and then he would turn into a fire-breathing dragon. Humphreys focused on rebuilding and drilling II Corps back up to combat effectiveness, though it was obviously going to be a difficult job. Hancock was to report to the War Department to help raise a new I Corps of reenlisting veterans, but in reality he was worn down, not just by his nagging wound but by the humiliation of his beloved II Corps in battle. Hancock would not return to front-line service for the rest of the war.
If the blue-clad soldiers in the trenches weren't always quite what they had been a few years earlier, the Union logistical machine was as or more powerful as it ever had been. The base at City Point was lined with wharves accommodating endless rows of steamers and barges. The base included a huge hospital with beds for 10,000, plus storage warehouses, barracks, blacksmith shops, bakeries, and long rows of sutler's shops. There was also an extensive rail system that linked City point to the Federal siege works around Petersburg, allowing straightforward resupply and quick transfer of troops from point to point on the line. The railroad had been laid down in a hurry without much earth-moving and so it snaked up and down over hills and hollows, with the motion of a train described by witnesses as like a fly crawling over a washboard. On upgrades, troops were often told to get out and push.
An Episcopal bishop from Atlanta passed through City Point on a safe-conduct pass from General Sherman and was astounded at wealth of the base, "not merely profusion, but extravagance; wagons, tents, artillery, ad libitum. Soldiers provided with everything." The bishop contrasted this with the poverty of Confederate soldiers, a comparison that once again brought up Sherman's warning on the eve of war that the South was picking a fight against a vastly greater economic power. The bishop found that the Federals all seemed to be infused with a sense of the manifest destiny of the Union, that it would become a great power, "to overshadow all the nations", and accordingly they despised the Confederacy as a heresy, "outside the pale of humanity", that should be utterly destroyed.
When the time came to vote, nearly all the soldiers voted for Lincoln. Most still revered McClellan, but it was an affection that did not override the awareness that it was Lincoln who really wanted to fight and win the war. The veterans agreed that the army had been shinier, nobler, more spirited under McClellan than under Grant. They also agreed that if Grant had been running the Peninsula campaign, Richmond would have fallen in 1862 and the rebellion would have long been over.
Squabbling still went on across the lines, with tons of shells fired each day. The bitterness of the fighting had declined somewhat, with soldiers across the trenches coming to agreements not to take pot-shots at each other, and even fraternizing to an extent. This was helped by the fact that Hinck's black division had been sent to the Army of the James, and the rebels were no longer shooting to kill every time a Yankee stuck his head up. One Federal wrote that it was "a great relief to stand up without the certainty of being shot." The Federal Irish Brigade even found itself in the trenches across from Confederate General William Mahone's heavily-Irish division, and the two sides had a fine time, even sometimes sharing a little whiskey. The Federals were quick to note that when it came time to shoot it out, however, the rebels still fought like "bull-dogs".
* In the meantime, to the west in the Shenandoah Valley, Sheridan's men were completing their work of destruction. Their only real opposition was from the elusive John Mosby and his Rangers, who had by no means been intimidated by the execution of six of their number by Custer's troopers in September, followed by the hanging of a seventh in October.
Mosby planned a reprisal. He captured hundreds of unwary Federals and forwarded most of them on to Richmond for imprisonment. He held on to any of Custer's men he captured, keeping them locked up in an old schoolhouse. By early November, Mosby had 27 of Custer's troopers in his custody. He then told them that seven of them would be executed in retaliation for the execution of his own men, and had them draw lots to determine who the unlucky ones were. They were taken in the night to a place near Custer's headquarters in Winchester so that the bodies would be found in the morning. Two of the Yankees managed to escape in the dark, while three were hanged and two were shot.
Mosby was not unhappy that two of the prisoners had escaped, since he knew they would spread the word of their terrifying experience. Mosby sent a messenger to Sheridan to spell out the lesson in specific terms, with the message concluding: "Hereafter, any prisoner falling into my hands will be treated with the kindness due their condition, unless some new act of barbarity shall compel me reluctantly to adopt a line of policy repugnant to humanity. Very respectfully, your obedient servant, John S. Mosby."
Had Sheridan been a little less headstrong, he might have foreseen that such a response to his order to hang Mosby's men was obvious and inevitable. Now that Sheridan had been enlightened the hard way, he sent out an order that Mosby's men would be treated as normal prisoners-of-war.
* Sherman's plan to march across Georgia made good sense if it was examined in detail, but it still sounded risky and some in the Lincoln Administration were worried about it. Grant was behind it, however, and told a skeptical War Secretary Stanton: "Such an army as Sherman has, and with such a commander, is hard to corner or capture."
Grant himself had misgivings when he heard in late October that Hood's army was moving west just south of the Tennessee border, obviously looking for an entrance into the state, but Sherman was taking appropriate measures to deal with Hood. Sherman first sent Major General David S. Stanley to Tennessee with his corps, which Stanley had inherited when Oliver Howard moved up. A little later, Sherman ordered Schofield north with his Army of the Ohio, now down to a single corps, and told A.J. Smith to leave Missouri and join Thomas as well.
In fact, if Hood had a window of opportunity for his invasion of Tennessee, it was sliding shut rapidly. He spent over a week trying to cross the Tennessee River, being forced to march around Federal garrisons in northern Alabama that he could not take the time to fight, and was also confronted with muddy roads and a swollen river. He ended up in Tuscumbia, Alabama, on 31 October, where there was a damaged railroad trestle that could be used for a crossing. Hood then decided to spend a few days in Tuscumbia to rest and refit, since he was short on food, shoes, and horses. However necessary the delays may have been, Beauregard was appalled. He had every reason to be, since Thomas was accumulating a force that outnumbered Hood's by two-to-one, was much better equipped, and could rely on well-developed defenses.
Grant was still nervous, and in fact his staff noticed unusual signs of
stress in their normally unemotional commander. The frustration of the
grinding siege warfare in front of Petersburg was beginning to get to him.
Grant also didn't have complete confidence in Pap Thomas, particularly since
Thomas was in command of an army scraped together in a hurry from available
forces. A rebel army on the rampage in Kentucky, or worse Ohio, could throw
mass confusion into Union war plans in both East and West. Lincoln was
nervous about the matter as well, and was pressing Grant about it. On 1
November, Grant sent a message to Sherman to suggest that Hood be crushed
before beginning the march to the sea. Sherman protested loudly, saying that
Thomas had plenty of resources to deal with Hood, and that the march east
would be far more profitable than chasing around after Hood. Grant swallowed
his misgivings and wired his approval on 2 November:
I SAY, THEN, GO AS YOU PROPOSE.
Supply ships would be sent to the Federal enclave at Hilton Head, South
Carolina, to replenish Sherman when he captured Savannah.
Sherman needed no more encouragement. Supply trains began to remove unneeded stores north on the Western & Atlantic, as well as any soldiers that the surgeons judged incapable of a long march. Once everything was cleaned out, the rails were torn up and the railroad trestles burned. The railroad was of no further use to Sherman and he wanted to make sure it was of no use to the Confederacy.
Sherman had over 62,000 men for the march, consisting of the four corps remaining after sending reinforcements to Thomas, with two of the corps under Howard and two under Slocum, along with a single cavalry division under Judson Kilpatrick. The rest of the cavalry had gone north to Nashville, where they were reorganized under James Wilson, who Grant had sent West after the poor showing of Sherman's cavalry during the Atlanta campaign. Sherman would have preferred Wilson over Kilpatrick on the march, but he was willing to make do with "Kill Cavalry": "I know that Kilpatrick is a hell of a damned fool, but I want just that sort of man to command my cavalry on this expedition."
The soldiers rested and refitted, preparing for the march and taking time to vote. Sherman liked the idea of beginning the excursion after Lincoln's reelection, since that in itself would be a great discouragement to the Confederates, making it a perfect opportunity to kick them when they were down. On 15 November 1864, Sherman's army began to file out of Atlanta, and was gone the next day. The Yankees methodically torched and wrecked everything of value to the Confederacy, and -- there being those in the ranks who were entertained by destruction for its own sake -- much else besides. A third of the city was burned down, though most of the residences were spared. Sherman's soldiers marched off singing "John Brown's Body". One called to the general: "Uncle Billy, I guess Grant is waiting for us at Richmond!" Sherman grinned and rode ahead.
His grand army was split into two columns, consisting of the Army of the Tennessee under Howard on the south flank and the "Army of Georgia", previously a chunk of Thomas's Army of the Cumberland, under Slocum on the north. This split was done to reduce traffic congestion, confuse the Confederates, and in particular widen the path of destruction. The army had to march fast, covering 275 miles (445 kilometers) to reach the sea around Christmastime.
Each soldier had 40 rounds of ammunition, and the wagon trains carried another 200 per soldier. Four pontoon bridges also accompanied the army. Rations were meager and so the soldiers had been given orders to "forage liberally" -- though in principle only authorized details were to enter dwellings and the properties of Southern citizens were otherwise to be respected. However, if the Federals encountered any resistance from civilians, such as felling trees to block roads or torching bridges, then commanders were to "order and enforce a devastation more or less relentless" in proportion to the hostile actions. Furthermore, Sherman added: "If the enemy burns forage and corn in our route, houses, barns, and cotton gins must also be burned to keep them company."
It is hard to believe that an army of over 60,000 men engaged in widespread looting and vandalism would be hard to track, but Sherman set out with Howard marching on Macon and Slocum moving toward Augusta, only to have them veer back together, leaving the rebels confused. The Confederate government sent Beauregard, Richard Taylor, and Hardee to Macon to see what they could do to stop the infestation of Yankees moving across Georgia in a swath 40 miles (64 kilometers) wide, but nobody was even sure where the Yankees were going, and there were no resources to stop them anyway.
Sherman's men had a wild party. Soldiers robbed houses of their valuables and trashed whatever they pleased. This excess was against orders, but enforcement was weak at best. There was no one to resist them except the wives and daughters of Southern men off in the ranks, and it wasn't safe to defy the Federals. The locals did have an occasional jab at the intruders. One group of Yankees who dug up a box opened it and found it contained a ripe dead dog. A woman told them: "It looks like poor Curly will get no peace. That's the fourth time he's been dug up today."
The white women regarded the intruders with justified hatred, though black slave girls would sneak into Union camps at night and show their appreciation. One Federal wrote: "Destroyed all we could not eat, stole their niggers, burned their cotton and gins, spilled their sorghum, burned and twisted their R.Roads and raised Hell generally." Confederate deserters and other vagabonds joined in with the fun.
The path left behind Sherman's army stank from the rotting corpses of livestock littering the remains of smoldering ruins. Sherman gave a vague estimate of having done a hundred million dollars worth of damage, with his troops taking a fifth of what they found for their own use and simply destroying the rest. A few careless Federals who fell into the hands of Confederates were found later with their throats cut, or hanged and tagged with a message: DEATH TO ALL FORAGERS. Such acts predictably increased the harshness of the Yankees.
* The only fighting worth any comment during the campaign took place on 22 November, near Griswoldville, north of Macon. A Georgia militia unit decided to take on one of Howard's brigades, which had been posted on a hill to protect the flanks of the main Federal column. Although the Georgians outnumbered the Federals two to one, the Confederates were very inexperienced. The militia charged the Federals and kept on coming as volleys cut them down. The Yankees were running uncomfortably low on ammunition when the attackers finally decided they'd had enough; the Confederates finally gave up and left the field of battle.
The Yankees did not pursue. The Union men were pleased with this exercise until they got a better look at the dead and wounded littering the hillside. They were all old men and young boys. One Illinois private wrote: "I hope we never have to shoot at such men again. They knew nothing at all about fighting and I think their officers knew as little." The rebels had lost about 600 men, the Federals a tenth that many.
The Georgia militia soon avenged their defeat. They were sent to Savannah, since Union Major General John G. Foster, in command of the Department of the South, was threatening the Charleston & Savannah Railroad, which could be used to send reinforcements to help resist Sherman or allow the rebels to flee and fight another day. On 30 November, 1,400 Georgia militia blocked an advance by 5,500 of Foster's troops against Grahamville Station, South Carolina. The rebels were set up on a good defensive position at nearby Honey Hill, and drove off the Yankees with stinging losses of 755 men, losing well under a tenth that many themselves. Apparently the militia had learned the ugly lesson taught them at Griswoldville about headlong assaults against strong positions and taken it to heart.
* Slocum's column entered Milledgeville, the state capitol, on the afternoon of 22 November, the same day as the fight at Griswoldville. A Yankee soldier commented: "The Legislature was in session the day before, but they adjourned with great rapidity to meet again when convenient." Sherman spent the night in the governor's mansion, just as hastily abandoned by Joe Brown in the path of the invaders. Sherman was amused to find Confederate newspapers there that announced that he and his army were "doomed". Union soldiers took over the Georgia hall of representatives, where they conducted a mock session to repeal the ordnance of secession and clown around generally, breaking up in a wild fire drill when one of them shouted: "THE YANKEES ARE COMING!"
The Federals didn't linger, leaving Milledgeville on 24 November. The citizens were relieved to see them go, but by the standards of Sherman's army they had been on their good behavior. The vandalism was casual and minor, even though they could have turned the place to rubble and ashes without much bother -- after all, they'd had plenty of practice.
Sherman was enraged when he found out that a rebel shell planted as a torpedo in a road had blown off the foot of a Yankee lieutenant, and ordered that Confederate prisoners be sent up the road under guard to find and dig out any more booby traps planted there. The prisoners protested loudly, but it did them no good, and Sherman was amused by watching the nervous prisoners probing around for deathtraps. The prisoners didn't trip off any more torpedoes, and nobody ran into booby traps for the rest of the march -- or for that matter any resistance, other than occasional and ineffectual probes by Wheeler's horsemen. Sherman crowed: "Pierce the shell of the Confederacy and it's all hollow inside!"
Judson Kilpatrick and his cavalry did get into a running tangle with Wheeler's troopers near Augusta, off the line of march, beginning on 26 November. Wheeler's men pushed Kilpatrick and his horsemen very hard, nearly capturing Kilpatrick twice. He finally called for help; two brigades of Federal infantry came up on the morning of 29 November and sent Wheeler's troopers packing.
From the point of view of President Lincoln, General Grant, and everybody else in the North, Sherman's grand army had disappeared. There had been no real communications since Sherman's departure from Atlanta, and the only knowledge of his movements and activities came from Confederate newspapers and rumors floating up from the South, hardly the most reliable sources of intelligence. Lincoln spun one of his homely stories to explain the situation: "Sherman's army is now somewhat in the condition of a ground-mole when he disappears under a lawn. You can here and there trace out his track, but you are not quite certain where he will come out until you see his head."
* Hood had believed that Sherman would either have to come after him or leave him with a free hand in middle Tennessee, but Hood was wrong both ways. Sherman had "hoodwinked" him, simply marching away to spread devastation in contemptuous indifference to Hood, who encountered no shortage of Union troops in middle Tennessee. Hood had taken himself off the game board as far as Sherman was concerned.
Hood's only chance in middle Tennessee was to move quickly, but the delays continued, driving Beauregard frantic. Forrest and his 6,000 troopers didn't link up with Hood near Tuscumbia until 14 November, and then winter storms rolled in for several days, making movement impossible. Hood didn't finally get on the road until 20 November. He had about 32,000 infantry and 108 guns, split into three columns, one under Stewart, the second under Cheatham, and the third under Stephen Lee. The major Federal forces in the area consisted of about 30,000 men under Schofield at Pulaski, just north of the Alabama border, and about the same number under Thomas at Nashville.
Hood's plan was to push his three columns north to Columbia, on the Duck River about midway between Pulaski and Nashville. This would place his own force in a strategic position where he could essentially cut off the two Federal forces from each other and deal with them individually. The rebels moved surprisingly quickly, despite the fact that the weather was miserable, cold, and damp, the terrain varying between frozen and muddy. Forrest's troopers easily drove off Yankee cavalry, most of whom were from a division under Brigadier General Edward Hatch, and it wasn't until the night of 22 November that Schofield found out that a big rebel force was moving to cut him off.
Schofield withdrew from Pulaski the next morning, 23 November, and marched his men quickly and efficiently, with Forrest's cavalry snapping at the rear of the column. Schofield's lead division was in Columbia the next day, 24 November, just in time to prevent Forrest's men from seizing the crossings over the Duck. By the time Hood arrived on 26 November, Schofield was heavily dug in south of the river and well prepared for an attack. The rebels didn't attack, and Schofield didn't stay. On the morning of 28 November, Hood found out that Schofield had withdrawn to the north bank of the river and burned the two bridges there behind him. Schofield was joined there by 4,000 cavalry under James Wilson.
Hood was actually very pleased at the withdrawal, seeing it as an opportunity to bag Schofield and his command with an encirclement maneuver. Forrest would go 10 miles (16 kilometers) west upriver to cross at Huey's Ford and drive off Wilson's cavalry; then Cheatham and Stewart would go three miles (five kilometers) upriver with their corps to cross at Davis Ford. Stephen Lee would remain behind with his corps, less a division detached to Stewart, and use the bulk of the artillery to demonstrate against Schofield, keeping the Yankees in place.
Cheatham and Stewart were to take up a position at Spring Hill, about twelve miles (20 kilometers) north of Columbia and about midway from Columbia to Franklin, which controlled a strategic crossing on the Harpeth River and was only 20 miles (32 kilometers) from Nashville. Once this was done, Hood would be able to either turn on Schofield or preferably move on Thomas in Nashville, with Schofield helpless to provide assistance.
* The plan went into motion before dark the next morning, 29 November, with Hood accompanying Cheatham to make sure that there were none of the mixups that had plagued Hood's sorties out of Atlanta. Neither crossing encountered resistance. At midday, Forrest's three cavalry divisions ran into two of Wilson's at Hurt's Corner, about four miles (6.4 kilometers) north of the river, and the rebels drove off the Yankee troopers in short order. Forrest detached a brigade to keep up the "skeer" on the Federal horsemen, and led the rest of his force towards Spring Hill to establish a foothold there, to be presently bolstered by two Confederate corps. That was the plan at least, and as far as Hood could see, that plan was going perfectly.
It wasn't until after 3:00 PM, when the rebel infantry column was nearing Spring Hill, that Hood discovered things weren't working quite the way he had expected. Forrest was not in possession of Spring Hill, having been blocked by Brigadier General George Wagner's Federal division, with the fighting overseen by Wagner's corps commander, Major General David Stanley. The Yankees were putting up a very stubborn fight.
James Wilson had trained his cavalry to provide useful and timely intelligence. Wilson had noticed Forrest's troopers scouting out the upriver crossings the night before and had tipped off Schofield. Schofield had been mesmerized by the rebel bombardment and hadn't thought of moving, but on receiving Wilson's intelligence, he wired Thomas in Nashville. Thomas promptly ordered him to withdraw to Franklin.
The reason the rebel crossings of the Duck had not been opposed was because Schofield was busy pulling out at the time. He had ordered Stanley to march north on the turnpike with two divisions as an advance guard for the withdrawal. One division was to be posted at Rutherford Creek, a few miles to the north, to secure that crossing, and the second to go farther north and hold down Spring Hill.
Stanley was approaching Spring Hill just after 2:00 PM when he learned that rebel cavalry was moving there in force. He double-timed Wagner's division up the road and had them in position, just in time to meet an attack by Forrest. Forrest's troopers were not parade-ground cavalrymen and pressed their assault heavily, only to be badly chewed up and driven off. Stanley was a tough fighter, with experience fighting Indians out West before the war. He had about 5,000 men and 34 guns; after driving off Forrest, his soldiers hastily formed a defensive line to receive a bigger attack. One of Cheatham's divisions, in the lead of the Confederate advance, hit Stanley about 4:00 PM. The rebels drove the defenders back on their artillery, which shattered the assault with shell and canister. The rebels had no guns of their own to conduct counterbattery fire.
The sun was going down when Stanley recognized that the battle flags of the Confederates were those of Pat Cleburne's division. He knew perfectly well that Cleburne wouldn't give up so easily, and told his troops to brace for another assault. However, despite the fact that two more rebel divisions came up, there was no second attack. For whatever reason, the Confederates went into camp for the night.
The two sides were so close together that a number of Federals walked up to rebel campfires to light their pipes and were captured. Two Confederates were eating around a fire when a soldier walked out of the darkness and asked: "What troops are you?" One rebel said: "Cleburne's division." The soldier immediately returned to the night from which he had come. One of the rebels asked the other: "Say, wasn't that a Yank? Let's go get 'im." The other replied: "Ah, let him go. If you're looking for Yankees, go down the pike and get all you want."
* In fact, the Yankees weren't there for long. Schofield was able to complete his withdrawal north to Franklin unmolested during the night, except for a momentary clash with one of Forrest's cavalry divisions. Stanley brought up the rear from Spring Hill with his division before dawn. When the sun came up on the morning of 30 November, the Federals had got clean away.
Hood was furious, "wrathy as a rattlesnake" as one observer put it, by the failure to conduct a second assault, and there was a noisy circle of recriminations among the Confederate generals. Nobody's ever quite straightened out what had happened ever since, but in general it seems that the confusion of war had got the better of the rebel Army of the Tennessee. Hood was even angry with his troops, who he astonishingly continued to believe were timid. Hood ordered an immediate and aggressive pursuit in hopes of catching up to Schofield and crushing him and his command before they could reach Franklin and cross the Harpeth River. The wintry weather had dissolved into sunshine, and Hood's troops were feeling energetic and enthusiastic, hoping to make up for the muddle at Spring Hill.
The rebels came up on Franklin in mid-afternoon, and it appeared at first sight that Schofield had been trapped. There were two bridges over the Harpeth at Franklin, a plank bridge and a railroad bridge. The railroad bridge was standing but moving horses, wagons, and artillery across it would be difficult at best, and the plank bridge had been washed out by flood waters. Schofield had wired Thomas to send pontoon bridges, but there was a mixup and they didn't arrive. Schofield ordered his troops to dig in while his engineers repaired the bridge.
Attacking an enemy force with its back to a river and no way to retreat almost seemed too good an opportunity for Hood to pass up. Hood had another advantage, but didn't realize it: Schofield was almost completely unstrung, in worse emotional shape than anyone around him had ever seen, and would almost certainly cave in under pressure. However, Schofield was still functional enough to take precautions, and almost by luck the Yankees were in a position of extreme natural strength. The approaches to the river were entirely exposed, the Federals had dug in on higher ground, and they knew how to build very good defenses. The Yankees had been digging in for the better part of a full day, plenty of time to create a solid deathtrap, and they had artillery support from a strongpoint on the north bank of the river that had been built a year before to protect the crossings. By that time, the repairs to the plank bridge had been completed, Schofield's wagon train was rolling across the river, and the troops were to follow that evening.
The Yankees were not trapped and they were far from defenseless. Anyone with military sense who took a good second look at the Federal lines in front of Franklin knew it was suicide to rush them, all the more so because Schofield outnumbered Hood by a fair margin. Schofield didn't think Hood would try it. Had Sherman been there, he would have almost certainly suggested otherwise, having thought such things himself only to have Hood prove him wrong repeatedly.
Hood was determined to try it. Such an assault would assure him that his men still had the willingness to attack. He directed his generals to send the army forward immediately, while there was still light. There was a shocked silence. The Yankees were well dug in, and Stephen Lee wasn't up with his corps yet, meaning Hood had almost no artillery to support the attack. Cheatham finally spoke up: "I do not like the looks of this fight. The enemy has an excellent position, and is well fortified." Hood replied that he preferred to deal with the Federals at Franklin rather than have to deal with them in their works at Nashville.
There was a certain logic to this, since the defenses of Nashville had been built up over a long time, and to suggest that the current situation was impossible was to imply that the entire campaign was impossible as well. Cheatham went silent, but then Forrest spoke up, suggesting a flanking attack. Hood dismissed the idea, saying the Federals wouldn't stand up to a determined assault, and concluding: "We will make the fight." His final order was simple: "Drive the enemy from his position into the river at all hazards." That was about the sum of the thought that Hood put into the plan, and his direction of the fight would show the same level of attention.
Forrest was permitted to moved southeast down the river and make a crossing in order to flank Schofield. The rest of the army was committed to a simple frontal assault. The rebels went forward at 3:45 PM, six divisions strong, with a seventh division in reserve. George Wagner had posted two of his three brigades in advance of Federal lines, and refused to pull them back even though his troops cursed him loudly. They were immediately overrun, with many taken prisoner; those that fled back to their own lines kept the defenders from firing lest they shoot their own men. Wagner would resign his command within a week over the fiasco.
The Confederates, encouraged, continued their rush, with Cleburne's division and another division penetrating Schofield's lines. The rebels that had got inside the lines were then hit with a fierce counterattack by Wagner's third brigade, posted as a reserve, under the command of a tough veteran named Colonel Emerson Opdycke. There was a nasty, stubborn, close-quarters fight, with soldiers using bayonets, entrenching tools, and clubbed rifles when all else failed. One Confederate colonel got up on the breastworks and ordered the Yankees to surrender. A Union private simply shoved his rifle up against the rebel's belly, said: "I guess not!" -- and in emphasis blew a hole through the colonel that witnesses said let daylight through. The rebels were finally pushed back outside of the Federal lines. The Confederates remained there, trading shots with the Yankees at point-blank range.
None of the other four divisions achieved a penetration, and they were badly chewed up by Federal repeater rifles and well-sited Federal artillery firing canister. Hood committed his reserve division, only to have it cut up as well. If Hood wanted to prove that his men could stand a real battle, he was getting all the proof he could want and then some, since the vicious fight outside the Federal defenses continued well into the night. Many Confederates thought that if they kept up the pressure, the Yankees would just have to break. One Arkansas private said: "We had never seen the Federals fail to run under like circumstances." The problem with that idea was that the Yankees had the Harpeth river to their backs, meaning there was no way for a soldier to safely cut and run, and the only result of rebel stubbornness was to increase their body count. Opdycke would report later: "I never saw the dead near so thick. I saw them upon each other, dead and ghastly in the powder-dimmed twilight."
The fight finally began to sputter out about 9:00 PM. Rebels outside of the Yankee earthworks finally decided they'd had more than they could take and cried out: "Don't shoot, Yanks! For God Almighty's sake, don't shoot!" They were taken prisoner. The firing finally went silent about 11:00 PM.
In the meantime, Bedford Forrest had been having troubles of his own. He had managed to get his cavalry across the river, only to be met by Wilson's troopers. The Yankees shoved them back to the river and across it, the first time Forrest had ever been pushed around by a Federal force that was smaller than his. Wilson was one Union general who Forrest would never "skeer" from that time on.
* During the night, Stephen Lee's corps came up, and Hood obstinately planned to make another assault at sunrise, supported by artillery. The guns started firing after first light, and then went silent. The Federal works were empty, Schofield having completed his withdrawal in the darkness and burned the plank bridge behind him. Some of Schofield's officers had pleaded with him to stand and fight, since they knew another Confederate attack would simply be massacred, but he was still skittish and wanted to run for cover. He even left his wounded behind. Forrest pursued, but Schofield and his men were inside the Nashville defenses by noon.
The Confederates had taken 6,500 casualties at Franklin, including twelve generals, with six of the generals killed outright, one captured, the others badly wounded. Yankee losses were about a third as great, and half of them were from the two brigades that Wagner had failed to pull back into his lines. The only senior officer hurt in the fight was David Stanley, who was wounded by a bullet that hit him across the back of the neck.
The rebels had taken a crushing defeat, all the more appalling because Schofield hadn't even wanted to fight them. Schofield had won a lopsided victory without really trying to; had Wagner been a little more alert and got his men out of harm's way in time, the result would have been even more one-sided. A Texan captain wrote in his diary that "the wails and cries of widows and orphans made at Franklin Tenn Nov 30th 1864 will heat up the fires of the bottomless pit to burn the soul of Gen J B Hood for Murdering their husbands and fathers at that place that day. It can't be called anything but cold blooded Murder."
Pat Cleburne disappeared after the first rush into the Federal defenses, going into the fight with the words: "If we are to die, let us die like men." His troops, who idolized the man, hoped he had been wounded, even captured, but he was found that morning dead from a single mercifully clean wound, a bullet through the heart. He was 36 years old. He was buried in Franklin, though his coffin would eventually find its way back to Helena, Arkansas, his hometown.
Another one of the dead generals was States Rights Gist, of the South Carolina Gist family, who had been a emissary of the secession movement in the months before the war. Those fond of ironies could make something of his death, but in reality he was just another one of countless corpses littering the field. They were literally piled on top of each other in places.
* Nashville was one of the most heavily fortified cities in Federal hands. It was now well garrisoned and able to hold out easily against any force the Confederacy had to throw at it. Hood pursued, even though any realistic consideration would have shown that the Army of the Tennessee was no longer in any condition to continue a useful campaign. Hood spent no time on such a consideration and just pushed on.
