November 30, 1864---The Battle of Franklin, Tennessee

NOVEMBER 30, 1864:     

The Battle of Franklin, Tennessee:

Over the last week General John Bell Hood C.S.A. has been fighting a series of small-scale engagements (collectively known as “The Battle of Columbia”) along the rail line leading north from Atlanta to Nashville in hopes of disrupting the 30,000 men of the Federal Army of The Cumberland under General George H. Thomas U.S.A., who have been effectively shadowing him since Sherman left the smoking ruins of Atlanta. Hood is also desperate to keep General John Schofield U.S.A.’s 30,000-man strong Army of The Ohio from linking up with Thomas and giving the Union a better than 2-to-1 advantage in battle.

On November 29^th, Hood attempts to entrap Schofield’s forces at Spring Hill. Not unsurprisingly, the tip of Hood’s spear, General Nathan Bedford Forrest C.S.A. and his men along with General Patrick Cleburne C.S.A. and his troops, manage to engage the Union force in a bold blocking action. 

Hood forgets, however, to advise General Benjamin F. Cheatham C.S.A. to guard the flank, and after nightfall, Schofield’s entire army inexplicably marches right past the Confederate encampment without anyone being the wiser and enters the outer Union lines at Franklin. The Battle of Spring Hill is a relatively bloodless engagement --- 350 Union casualties versus 700 Confederate casualties --- but both tactically and strategically, it is a disaster for the South.

Hood wakes up on the morning of the 30^th “as wrathy as a rattlesnake” and in a blistering Council of War accuses his subcommanders of cowardice and of failure to engage the enemy. Ignoring his subordinates’ advise that he will be attacking a reinforced enemy placed within longstanding well-entrenched lines, Hood orders that the Army of Tennessee break through the outer Union defenses at Franklin prefatory to taking Nashville.  Hood’s men begin marching north. 

The 30,000 Federal troops at Franklin are ensconced behind three rings of earthworks and obstacles. In order to attack this force, Hood’s 25,000 men will be forced to march over two miles of open ground on a front two miles wide. They are supported by just a single battery. 

As soon as Hood’s troops begin the long march (larger than Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg), the Union batteries open up, blowing huge holes in the line. As the Confederates come within range of the three-tiered Union defenses, the Federals begin firing a hail of musket fire. Many, many men go down. Six Confederate General Officers are lost this day at Franklin, including the South Carolina fire-eater States Rights Gist, and the much-honored and renowned Patrick Cleburne. 

On the Union side, one little-known but historically important soldier is badly wounded and nearly dies --- nineteen year old Colonel Arthur MacArthur, “The Boy Colonel,” who will, after the war, become the father of General Douglas MacArthur. Colonel MacArthur is eventually promoted to General’s rank and receives the Medal of Honor for his Civil War service (Arthur MacArthur and Douglas MacArthur are the only father and son to ever win the Medal of Honor). World War II would have been much different had Arthur MacArthur died at Franklin. 

States Rights Gist

 

Patrick Cleburne

   

Arthur MacArthur

Douglas MacArthur

The Union loses 189 killed, 1,033 wounded, and 1,104 missing at the Battle of Franklin. The Confederacy loses 1,750 killed, 3,800 wounded, and 702 missing. In all, the Union toll is 2,300 of 30,000 on the field; the Confederate toll is 6,300 of 25,000. 

Hood’s army comes apart after the Battle of Franklin. The loss of so many top-echelon commanders (beside the six generals killed, six were wounded, and scores of lower-ranking officers and NCOs were killed or injured), effectively decapitates Hood’s command structure, and his seeming indifference to his own accountability enrages his men of the line, many of whom desert in droves. On paper, Hood is supposed to have 50,000 men, but he has already lost at least half his numbers, if not more, to battle and desertion, and so the disappearance of so many more men is catastrophic. He is later accused of “mortally wounding” his army this day. 

Nathan Bedford Forrest, though nominally under Hood’s command, chooses to exercise the command independence which he has demonstrated throughout the war, and takes several thousand men away to continue raiding in Tennessee, further weakening Hood’s Army of Tennessee.  About 17,000 men remain in the ranks for now.   

John Bell Hood

As the historical novelist Michael Shaara (The Killer Angels) pointed out, some men make excellent small unit, brigade, Divisional or even Corps commanders but are overwhelmed by the responsibilities of leading larger forces. So it was with John Bell Hood, whose personal bravery cannot be questioned --- he lost an arm at Gettysburg and a leg at Chickamauga --- whose dedication to the cause is undoubted --- most other men in his position would have opted for an honorable retirement or a sinecure command --- but whose command decisions as the head of the Army of Tennessee have virtually all been not just flawed but flatly wrong. Hood’s impulsive style of leadership, his love for the slashing attack, his disregard for Military Intelligence, his failure to understand battlefield topography, and his blindness to larger all-encompassing issues of strategy or even politics, might not have been quite so terrible if he had remained even a high-ranking subordinate, taking direction from another. As the head of an army he fought himself out of the war at an incalculable cost in blood and Confederate morale.