Later that morning, a tearful Uncle Wiley Howard removed States Rights Gist’s remains from the field hospital. “Dr. Wright holped me ter git er cedar box. We couldn’t git a coffin. We got er ambulance.” Howard took Gist’s body to the William White home, a brick mansion on the far right of the battle area, where he was met at the door by Mrs. White. “I told her General Gist had been killed, en axed her if we could bury him in her graveyard. She made us drive de ambulance up de walk ter her front door. She had him tuck out en laid on de sofa in her parlor. She sont fer er preacher ter hab de burial service. We buried him in her yard, under er big cedar tree.”
General John Carter, mortally wounded with a bullet in the abdomen, was taken to the Harrison home, on the far side of the Winstead Hills. He lingered for a few days, begging for chloroform and ministered to occasionally by Chaplain Quintard, who said that Carter “could not be convinced he was going to die.” Finally, Quintard posed the question that if he should die, what was his message to his wife? “Tell her that I have always loved her devotedly and regret leaving her more than I can express,” was Carter’s reply. He was buried in Columbia not long afterward.
The body of General Adams was taken down to Pulaski, where Schofield and his army had started out a long week before, and buried by his family. The other three generals, Strahl, Granbury, and Cleburne, were carried to Columbia and buried in St. John’s churchyard at Ashwood, in the spot that Cleburne had remarked was so beautiful a few days earlier.
Meantime, every available house, church, school, and public building in Franklin was being turned into a hospital—forty-four in all, three for wounded federals, the rest for Confederates, each marked with a red flag—but these were not enough, and many of the wounded had to stay in cloth tents. The Confederate surgeons corps had not prepared to deal with a disaster of this magnitude, and there were critical shortages of everything from medicines to food and shelter. Dr. Deering Roberts, chief surgeon of the 20th Tennessee, described one of the “hospitals” he created. “I found an old carriage-and-wagon shop, two stories high. It had a good roof, plenty of windows above and below . . . and a good well. This I immediately placarded as ‘Bate’s Division hospital,’ and put part of the detail to work cleaning out the work-benches, old lumber and other debris.” Farther up the same street Roberts also commandeered an unoccupied brick store and the chancery court building on the square and sent his wagons to scour the countryside for fresh straw. By midday he had the floors scrubbed and covered “with clean wheat straw, ten or twelve inches thick,” and the wounded were ready to be brought in.
There were four principal types of dangerous wounds in that era. Head wounds, if not superficial, were almost always fatal. So were wounds to the abdomen because, as Dr. Roberts explained, “the intestines were perforated.” Wounds to the upper chest, however—unless to the heart—were frequently curable because “the swiftly moving conical ball often produced a clean-cut wound.” The last, and perhaps most common potentially fatal, wound was “the shattering, splintering and splitting of a long bone.” Experience during the war had taught surgeons that amputation of those injuries was the preferred way to save the patient because otherwise gangrene typically set in, and the victim died in a matter of days. Accordingly, one Franklin civilian reported, “When I went past one of their hospitals there were several wagon loads of limbs that had been amputated.” It is an interesting fact that in the year following the war the single largest item in the Mississippi state budget was for artificial limbs.
Antibiotics were unknown, and infections in an unclean wound regularly spread. Pain killers, if they could be had, were highly addictive derivatives of opium, and for years after the war tens of thousands of veterans were hopelessly hooked on these drugs. Chloroform was the anesthetic commonly used to sedate men before their limbs were sawed off or probes tore through their flesh searching for a bullet, but little of it was available to the Confederates at this stage of the war. Most of the time, a sort of unwritten rule stated that the wounded man either got better or he didn’t.
The women of Franklin quickly rallied to the crisis. They cut up their bedding, linen, and even their clothing for bandages and worked tirelessly in the hospitals night and day. They baked cakes, pies, cornbread, and contributed what little meat, tea and coffee, and other things they could spare. One woman and her mother took charge of a hospital for Union wounded in the Presbyterian Church and were dismayed to find that “they drew scanty rations from the rebels—flour the color of ashes, and a little poor beef not suitable for well men, much less for wounded. We furnished them every little luxury we could prepare, for several days.” Even young Harding Figures got in on the act. “Many a day,” he reported, “I went out through the country in an old dump cart hunting for food. We would take a large wash kettle, holding about twenty gallons, and make it full of soup, with plenty of red pepper. For this soup I brought in from the country Irish potato’s, cabbage, dried beans, and turnip, and in making it we used any kind of meat obtainable. The soldiers thought this was a great diet; in fact, the best they had had for more than a year.”
Sometime that morning, John Bell Hood and his staff rode into Franklin. Pausing at the nauseating sight around the breastworks, an artilleryman recalled that the commanding general sat on his horse and “wept like a child.” Hood took up headquarters in the yard of a Mrs. Sykes of Franklin. Alice McPhail Nichol remembered seeing the sling-armed, onelegged officer sitting there in a chair, surrounded by his staff. “He looked so sad,” she said, “and grandpa told me it was Gen. Hood.” Frances McEwen was there, too, but later said she didn’t look on Hood as a hero, “because nothing had been accomplished that could benefit us.”
This was another of the understatements commonly associated with Hood’s campaign. Hood had not only accomplished “nothing,” he had in fact wrecked his army.
Like the Spring Hill affair, from the moment the fighting died down at Franklin, the finger pointing began and never let up. Many thought Hood should not have attacked at all, that he should have moved off to the right across the Harpeth and flanked Schofield out of his breastworks. Others believed he should have waited for Stephen Lee’s whole corps to come up—especially since it had the army’s artillery—and launched a vast bombardment before the first attack was made. Still others believed he failed to reconnoiter properly, and that his main strike should have been against the federal right instead of the stronger left and center. Some suggested that he was in tantrum over his failure to bag Schofield at Spring Hill and ordered the charge only out of spite. Others claimed he attacked vindictively because he wanted to teach his army to assault breastworks.
Each position has its supporters and detractors, and the arguments will continue so long as the history of the Civil War is studied. In Hood’s defense, however, are these observations: First, any flanking movement across the Harpeth was certain to be observed by Schofield, who had been tricked by Hood once at Columbia and was not about to be tricked again. Furthermore, the Franklin plain was open to view, and any Confederate advance could be plainly seen from the Union positions. By the time Hood might have initiated such a turning movement, Schofield would probably have been on the move. He already had his supply wagons and one of his five divisions across the river by the time of Hood’s attack and would have had a head start of at least two miles along a good macadamized road, while Hood would first have had to ford a high river, then negotiate fields, woods, and back roads in the chase.
Forrest’s assertion that with the help of an infantry division he could have “flanked Schofield out of his position” may or may not have been true. After all, Wilson’s cavalry outnumbered Forrest’s at that point, and Schofield had already moved a division of bluecoats to the other side of the Harpeth in anticipation of just that sort of maneuver. Furthermore, it was getting late in an already short day, and would be even later before Hood could swing any sizable part of his army around to attack Schofield in flank. And the one thing he did not want to
do was spook Schofield out of Franklin only to have him flee up the pike and join with Thomas’s other forces behind the formidable Nashville defenses. This argument was clear in Hood’s mind when he told Cheatham he would rather fight the enemy where they had been fortifying for eight hours, instead of Nashville, where they had been fortifying for years.
That Hood’s attack might have benefited from the addition of Stephen Lee’s corps is debatable. Had Hood postponed his movement until 4 P.M., when the head of Lee’s column finally arrived at the Winstead Hills, he would have had only about forty-five minutes left till sundown to get that ten-thousand-man element into formation and moving toward the federal breastworks. Considering that it took nearly two hours to get Cheatham’s and Stewart’s corps onto the field and ready for action, it would have been well after sundown before Lee could have been effectively positioned. Even if Lee could have joined the charge, the question arises of whether he would have just added to the Confederate casualty lists. There is a possibility that Hood could have deliberately launched a night attack with all three of his corps up, but night attacks were extremely rare and often failed because command coordination was practically impossible; furthermore, Schofield had already given orders for his army to withdraw across the Harpeth to Nashville at 6 P.M.
Moreover, the notion that all the Confederate artillery—somewhere far back in Lee’s column—could somehow have been hauled out on the field and positioned before nightfall to deliver a sizable barrage is unsound. Even if it were possible, Robert E. Lee’s experience with his huge two-hundred-gun artillery bombardment of the Union center at Gettysburg certainly demonstrated that it was no guarantee that Pickett’s charge would have succeeded. Also, Schofield’s men were safely behind breastworks five to ten feet high and five feet wide, against which artillery would have little effect. From Hood’s point of view, Schofield was there, at Franklin, where he could actually see him, and he wanted to get at him before nightfall gave him a chance to slip away, which was exactly what Schofield planned to do.
Perhaps Hood could have let Cheatham’s and Stewart’s corps stage a strong and lengthy demonstration in hopes of keeping Schofield pinned to his works, while Lee’s corps tried to ford the river and march around the federal right. Certainly, though, Schofield would have detected this and probably been off like a shot—burning his bridges behind him—before Lee could get on his flank.
Another possibility is that Hood could have directed his main assault against the federal right, which was defended by a full Union division but apparently not behind such formidable breastworks as what Cheatham and Stewart encountered. What Hood knew about that part of the line is unclear, but if a division had been pulled away from Cheatham or Stewart to assault that part of the line along with Chalmers’s dismounted cavalry, it might have met with some success. Again, however, Schofield surely would have noticed any such movement and taken measures to counter it.
The battle of Franklin is filled with what-ifs, might-have-dones, could-have-dones, should-have-dones—each with its advocates. But from Hood’s perspective, right or wrong—and he was the general on the ground—the elusive Schofield was there in plain sight, and there Hood intended to fight him—a desperate plan for desperate times. It should also be considered that in some Civil War battles the mighty impetus of a massed charge—if the attackers could get close enough to a defensive position—often tended to dislodge the defenders. This seems to have been on Hood’s mind, and if it had worked, he would have become a hero. Instead, many in his army agreed with Texas Captain Sam Foster that this wasn’t war: “It can’t be called anything else but cold blooded murder.”
In any event, on this first day of the last month of 1864, John Bell Hood sat in his chair in the sunlit yard of Mrs. Sykes trying to digest the ration of bad news that was served to him in a steady diet by his commanders and staff. Nobody knew any exact figures, but it was clear that he had lost nearly one-third of his army. In Cleburne’s and Brown’s divisions, his largest and best, casualties were nearly 50 percent. In all, about seven thousand men were killed, wounded, or missing. How many were actually dead no one would know. The official records say that 1,750 were buried on the battlefield, while hundreds of others were carried away by friends and family, some dead, some dying. Nevertheless, Hood sought to put the best possible face on it, there in Mrs. Sykes’s yard, issuing a General Field Order to be read to each regiment:
GENERAL FIELD ORDERS, HDQRS. ARMY OF TENNESSEE
No. 38
Near Franklin, December 1, 1864
The commanding general congratulates the army upon the success achieved yesterday over our enemy by their heroic and determined courage. The enemy have been sent in disorder and confusion to Nashville, and while we lament the fall of many gallant officers and brave men, we have shown to our countrymen that we can carry any position occupied by the enemy.
By command of General Hood:
A.P. MASON, Assistant Adjutant-General.
Hood fired off other orders that morning amid the Franklin carnage. First, he told his corps commanders to have the field scoured for loose weapons—of which there were thousands—which were to be stacked for collection by the quartermaster. Next, he ordered them to prepare at once a list of all the dead and wounded field-grade officers. Finally, he issued his marching orders. Stewart, whose cut-up corps had occupied the Confederate right, was to cross the Harpeth skirting Franklin, march toward Nashville, and bivouac north of the town. Lee and Cheatham were to march their divisions straight up the ColumbiaFranklin Pike, right past the scene of the crime, and cross the river at the bridges on the other side of town.
This last order had such a dampening effect on the morale of the Army of Tennessee that Captain Robert Banks, an adjutant in Walthall’s division, was inspired to say, “Nothing better calculated to affright and demoralize an army could have been devised than the exhibition of the dead, as they appeared to those who viewed them there in marching by the gin-house that morning.” Wondering why the men of Cheatham and Lee were not detoured around the “sickening, blood-curdling, fear-kindling sight,” Banks described the scene as a living hell.
It was in this putrid and ghastly atmosphere that Hood had to make yet another decision—what to do next? There were not many options. He could admit he was beaten and turn around and march out of Tennessee. But he feared if he did, his army would disintegrate; and it probably would have. He could bypass Nashville and move up through Kentucky toward the Ohio, but, by leaving Thomas and the ever strengthening federal army behind him, he knew he would find few recruits in either Kentucky or Tennessee, and those were what he now needed most. He had to have a decisive victory, and soon, if more men were to be rallied to the cause. So Hood, ever the fighter, scorner of defeat, determined to fight it out once more. He would bring the army to Nashville, he told his generals, and whip George Thomas to a pulp.
15
Nashville, Tennessee
The men John Bell Hood left buried on the plain before Franklin signified another kind of grim statistic. Never in any single-day battle during the entire war had that many Confederate soldiers been slain. The number of Hood’s dead was greater than the number of Confederates killed at First and Second Bull Run or at Fredericksburg, Antietam, Chancellorsville, Shiloh, Vicksburg, Chattanooga, Spottsylvania, or Cold Harbor. Only during the prolonged two-day slaughter at Chickamauga, the bloody Seven Days battles around Richmond in 1862, Hood’s various sorties at Atlanta, the entire Wilderness Campaign, and the three-day holocaust at Gettysburg did the number of Confederate killed exceed that of the Army of Tennessee that short afternoon at Franklin. In fact, Hood’s losses were double those of George Pickett’s famed charge at the height of the Gettysburg campaign. To add to the misery quotient, on no single-day battlefield of the war had so many generals been killed.
Just how much of this Hood absorbed as he rode the long dusty road up to Nashville is hard to assess from his initial report to Confederate Secretary of War James A. Seddon
:
HEADQUARTERS ARMY OF TENNESSEE
six miles from Nashville, on the Franklin Pike
December 3, 1864
Hon. J.A. Seddon:
About 4 P.M. November 30 we attacked the enemy at Franklin and drove them from their center lines of temporary works into their inner lines, which they evacuated during the night, leaving their dead and wounded in our possession, and retired to Nashville, closely pursued by our cavalry. We captured several stand of colors and about 1,000 prisoners. Our troops fought with great gallantry. We have to lament the loss of many gallant officers and brave men. Major-General Cleburne, Brig. Gens. John Adams, Gist, Strahl and Granbury were killed. Maj. Gen. John C. Brown, Brigadier-Generals Carter, Manigault, Quarles, Cockrell and Scott were wounded. Brigadier-General Gordon was captured.
J.B. Hood
general
In a campaign filled with understatement, this dispatch augurs with the best, prompting one sour historian to brand Hood as a “pathological liar.” While that would seem excessive, there is no doubt he was seeking to put the best possible face on what had happened to his army at Franklin. His lack of mention of overall casualty figures could have been that, because there were so many, he actually did not yet know them. Seddon and the Confederate officials in Richmond were alarmed and appalled at what Hood did report, however, and apparently wired him back for more information because two days later, on December 5, he sent another dispatch to the secretary of war, which stated: “Our loss of officers in the battle of Franklin, on the 30th, was excessively large in proportion to the loss of men.” Furthermore, he issued a directive to all his commanders to immediately report to him how many stands of colors had been lost during the battle and which regiments they were from; armed with that information, he wired Richmond: “The enemy claim that we lost thirty colors in the fight at Franklin. We lost thirteen, capturing nearly the same number. The men who bore ours were killed on and within the enemy’s interior line of works.” Again, he was trying to put a good face on bad news. In fact, the infantry had captured only a handful of federal colors, but Forrest’s cavalry, in the course of its running battles, acquired a larger number of Union cavalry colors, and Hood disingenuously decided to include those in his report to his superiors.