In any event, Brown’s division soon appeared on the scene, and Cheatham sent it off to the right of where he thought Cleburne was, so that he would have a front consisting—or so he conceived—of Bate on the left, Cleburne center, and Brown right. Meantime, as Cheatham got Brown’s men in motion, a courier rode up from Cleburne with a message that his far right had stumbled on a strong entrenchment of federals and was severely mauled. The advance must halt, Cleburne said, until he had time to fall back and reorganize with a change of front. Cheatham afterward said Cleburne somehow got turned around, that from his line of departure he could not actually see either Spring Hill or the pike, and that he was attacking west instead of northwest toward the town when his far right brigade came into the direct line of fire of Stanley’s federals and was struck in the flank. But Cheatham also wrote that Cleburne’s westward advance was “almost parallel with the turnpike,” which is an impossibility, since the pike runs northeast into Spring Hill. Perhaps he meant perpendicular, but in any case, Cleburne did get stalled for about an hour after he encountered the federal lines.
What went on there was fast and furious and very nearly accomplished what Hood had intended. After wading across Rutherford Creek, pants rolled up, their distinctive full-moon battle flags waving in the fading light, Cleburne’s division marched across open fields and hills until, at half an hour before sunset, they struck the Union lines, which were spread in a semicircle facing south and east of Spring Hill. There they encountered an exhausted Forrest, who had been fighting federals since sunup, and with a dismounted brigade of Forrest’s troopers Cleburne charged the Union position that was being held by the federal brigade of General Luther Bradley, severely wounding Bradley and sweeping the blue-coated soldiers from the field.
At this point, the whole right wing of Stanley’s command crumbled, and the Southerners called upon their Northern brethren “with loud oaths, charging them with a Yankee canine descent, to halt and surrender.” Cleburne’s Confederates pressed a hot pursuit right up to the edge of town. At one point Lowrey, commanding Cleburne’s right brigade, perceived that a single federal regiment that remained on the field was about to attack him and dashed over to Cleburne to tell him so. The Irishman, “with his right hand raised as though he held a heavy whip, exclaimed, ‘I’ll charge them!’” and, rushing to his favorite brigade, commanded by General Daniel C. Govan, did exactly that, driving the federals in confusion from the field.
Cleburne’s men were on the verge of overwhelming Stanley’s entire position when suddenly Union General Wagner opened up on them “with a furious cannonade” from at least eight guns that had been brought up from Columbia, and the Confederate charge quickly stalled. Cleburne ordered an aide to ride over to General Hiram Granbury’s brigade with instructions to reform on a fence several hundred yards away, facing the pike, then set about rectifying the lines of his other two brigadiers, Govan and Lowrey. It was then that he sent the message to Cheatham saying that he had been struck in the flank and needed time to reorganize.
From the point of view in the federal lines, the situation was now desperate. William Keesy of D Company, 64th Ohio, was on Stanley’s far right when Cleburne’s attack burst out from some woods and across a corn field. Keesy aimed a shot at one “audacious fellow,” but the rifle misfired, and his captain made him disassemble the piece on the spot and fix it. Nearby, he recalled, “I distinctly heard the unmistakable ‘whack’ and knew that some one of our boys was hit.” The Confederates “came with a rush and a yell, and swept like a cyclone across that field. It was now far safer in the rear and the order came not a whit too soon, ‘fall back.’” In the midst of all this, Keesy became overwhelmed by the trance of battle. “While this tremendous rattle of musketry was raging so fiercely,” he recalled, “I noticed a flock of wild pigeons fluttering right over the smoke of battle. The scene was so contrary to anything that I could conceive, I called to a lieutenant standing by my side and said: ‘Look at those pigeons there.’” The lieutenant gave the Ohioan a prod with his sword and told him, “Look at that Rebel flag. Shoot that fellow with that flag there. That is the kind of game we are after now.”
Pressed by the ferocity of Cleburne’s attack, Keesy’s brigade drew back, trampling to death many of their unfortunate wounded. Cleburne’s men were in sight of the pike and would have gained it, accomplishing Hood’s plan, when the calamitous artillery barrage opened up in their faces. Captain Levi Scofield later remembered that it was Captain Alec Marshall’s artillery battery and a lone regiment of infantry, the 103rd Ohio, that saved the day for the federals. What had begun as a planned withdrawal to a better position had turned into a general rout, and the officers of this brave little regiment were trying to stop the flow. “Capt. Charley Sergeant,” Scofield said, “grabbed one officer who was tearing past him, who shouted, ‘For God’s sake, don’t stop me! I’m a chaplain!’” The regimental officers had broken open boxes of ammunition and “built a little parapet of ammunition in front of the men, from which they loaded,” pouring “a furious, driving storm of lead” into the Confederate ranks. This, coupled with the deathly artillery fire, caused Cleburne to lose momentum and thus ended the second opportunity of the day for the Confederates to secure the turnpike (the first had been Forrest’s failure to place himself athwart it in time).
By now it was nearly sunset, but with about an hour and a half of twilight left, Cleburne was poised to resume the attack, when an officer from Cheatham’s staff arrived with instructions to halt where he was and await further orders.
Cheatham’s reasoning for the delay seems to be that he was under the impression Stanley had a much larger force in Spring Hill than he actually did, and so Cheatham wanted to get all three of his divisions in line for a massed assault. To do this, he first had to find and relocate Bate—who, acting on Hood’s instructions, had gone due west and was on the verge of taking the Columbia-Franklin Pike—and place him on Cleburne’s left. Meantime, Brown was formed on Cleburne’s right and the corps was now positioned in accordance with what Cheatham desired, which seemed to be the disposal of Stanley’s Union troops, instead of securing the all important pike.
Actually, Bate had been in the perfect location to initially cut off the retreat of Schofield’s army coming up from Columbia. His division was only one hundred yards from the pike when a heavy column of federal soldiers and wagons appeared, moving rapidly toward Spring Hill. This—though Bate did not know it—was the vanguard of Schofield’s main force, which Schofield had not started moving out of Columbia until nearly 3 P.M., having finally satisfied himself that Hood was not in his front but well in his rear, a fact brought home to him with utmost clarity as the sounds of battle from Spring Hill began wafting down toward him.
In any case, Bate at this particular moment was a man in the right place at the right time. A lawyer and newspaper editor before the war, the thirty-six-year-old Tennessean and veteran of the Mexican conflict had established himself as a bold fighter, having been wounded several times previously, and he was spoiling for a fight now that he could see the advancing federals before him. He was about to plunge into these strung out and nearly helpless bluecoats when Cheatham’s message arrived ordering him to pull back northward and join Cleburne. Puzzled, Bate sent the messenger back with word that he was about to launch an assault and requested that Cheatham suspend his withdrawal order. Cheatham, apparently in no mood for argument, and seemingly unaware that Hood had personally ordered Bate to seize the pike, responded with word for Bate to either join up with Cleburne immediately or report to the commanding general under arrest. So, with the advancing columns of Schofield’s army in plain view, Bate reluctantly withdrew his division and marched to where he had been told to go.
With this golden opportunity lost, yet another blunder soon occurred. With his whole corps on line for attack, Cheatham had given instructions that the assault on Stanley was to be carried off en echelon, right to left—Brown’s division leading off, then Cleburne’s, and fina
lly Bate’s. Cheatham ordered Cleburne to wait until he heard the crash of Brown’s guns as the signal to begin his attack, then rode off to his field headquarters to await the opening of the battle. It never came. Not long afterward, Cheatham received a message from Brown that the Union left outflanked him by several hundred yards, and that any attempt at an assault would result in “inevitable disaster.” Cheatham later said he fired off a dispatch telling Brown to “throw back” his right brigade and go ahead with the attack immediately. By now it was nearly dark, but Cleburne and Bate, battle flags flying in the dim air, were straining at the leash to get at the Union troops at their front. From his headquarters, Cheatham paced nervously and kept asking his staff, “Why don’t we hear Brown’s guns?” Finally, he rode to Brown’s position to see what was going on.
Major General John Calvin Brown was no coward; the handsome thirty-seven-year-old lawyer had joined up as a private and taken part in every major battle of the Army of Tennessee. But just why the assault never came off remains shrouded in mystery and perhaps a deliberate cover up. Brown himself claimed that he had been told that General A. P. Stewart’s entire corps was being rushed to his right flank, and so he waited for its arrival—which never came. He also contended that Cheatham visited him in position and concurred in suspending the assault. Cheatham, however, claimed that he never got to Brown’s position at all, that he was waylaid en route by a courier from Hood who told him the commanding general wanted to see him. By this time, Hood had left the field and taken up headquarters at the Absalom Thompson house, an imposing columned mansion more than a mile from the battlefront. There, Cheatham said, Hood informed him that he had decided to call off the attack until morning. Later, Cheatham was to write, “I was never more astonished than when General Hood informed me that he had concluded to postpone the attack till daylight.”
Others had different versions of the story, including Hood, who said that when Cheatham rode up to his headquarters, instead of ordering him to suspend the attack, he exclaimed, “General, why in the name of God have you not attacked the enemy and taken possession of that Pike?” Cheatham, according to Hood, replied that the enemy line “looked a little too long for him,” and that he was waiting for Stewart’s corps to form up on his right. Hood says he then posted guides to place Stewart’s corps in position to support Cheatham, grumbling, “I would as soon have expected midday to turn into darkness as for [Cheatham] to have disobeyed my orders.” Still others, including Captain Joseph B. Cumming of Hood’s staff, remember that it was Cheatham “remonstrating with Gen. Hood against a night attack.” This might well have been the real situation, and for a darker reason than Hood then realized. Brown, it seems, was drunk.
That disturbing information came from no less a source than Lieutenant General Stephen Dill Lee, who imparted it many years after the war to fellow general Ellison Capers, who had since become Episcopal bishop of South Carolina. Responsibility for not launching the attack on Stanley, Lee wrote, rests “on one not suspected. He was drunk, and it was not Cheatham either. John C. Brown, who commanded Cheatham’s old Div.—either lacked the nerve on that day or was drunk—no doubt the latter.” Middle Tennessee in those days was whisky country—as it is today (the Jack Daniels Distillery was established there a year after the war). Brown along with other generals had received “a great many presents of liquor” and became “too intoxicated to attend to his duties.” Cheatham, Lee went on to hypothesize, was covering up for his long-time friend Brown when he urged Hood to wait until morning,
The Union High Command
President Abraham Lincoln
General Ulysses S. Grant (courtesy of Culver Pictures, Inc.)
Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton
General Henry W. Halleck
Union Infantry Commanders
General David S. Stanley
General Thomas H. Ruger
General Jacob Cox
General James W. Reilly
General Nathan Kimball
Union Cavalry Commander James H. Wilson and His Division Commanders
General Edward Hatch
General John T. Croxton
General James H. Wilson
General James B. Steedman, who ferreted out the plot against Thomas
General George Day Wagner, who was accused of drunkenness at Franklin
Colonel (later General) Emerson Opdycke, who disobeyed orders at Franklin but saved the Union Army there
General Thomas J. Wood, who was accused of disloyalty by his corps commander
General John M. Corse, who gave the famous reply when French asked him to surrender
Bishop-General Leonidas Polk, who baptized General Hood on the eve of battle
Emma Sansom, who was eulogized by General Forrest as a Confederate heroine (courtesy of the Alabama Department of Archives and History, Montgomery, Alabama)
Captain Theodoric (Tod) Carter, whose death expressed the traaic irony of Franklin (courtesy of the Carter House, Franklin, Tennessee)
Sally Buchanan “Buck” Preston (photograph by Alt-Lee; printed courtesy of the Historic Columbia Foundation)
The Absalom Thompson House, which served as Hood’s command post at Spring Hill on the night of November 29, 1864 (courtesy of the Maury County Visitors Bureau)
The Nathaniel Cheairs House at Spring Hill, where on the morning of November 30, 1864, Hood became “wrathy as a rattlesnake” (courtesy of the Maury County Visitors Bureau)
The Carter House, Franklin, Tennessee, which served as General Cox’s headquarters during the battle (courtesy of the U.S. Army Military History Institute)
The town of Franklin, looking north from Carter’s cotton gin (courtesy of the U.S. Army Military History Institute) when Brown would presumably be sober again. There was also talk around Brown’s division that whisky was at the bottom of the Spring Hill affair. One diarist, William Pollard of the 1st Tennessee, wrote down, “Rumor had it that John Barleycorn played his part in the drama.”
Whatever the cause, no decisive all-out assault was ever launched against the federal army, either at Stanley or at Schofield when he showed up, and what Hood described as his “golden opportunity” was forever lost. But there was even more to it than that. By the time night finally closed in, Stewart’s large corps had only begun to take the field. While three hours earlier Hood had told Cheatham that Stewart was “close by” and would soon be forming for battle, a courier from Hood had actually given Stewart orders not to cross Rutherford Creek but to wait there for further instructions. Thus, Brown and Cheatham, facing the Union line several miles to the north, waited in vain for the arrival of nearly half of the rest of the army. Later, Stewart said that Hood had held him in place because he said he needed a force to prevent the federals from escaping eastward toward Murfreesboro. This, in Stewart’s opinion, “was the fatal error.”
In any case, about dusk and exasperated that no attack had been made by Cheatham, Hood finally told Stewart to move north and ordered him to get across the pike above Spring Hill. With a “young man of the neighborhood” procured by Hood as a guide, Stewart’s column groped forward in the darkness for several hours until they came upon Forrest’s headquarters, where they were overtaken by a messenger from Cheatham’s staff. This man brought news that Hood now wished Stewart to form on Cheatham’s right, next to Brown’s division. Stewart recalled it “striking [him] as strange” that Hood would send new orders by one of Cheatham’s staff and not his own,” and when he had time to examine the position these new instructions directed him into, “Old Straight” realized his new line would bear away from the pike instead of across it and, worse, would “require all night to accomplish.” So Stewart put his weary soldiers into bivouac, and he and Forrest rode back together to Hood’s headquarters to see if they could iron this out.
By then it was past 10 P.M. Much had been going on inside Hood’s headquarters at the Absalom Thompson mansion, including, if the word of one of Hood’s guides is to be accepted, excess drinking, and e
ven drunkenness, by, among others, Generals Cheatham, Cleburne, Walthall, and Granbury. While Hood wasn’t specifically singled out as a participant in this revelry, it has been suggested that he was, and also that, to ease the pain of his wounds, he might have been taking drugs such as laudanum or other opiates. Even more tantalizing, the federal cavalry commander Wilson reported having information that Frank Cheatham had been absent from his command, whiling away his time at the mansion of the beautiful Jesse Helen Peters.
Mrs. Peters had become the center of one of the Confederacy’s most notorious scandals the previous year. One of the Confederacy’s rising stars, Major General Earl Van Dorn, had been using the mansion of Nathaniel Cheairs as a headquarters when, on a bright May morning about 10 A.M., Dr. George Peters, on the pretext of obtaining a pass to go through Union lines, came into Van Dorn’s office and—having gotten his pass—shot the dashing young general dead. This apparently had much to do with Van Dorn’s attentions to Mrs. Peters; in any case, in the ensuing confusion the doctor was able to use his pass to escape to the federal lines to spend the rest of the war up north.
That the alluring Mrs. Peters was indeed receiving visitors on the day of the Spring Hill affair is attested to by a Major Tyler, of Forrest’s staff, who recalled seeing a woman on the porch of a home at Spring Hill. “I was struck by her great beauty,” he said. “She at once asked if General Forrest was with us, and I pointed him out to her. She then said that she would like to meet him and speak to him. I said, ‘who are you, madam?’ and she replied: ‘Mrs. Peters. General Forrest will know me.’ I took him to her and left them talking.”