Hood replied, “I would prefer to fight them here where they have only eight hours to fortify, than to strike them at Nashville where they have been strengthening themselves for three years and more.” Still smarting from his chastisement over the debacle at Spring Hill, Cheatham argued no more and gave the order for Bate to move his division west through a gap in the hills, then down onto the valley floor.
Presently Pat Cleburne came along. As he waited for his troops to ascend Winstead Hill, he had been enjoying a game of checkers with his staff, using a board drawn out on the ground with a stick and with colored leaves for men. Earlier, from the crest of the hill, Cleburne had rested his field glasses on a stump and carefully examined the Union lines. “They are very formidable,” was his only remark. Now he and Brown met Hood and threw their weight into the argument, with Cleburne asserting that a direct attack would involve “a terrible waste of life.” Like Forrest before him, Cleburne urged a flanking movement to turn Schofield out of his entrenchments, but Hood was having none of it. Brown recorded that Hood told them, “The country around Franklin for many miles is open and exposed to the full view of the Federal Army, and I cannot mask the movements of my troops so as to turn either flank of the enemy, and if I attempt it, he will withdraw and precede me into Nashville.”
So they, too, rode off in frustration to give the fateful orders. General Govan, commander of one of Cleburne’s brigades, remembered that the Irishman “seemed to be more despondent than I ever saw him.” He “fully realized,” Govan said, “as did every officer present, the desperate nature of the assault we were about to make. He informed us that by the direction of Gen. Hood, he had called us together to impress upon us the importance of carrying the works of the enemy at all hazards.” Govan, an old friend of Cleburne’s from Arkansas days, later recalled, “Looking over and beyond the bare common over which we had to move, you could see behind the heavy earthworks the bristling bayonets of the enemy, and flitter of Napoleon guns, as they peeped through the embrasures.” As Govan saluted and started to ride off, he remarked, “Well, General, few of us will ever return to Arkansas to tell the story of this battle.” To which Cleburne responded, “Well, Govan, if we are to die, let us die like men.”
As the Confederate army began to pour onto the valley floor and take battle formation, over in the federal lines Schofield’s men began their final preparations to receive the attack. Up until then, not a single Union general—including Schofield and his two corps commanders, Cox and Stanley—had believed that Hood would actually assault them in the front. Now as the sun sank low in the clear winter sky, it was apparent that that was precisely what he intended to do. By this time, Schofield’s hard work and personal supervision of the bridging of the Harpeth had paid off—all of the thousand or so wagons were already on the far side of the river, and Schofield sent orders for the troops to begin retreating across by 6 P.M. if Hood did not attack before then.
Cox’s strenuous supervision of the defensive front had also paid off. He had laid out a line of fortifications nearly two miles long, anchored more or less on both ends by the Harpeth, and most of it was contained behind a deep trench line in back of which was a mound of dirt five feet high capped with headlogs. In front of the trench the troops had hastily fashioned abatis of sharpened stakes, mostly from the locust grove at their front, on the west side of the Columbia Pike, and a thick hedge of Osage orange that grew near the entrenchments on the east side of the pike.
Facing Hood’s army behind this formidable position were three divisions of Union infantry. On the left of the pike was the Third Division, Twenty-third Corps, temporarily under command of General James W. Reilly, a thirty-six-year-old Ohio lawyer and politician. The immediate right of the pike was manned by the Second Division, Twenty-third Corps, commanded by General Thomas H. Ruger, a thirty-one-year-old New Yorker and West Point graduate who had served back east in the Antietam, Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg campaigns. The far right of the federal line was occupied by the First Division, Fourth Army Corps, commanded by forty-two-year-old General Nathan Kimball, an Indiana physician before the war. In reserve on the far side of the Harpeth was the Third Division, Fourth Corps, under General Thomas Wood. Interspersed along the lines were sections of artillery containing some thirty guns.
Out in front of the whole federal line was the rear guard, Second Division, Fourth Army Corps, led by thirty-five-year-old General George Day Wagner, an Indiana politician with a receding hairline and a goatee. This was where the trouble began.
Wagner’s division consisted of three brigades commanded by Colonels John Q. Lane, Joseph Conrad, and Emerson Opdycke. They had borne the brunt of the Union retreat all the way from Columbia and were the first to arrive at Spring Hill, saving it—and most likely the entire federal army—from capture. In the fierce fighting there, Luther Bradley, formerly commanding Conrad’s brigade, was severely wounded, and after the rest of Schofield’s army had passed through on its way to Franklin, Wagner’s division had to fight the pursuing Confederates all the way up the pike.
Now, after failing to check Hood’s army at the Winstead Hills, the brigades of Lane and Conrad were posted in an exposed and hastily drawn-up position astride the Columbia-Franklin Pike, about a quarter mile in front of the federal entrenchments, with orders to skirmish with and delay any general Confederate assault, then withdraw up the pike and into the Union lines, but by no means to stand and try to give battle.
Wagner was no doubt feeling pretty good about himself that afternoon. After all, he had “saved” Schofield’s army from destruction by holding Spring Hill against Hood’s whole force and then fought them hammer and tongs all the way back to Franklin. As Opdycke’s tired brigade trudged back up the pike after Hood’s initial flanking movement, Wagner rode up and accosted his young brigadier, ordering him to place his men in the forward position with Lane and Conrad. To this order, Opdycke “strenuously objected.” Captain John K. Shellenberger, commanding a company in Conrad’s brigade, said that Opdycke complained to Wagner that the position was untenable. “He also pleaded that his brigade was worn out, having been marching . . . in line of battle in sight of the enemy, climbing over fences, passing through woods, thickets and muddy cornfields, and was entitled to a relief.” Finally, Wagner gave up, grousing, “Well, Opdycke, fight when and where you damn please; we all know you’ll fight,” then turned and rode off. Opdycke marched his men inside the federal lines and took position as a reserve, by the Carter house, two hundred yards inside the breastworks. As things developed, this turned out to be the crucial troop disposition of the battle, but it did nothing to help the brigades of Lane and Conrad, which were still hanging out there, half a mile in front, exposed to the advance of the entire Confederate army.
What began to transpire down in the valley of the Harpeth was a military spectacle to behold. Two Confederate army corps—more than twenty thousand men—began to align themselves for battle on an open plain in full view of the enemy. While A. P. Stewart’s corps was forming to the east, Cheatham had delayed bringing Cleburne’s and Brown’s divisions over the crest of Winstead Hill in order to wait for Bate’s division to swing into position way around to the west. He sent word that a prearranged signal flag would be the order for them to move out. After he satisfied himself of Bate’s progress from the crest of the hill, Cheatham ordered that the flag be dropped, “and the line moved forward steady as a clock.” Twenty years later, Cheatham revisited the battlefield with his former chief of staff, James D. Porter. “Don’t you recall, Porter, that as they wheeled into line of battle in full view of the enemy, their precision and military bearing was as beautiful a sight as was ever witnessed in war?” Porter nodded his head. “It was the greatest sight I ever saw,” he said, “each division unfolding itself into a single line of battle with as much steadiness as if forming for dress parade.”
Along a three-mile front across the Franklin fields six Confederate divisions moved into line, the battle flags of more than 125 re
giments fluttering in the breeze of an Indian summer afternoon. Cheatham’s corps was placed with two divisions astride the Columbia Pike, Cleburne on the right and Brown to the left. Bate’s division, which had gone marching around west through a gap in the hills, now reappeared on the far left of the line near the Carter’s Creek Pike.
A. P. Stewart’s corps occupied the far right, between the river and the cut of the Nashville-Alabama railroad. From right to left it consisted of the divisions of one-armed General William Wing Loring, mostly Mississippians and Alabamians; the Tennessee, Arkansas, and Alabama brigades of General Edward C. Walthall’s division; and the North Carolina, Texas, and Mississippi regiments of Sam French’s division. Forrest anchored the Confederate far right with two divisions of his cavalry, while Chalmers’s cavalry division had gone around to anchor the far left next to Bate. Hood had with him only two six-gun artillery batteries; the rest of the guns were with Stephen Lee’s corps, which still had not caught up to the main army. These field pieces were placed in position on the right and left of Columbia Pike, one for each corps.
It was nearing sunset when this vast panorama began to take shape across the peaceful Harpeth valley; in the lengthening shadows the long gray and butternut lines merged with their battle flags flying, officers dashing up and down on horseback, couriers coming and going, while to the north were the sullen frowning lines of the federal army, their own flags planted atop their breastworks. A surgeon in A. P. Stewart’s corps recalled that “during the time while the lines were forming it was perfectly still; no sound jarred upon the ear,” while a Tennessee private remembered that “a profound silence pervaded the entire army; it was simply awful, reminding one of those sickening lulls which preceded a tremendous thunderstorm.”
In the ranks, various little dramas were being played out. James M’Neilly, a chaplain in Walthall’s division, was surrounded by men who fully understood the implications of the coming fury. “Several of them came to me bringing watches, jewelry, letters and photographs, asking me to send them to their families if they were killed,” M’Neilly said. “I had to decline, as I was going with them and would be exposed to the same danger. It was vividly recalled to me the next morning, for I believe every one who made this request of me was killed.”
As Brown’s division formed up on the right of the pike, Sergeantmajor Cunningham was in position as guide of the 41st Tennessee, about four paces in their front. Here he met his brigade commander, thirty-one-year-old General Otho French Strahl, a handsome blackhaired Northerner who came south to study law after graduating from Ohio Wesleyan University and threw his lot in with the Confederacy. Marching on foot this fading sunny afternoon because he had that morning given his horse to Chaplain Quintard, Strahl told his brigade, “Boys, this will be short and desperate,” but other than that he rarely spoke, and Sergeant-major Cunningham said of him, “a sadder face I have never seen.”
One brigade back, the commander—whose given name was the epitome of the lost cause—was riding up and down his lines with inspiring words for his troops. He was thirty-one-year-old Brigadier General States Rights Gist, a South Carolinian who had graduated from Harvard Law School and fought conspicuously in the Chickamauga, Chattanooga, and Atlanta campaigns. Gist was followed into battle by his slave and body servant, “Uncle Wiley” Howard, who had been with him all through the war.
Over in Sam French’s division of Stewart’s corps some officer made the mistake of quoting to a regiment of Irishmen Lord Nelson’s famous remark before the battle of Trafalgar: “England expects every man to do his duty.” Sergeant Denny Callahan raised a huge laugh by saying, “It’s damned little duty England would get out of this Irish crowd.”
On the floor of the Harpeth valley less than a mile from the Union lines was a small rocky knob called Merrill’s Hill, where some of Cheatham’s sharpshooters had been stationed, making a hell on earth for federal officers and artillerymen. Pat Cleburne rode out and asked if he could borrow a telescope. The lieutenant in charge “quickly detached the long telescope from his gun, adjusted the focus and handed it to General Cleburne, who . . . looked long and carefully over the field, and remarked, ‘They have three lines of works,’ and then, sweeping the field again as if to make himself certain, said, ‘And they are all completed.’” Riding back to Hood, Cleburne asked permission to form his division in a column of brigades, so as to expose his front as little as possible to federal fire. Hood granted the request and further instructed Cleburne, “Give orders to your men not to fire till you drive the Federal skirmishers from their works to your front. Then press them and shoot them in the backs. Then charge the main works.” Cleburne replied, “General, I will take the works or fall in the attempt.”
In bizarre contrast to practically everybody’s recollections of Cleburne’s frame of mind at this time, Hood recalled that his premier division commander was practically ebullient at the prospect of attacking headlong into the federal lines. “Expressing himself with an enthusiasm which he had never before betrayed in our intercourse,” Cleburne, Hood said, told him, “‘General, I am ready and have more hope in the final success in our cause than I have had at any time since the first gun was fired.’” Hood said, “I replied, ‘God grant it!’ He turned and moved at once toward the head of his division.” There is such a contradiction between this and other accounts it can only be explained by assuming that Hood was not telling the truth or that his memory was faulty, or that in the time between his original orders and Cleburne’s formation of his division on the field the Irishman somehow had worked himself up into a frenzied pitch of confidence and aggressiveness.
After Hood rejected Nathan Forrest’s proposal to take his cavalry and one “good” infantry division across the Harpeth and flank Schofield from his position, the Confederate cavalry commander set about to do what he could—as Hood had ordered—to protect the Confederate flanks and block Schofield’s anticipated retreat. About 2 P.M., just as the Army of Tennessee’s brigades were beginning to form for battle on the Franklin plain, Forrest took the two cavalry divisions he had on the Confederate right, “Red” Jackson’s and Abraham Buford’s—totaling about three thousand men—and crossed to the east bank of the Harpeth. From there he turned north, driving the federal cavalry of Generals John T. Croxton and Edward Hatch before him.
But then Forrest hit a snag. For the first time in the campaign, Wilson had all the available cavalry in the Army of the Tennessee with him, six thousand troopers on the press-ganged civilian horses he had been so feverishly confiscating. In addition, Schofield had given Wilson use of the infantry of T. J. Wood’s division, which was posted across the river north of Franklin in reserve (although Wilson said he was never told this, and the first time he heard it was weeks later when he read Schofield’s official report). In any case, the vaunted Wilson, who in the week since joining the Army of the Tennessee had been nothing but humiliated and embarrassed by Forrest’s “wizardry,” now had on hand a force twice superior to his opponent.
Schofield, of course, was in no way convinced that Wilson could hold Forrest; after all, only that morning he had grimly telegraphed Thomas up in Nashville, “I don’t know where Forrest is. Wilson is entirely unable to cope with him.” And even as Wilson’s troopers were moving out to meet Forrest’s new threat, Schofield was replying pessimistically to a query by Thomas as to whether Wilson could hold the Confederate general in check: “I think he can do very little. I have no doubt Forrest will be in my rear to-morrow or doing some greater mischief.”
Jackson’s division moved on the cavalry of Croxton and pressed it back, while Buford attacked, dismounted, the division of General Edward Hatch, who had recently inspired much Southern enmity by personally looting paintings, china, and silverware from the Mississippi mansion of the former U.S. Interior Secretary. It was a sharp and vicious fight, but after about three hours Wilson’s superior numbers finally began to tell on Forrest, and he was forced to fall back across the river to resupply his ammunition.
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Although both Wilson and Schofield maintained that Forrest’s horsemen always outnumbered them two to one, Wilson later said it had been a “fatal mistake” for Forrest to divide his cavalry by sending Chalmers’s strong division way over on Hood’s left flank and effectively out of the action. “Instead of driving me back and getting on Schofield’s rear as he might have done with his whole corps,” Wilson wrote, “it made it easy for me not only to beat his two divisions in actual battle but to drive them north of the river in confusion.”
In any event, for once Forrest had not lived up to his reputation or, for that matter, to Hood’s expectation. Schofield’s route of retreat toward Nashville would remain unmolested.
It was now 3:30 P.M., Wednesday, November 30. The sun was a reddish biscuit “going down behind a bank of dark clouds” in the western sky. The afternoon was still warm and a little hazy. Hood had ridden forward about a half mile on the Franklin Pike to a little straw pen by a toll gate, where his staff helped him to dismount and placed him down on some blankets they had spread out on the ground over the straw. Here he reclined, using a saddle for a backrest, when word came that the Army of Tennessee was formed for battle. Precisely how he responded is not recorded, but whatever his words, they set in motion one of the most breathtaking infantry charges in the history of warfare.
Captain Joseph Boyce, of General Francis Marion Cockrell’s Missouri brigade, observing that “this was no boy’s play,” remembered the “clear, ringing tones of the final commands: ‘Shoulder arms! Right shoulder shift arms! Brigade forward! Guide center! Music! Quick time! March!’”
It must have been the incongruity of the music that struck so many of the soldiers in the line. “Our brass band, one of the finest in the army,” Boyce said; there were tunes of glory, tunes of death, twenty thousand bayonets gleaming on a lovely autumn afternoon, an army of veterans with the veteran’s understanding of what they were about to face. “This was the first and only time I ever heard our bands playing upon a battlefield, and at the beginning of a charge,” said Dr. G. C. Phillips, of Stewart’s corps. During the twenty or so minutes it took the lines to reach the outermost defense works of Schofield’s army, the tunes resounded across the level valley floor, all the old Southern favorites—“Bonnie Blue Flag,” “The Girl I Left Behind Me,” “Dixie.”