Providence Publishing: The Battle of Franklin

James A. CrutchfieldЧThe Battle of Franklin: Twilight of the Army of Tennessee Х ISBN: 978-1-57736-438-2 Х $9.95 Х 66 pages Х softcover Х 6x9 Х Imprint: PHP

For five horrible hours during the evening of November 30, 1864, Union and Confederate forces faced each other at Franklin, Tennessee, a small village located fifteen miles south of Nashville. General John Bell Hood, fresh from his defeat at Atlanta, commanded between thirty and forty thousand tired, poorly equipped soldiers of the once-mighty Army of Tennessee. His foe was his West Point classmate, General John M. Schofield, and twenty-one thousand troops of the Union ArmyТs Fourth and Twenty-third Corps. A few hours earlier, Schofield had marched around Hood several miles south of Franklin and reached town at 3:00 AM on the thirtieth. By the time advance elements of HoodТs army arrived around noon, Union engineers had built a formidable system of earthworks which, combined with the Harpeth River, surrounded the town. Between 3:00 and 4:00 P.M., nearing dusk on this late November day, amidst heated protests from his staff, Hood made his infamous decision to attack Schofield. ааа

When the fighting stopped during the late evening of November 30, the Confederates had suffered around 7,300 casualties while Union numbers exceeded 2,500. УBloody Franklin,Ф as the battle has often been called, plunged its sleepy namesake town and the roundabout countryside into a state of depression, both economic and psychological, from which it took years to recover. For Hood and the Army of Tennessee, however, the battle had more dire short term effects. The Army of Tennessee, along with the Army of Northern Virginia, was a mainstay of the Confederate war machine, and, at Franklin, it was severely weakened, setting the stage for its defeat at Nashville two weeks later.