John Bell Hood: The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of a Confederate General
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Contrary to these wholly unfounded assertions, the strategy behind the army’s alignment for the assault at Franklin was quite simple and devoid of any malevolent intent by Hood. As was customary, corps, divisions, and brigades alternated (rotated) their marching order each day. Stewart’s corps had followed Cheatham’s corps on the march from Columbia to Spring Hill on November 29, so it led the army column on the November 30 march to Franklin. As a result, it was the first to arrive at Franklin. Stewart’s vanguard corps, with Cheatham trailing three or four miles behind, was the first to contact the Federal rearguard situated on the southerly slopes of Winstead and Breezy hills.
Rather than assault the defenders, Hood sent Stewart east to flank the enemy and force their withdrawal northward to the main lines at Franklin. After Stewart’s flanking movement compelled the Federals to retreat, Cheatham’s trailing corps continued up the road unmolested and assumed a position on the Confederate left (Stewart already held the right). Brown’s division led Cheatham’s column on the march from Spring Hill and so arrived at Franklin ahead of Cleburne’s division, with William Bate’s division bringing up the rear. On the previous day’s march from Columbia to Spring Hill, Cleburne had been in the lead, Bate was second, and Brown third. The customary daily march rotation of the divisions placed Brown’s division in the lead on November 30, followed by Cleburne and then Bate. With Stewart already positioned to the east, occupying the right half of the Confederate formation from the river to near the Columbia Pike, Cheatham’s arriving corps necessarily constituted the left half of the Confederate front line, with its right flank connecting with the left of Stewart’s corps.
In summary, the first of Hood’s two corps (Stewart’s) arrived and deployed to the right, and the second corps (Cheatham’s) arrived next and deployed to the left. Cheatham’s three divisions, like the army’s two corps, simply deployed right to left in the order they arrived from Spring Hill. Hood’s positioning of his corps and divisions at Franklin was consistent with usual and customary practices of his time. To assert otherwise without credible contemporary evidence is simply wrong.25
Basic research alone dictates why the army was aligned as it was, but critics need not have looked for any sources beyond Hood himself, who correctly recognized the Federal center (Gen. George D. Wagner’s advanced positions) as the weakest point in the Federal line, and thus offered the key to victory. Hood would have wanted to spearhead the assault with his most accomplished and successful troops (Patrick Cleburne’s division, which included Hiram Granbury’s brigade of mostly Texans; Hood was familiar with soldiers from Texas from his service in Virginia). As luck would have it, Cleburne and his men took up a position directly opposite that weak section of the enemy line.
Comparing Franklin and Gaines’s Mill (part of the 1862 Seven Days’ battles) in his memoirs, Hood saw similarities between Schofield’s position at Franklin and Gen. Fitz John Porter’s reinforced lines at Gaines’s Mill. At the latter location, Hood led his Texas brigade in a frontal assault against entrenched enemy lines. Robert E. Lee’s prior attacks there had failed, in part because the men were shot down while stopping to reload. This time, Hood’s men advanced with the bayonet and, enjoying some flank protection due to the topography, pierced the Union line and helped collapse the entire front. At Franklin, Hood instructed Cleburne to charge the forward Federal lines without firing, overrun the lines, and follow the retreating enemy into the works. Hood’s tactics at Franklin were essentially identical to those he employed in the stunning victory at Gaines’s Mill, and Cleburne followed Hood’s directive explicitly.26
Before the attack, recalled W. A. Washburn of the 1st Arkansas Infantry, “Gen. Cleburne rode along the line, cautioning us to save ammunition and ‘use the bayonet.’” However, unlike the enemy at Gaines’s Mill, the Federals stood firm. “We had never seen the Federals fail to run before under like circumstances,” Washburn admitted. Although the positioning of Cleburne’s division was a result of their sequence of arrival at Franklin, Hood would have been satisfied that his best troops and commanders were occupying the position at Franklin identical to that which had been occupied at Gaines’s Mill by Hood’s Texas brigade, Lee’s hardest-fighting and most accomplished troops.27
Hood is frequently criticized for not allowing Nathan Bedford Forrest to attempt a flanking maneuver around Franklin to cut off Schofield’s escape route to Nashville. Historians across the love-hate spectrum almost universally criticize Hood for rejecting the legendary cavalryman’s proposal. Franklin historian Eric Jacobson, a generally objective and keen observer, believed that “Hood made woeful use” of Forrest by denying his flanking request and splitting the cavalry during the assault. On the other end of the spectrum, Hood critic Wiley Sword strongly condemned Hood’s rejection of the flank option.28
In The Confederacy’s Last Hurrah, Sword claimed that Hollow Tree Gap—the point where the Federal escape to Nashville could be cut off—was as close to Hood’s forces as to Schofield’s. “Of specific use to Forrest was Hollow Tree Gap, a defile in the range of hills through which the Nashville Pike passed, only about four and a half miles distant from Hood’s present position,” explained Sword. “Here the Yankees might be cut off from Nashville, urged Forrest, since Hood’s army was as close to this gap as was Schofield’s at Franklin.” In fact, Hollow Tree Gap (“Holly Tree Gap” on modern maps) is significantly farther from Hood’s position than it was from Schofield’s. On a direct route from Winstead Hill through the very center of the Federal lines between the Carter House and Carter cotton gin house, the distance to Hollow Tree Gap is about seven miles. From the extreme right of Hood’s army’s position, along the bank of the Harpeth River, the distance is slightly shorter as the crow flies, but this direct route passed through the Federal positions around Fort Granger. If infantry or cavalry from any point along the Confederate lines had attempted to march to Hollow Tree Gap, the route would have had to have been circuitous in a northeasterly direction, a distance of at least ten to twelve miles, in order to avoid Schofield’s artillery at Fort Granger. To accomplish such a flanking movement, Forrest’s cavalry and his requested 2,000 infantry would have had to ford the rushing rain-swollen Harpeth River, march cross-country 10 to 12 miles in clear view of the Federals, meet up with heavy resistance from 5,000 Yankee cavalrymen and at least one 4,500-man infantry division, all in a matter of three or four hours.
Sword (and other writers) disregarded the large enemy force available to resist Forrest by writing that Hood “easily could have outflanked Schofield from Franklin by crossing the Harpeth River at Hughes’s Ford or various other sites.” By this time, most of James Wilson’s 5,000 cavalry had consolidated at Franklin and held a strong position on a high bluff overlooking McGavock Ford, the nearest possible crossing point on the Harpeth. Any unmolested crossing of the river by infantry would have been at Hughes Ford, more than a mile farther south of Franklin, which in turn would have added even more time to any attempted flanking movement. The functional distance to Hollow Tree Gap for Hood’s forces was at least double, and most likely triple, the distance from Schofield’s lines. Sword’s unequivocal statement that the Confederates and the Federals were equidistant from the point where Schofield’s retreat could be blocked is patently wrong. This misleading information makes Hood look ignorant, incompetent, or worse, by lending validity to Forrest’s impracticable proposal. Additionally, Sword and many other historians overlooked the diminishing daylight and the treacherously high river that had trapped much of Schofield’s army in Franklin. A simple question settles the matter: If the river was so easy to ford, why did Schofield stop and entrench at Franklin rather than continue to march his column north to Nashville?29
Some authors have made the bewildering case for flanking Schofield out of Franklin, as if gaining the town offered some strategic benefit to the Confederates. Hood had no interest in occupying the town; his goal was to destroy Schofield, who was trapped inside Franklin. According to Thomas Hay, “Hood s
hould not have attacked at Franklin, but should have continued his flanking movements and forced Schofield out of that place by himself crossing the Harpeth River.” Cleburne biographer Craig Symonds echoed Hay when he wrote that a flanking movement across the river would “force a Federal evacuation.” These suggestions that Hood could have forced an evacuation are bewildering, since it is well known that the Federals were trapped with their back to a river, and that Hood was attempting to destroy Schofield’s army, not seize and occupy the town of Franklin.30
The producers of “The Battle of Franklin” documentary also missed the point of Hood’s attack when the narrator stated that Schofield’s retreat from Franklin “would have happened without a Confederate attack.” No contemporary record by any Confederate or Federal even suggested that the contending armies had an interest in occupying Franklin. Hood was attempting to destroy the Federal army, not seize and occupy a strategically insignificant spot on a Tennessee map. Stanley Horn, in The Army of Tennessee, went so far as to claim that Schofield was merely an obstacle to Hood’s march toward Nashville, telling his readers that “if Hood could have restrained his headlong assault that evening, he would have found that the enemy was out of his way.”31
How quickly could Forrest have moved a division of infantry to Hollow Tree Gap? One of the fastest documented marches by an infantry division during the Civil War was conducted by Gen. A. P. Hill, who pushed his “Light Division” from Harpers Ferry to Sharpsburg on September 17, 1862, roughly 17 miles in seven hours. Hill’s troops marched unmolested along a well-maintained road. Even if a flanking column at Franklin managed to match Hill’s pace from Harpers Ferry, Forrest and his infantry would have reached Hollow Tree Gap long after nightfall.32
There is another aspect to this flanking operation that is also routinely overlooked: Hood’s extensive knowledge of cavalry operations. He gained several years of experience in the saddle leading up to the Civil War, including combat as a cavalry commander with the elite U.S. Second Cavalry in Texas. Hood was also ordered to West Point to serve as chief instructor of cavalry in 1860 (which as earlier noted, he turned down). After enlisting in the Confederate army in 1861, Hood was assigned by Robert E. Lee to organize and train cavalry units on the Virginia peninsula. One Southern newspaper even reported (incorrectly) that Hood had been appointed to lead the Army of Northern Virginia’s cavalry. Hood had led brigades and divisions and corps of infantry in campaigns and battles across several states. He also fully understood cavalry and its uses, capabilities, and limitations. Forrest could never have flanked Schofield before darkness, and Hood (unlike modern commentators) knew it.33
Contrary to the common allegation that Hood sought to punish his army at Franklin for allowing the Federals to escape at Spring Hill, eyewitness accounts of Hood’s demeanor immediately prior to the battle offer a starkly different portrait. S. A. Cunningham of the 41st Tennessee Infantry (later founder and editor of Confederate Veteran) was standing near Hood on Winstead Hill as the army commander contemplated the attack. In his memoirs, Cunningham recalled a composed and pensive commander immediately before the final decision was made to assault Schofield:
While making ready for the charge, General Hood rode up to our lines, having left his escort and staff in the rear. He remained at the front in plain view of the enemy for, perhaps, half an hour making a most careful survey of their lines… . Hood rode up to General S. D. Lee, and after shaking hands, he gave orders which we could not hear. But, from his gestures it was clear that the word was forward [emphasis in original].34
Cunningham wrote a slightly different version in a later article in Confederate Veteran:
I happened, though in the line of battle (as I was “right guide” to my regiment), to be close to where Gen. Hood halted his staff and rode along to the top of the hill, and with his field glasses surveyed the situation. It was an extraordinary moment. Those of us who were near could see, as private soldiers rarely did, the position of both armies. Although Franklin was some two miles in the distance, the plain presented a scene of great commotion. But I was absorbed in the one man whose mind was deciding the fate of thousands. With an arm and a leg in the grave, and with the consciousness that he had not until within a couple of days won the confidence which his army had in his predecessor, he had now a very trying ordeal to pass through. It was all-important to act, if at all, at once. He rode to Stephen D. Lee, the nearest of his subordinate generals, and, shaking hands with him cordially, announced his decision to make an immediate charge.35
In another interview, Cunningham recalled, “I watched him closely while there, meditating upon his responsibility.”36
Hood had witnessed his army’s enthusiasm on the march from Columbia to Spring Hill, and may well have believed that the same fervor would be shown at Franklin. Of the troops’ morale, Cunningham wrote:
The march to Spring Hill, where the Federal retreat was so nearly cut off, a failure for which it was understood General Hood was not to blame, created an enthusiasm for him equal to that entertained for Stonewall Jackson after his extraordinary achievements. The soldiers were full of ardor, and confident of success. They had unbounded faith in General Hood, whom they believed would achieve a victory that would give us Nashville.37
Cunningham reported that although much of the rank and file of the Army of Tennessee was initially upset at the removal of Joseph Johnston, the men as a whole later embraced Hood. “So devoted to Johnston were his men that the presence and immediate command of Gen. [Robert E.] Lee would not have been accepted without complaint,” explained Cunningham, who went on to add that the men “were not reconciled to the change until the day before the battle of Franklin.”38
The Confederates saw evidence of the Federal desperation during the pursuit from Spring Hill to Franklin. “The next morning,” Cunningham wrote, “as we marched in quick time toward Franklin, we were confirmed in our impressions of federal alarm. I counted on the way thirty four wagons that had been abandoned on the smooth turnpike. In some instances whole teams of mules had been killed to prevent their capture.” Cunningham described the spirit of the army while forming for the charge. “The soldiers, as a general thing, seemed to have an unprecedented determination and, indeed, were confident of success,” he confirmed, adding that “the highest eulogies were heaped upon General Hood. It was believed that he would achieve victories unprecedented in the past.”39
Federal Col. Emerson Opdycke, who led a brigade of seven regiments at Franklin, similarly observed the degree of desperation that had gripped the retreating Federal army under Schofield. “I was informed that our situation was critical, and the greatest efforts would be needed,” wrote Colonel Opdycke. As Federal stragglers began filling the road, Opdycke observed that most of the men were new recruits hauling “immense knapsacks” and that they seemed indifferent to the very real risk of being captured. Opdycke came up with the solution: “I ordered each of my three lines to bring along every man at the point of the bayonet, and to cut off the knapsacks. These orders were obeyed rigidly, and probably less than 20 of our men escaped our vigilance and were captured. I am sure we saved five hundred men from capture by these extreme measures.”40
The debris observed by the pursuing Confederates spoke for itself. Sam Watkins of the 1st Tennessee Infantry recalled the Rebel army being cheered by locals along the roadside, who told the pursuing gray clad soldiers that the Yankees were just ahead. Like Cunningham, Watkins also observed abandoned wagons with teams of mules shot and bayoneted while still in their harnesses to avoid their capture. “All that we want to do now is catch the blue coated rascals,” confessed Watkins, and “we all want to see them surrender.” Captain W. O. Dodd of Chalmers’ division recalled that “each man felt a pride in wiping out the stain” of the failure at Spring Hill.41
Another Confederate wrote that the spirits of the army “were animated by encouraging orders from General Hood who held out to them the prospect that at any moment he might call upon them to deal the e
nemy a decisive blow.” Modern authors appropriately provided extensive quotes of soldiers who felt fear and despair prior to the attack at Franklin. These are understandable human emotions not uncommon among men about to assault a determined veteran enemy. However, these same authors rarely provided contemporary testimony that demonstrates the confidence and resolve many soldiers in the Army of Tennessee felt at the prospect of finally destroying their longtime antagonists. “Hood was not to be frightened,” explained Cunningham, “and his men were never more in the spirit to conquer or die, to make Tennessee indeed ‘a grave or a free home.’”42
From Winstead and Breezy hills, two miles south of the main Federal lines, the soldiers and their commanders could see the trapped chaos that was Schofield’s army in Franklin. While some were deployed for battle, others were quickly crossing the Harpeth River on a hastily repaired bridge in their desperate attempt to reach Nashville farther north. There were only a few hours of daylight left, after which any chance for a successful assault, flanking, or delaying action would be lost. The moment of decision was at hand, and it was at this time that Hood decided to assault the enemy lines and crush Schofield against the swollen river. Hood called his key officers together and issued the appropriate orders. While Stewart’s and Cheatham’s corps were on hand and ready, Stephen D. Lee’s entire corps, with 90 percent of the army’s artillery, was still miles away. Two of Lee’s three divisions and the bulk of the army’s artillery would not arrive on the field until long after dark. Despite this fact, some historians condemned Hood for not waiting for Lee. Thomas Hay described Hood’s decision to attack without awaiting artillery as unwise, stating that Hood “was unwilling to wait for his guns.”43