John Bell Hood: The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of a Confederate General

by Hood, Stephen

  Schofield continued:

  The Confederate cause had reached a condition closely verging on desperation, and Hood’s commander-in-chief had called upon him to undertake operations which he thought appropriate to such an emergency. Franklin was the last opportunity he could expect to have to reap the results hoped for in his aggressive movement. He must strike there, as best he could, or give up his cause as lost. I believe, therefore, that there can be no room for doubt that Hood’s assault was entirely justifiable.60

  Hood’s decision to attack at Franklin was based solely upon the unique circumstances presented to him and the desperate state of the war, as he perceived it. Contrary to the accepted portrayal of Hood’s state of mind on November 30, anger, vengeance, or any other ulterior motive had nothing to do with his decision to attack Schofield’s lines at Franklin.

  The mindset of military men of the 19th century is understood and well explained by the respected author and military historian Winston Groom, who wrote,

  Great infantry or cavalry charges are as often remembered for the ones that failed as for the ones that succeeded. On July 3, 1863, General Robert E. Lee sent 15,000 infantry under George Pickett charging into the Union lines at Gettysburg. The resulting failure presaged the decline of the Confederacy. A decade earlier, England’s Lord Cardigan had dispatched his light brigade of cavalry to charge against a strong Russian position during the Crimean War, and nearly all were killed or wounded; this became the stuff that poems were made of. In World War I, millions of soldiers were killed in frontal infantry assaults; it was likewise with the Japanese in World War II, who died by the tens of thousands in pointless banzai charges.

  The psychology of the tactic was a leftover from the days of the rock, the club, the spear, and the sword, in which battles were won or lost in close combat with one side ultimately overwhelming and terrifying the other by dint of sheer audacity and ferocity. With the evolution of gunpowder and weapons of distance—rifles, cannons, and the like—personal physical prowess had become less and less important. Still, as military scholars continued to emphasize, most wars are fought based upon the strategies and tactics gleaned from the previous one, yet men commanding warriors of the nineteenth and even twentieth century were slow to understand this.61

  Civil War history is replete with testimony of soldiers whose courage and ardor surpassed their instincts for self-protection and survival. Southern soldiers were especially motivated by their view that the Northerners were invaders and occupiers. By November of 1864, the soldiers of the Army of Tennessee, defeated or stalemated in every major battle except Chickamauga in September of 1863, and constantly forced to yield territory because of the numerical superiority of the enemy, were in a do-or-die state of mind. They had finally cornered their enemy at Franklin against a swollen river and revenge was in their hearts.

  According to the “The Battle of Franklin’s” narrator, “In seventeen separate attacks, according to one Federal witness, John Bell Hood sacrificed his men.” Hood issued or approved only two attack orders that afternoon. The first was the general assault by the army, and the second (technically ordered by Cheatham) was the night attack by Edward Johnson’s division, which had arrived from Spring Hill after the main army assault. The “seventeen separate attacks” stated in the film script presumably came from a wounded Yankee soldier who later wrote that while he lay injured in the trench, he heard the shouts of attacking Rebels 17 times. If this number is correct, what the Union soldier heard was 17 separate attacks by various Confederate regiments—some or many of which were different regiments attacking various portions of the Federal lines multiple times. The wounded Federal, or course, was not physically situated to definitively state what took place. To claim that Hood personally ordered 17 attacks is not only unwarranted, but also misleading and unsupported by any known historical record. With Hood at his headquarters more than a mile away near Winstead Hill, and with much of the battle occurring after dark, he would have been in no position to order attacks by specific regiments or brigades.62

  Simple human logic and survival instinct dictated that the soldiers withdraw after the first few attempts to storm Schofield’s works failed, but their patriotism and courage, coupled with what they knew was at stake, forced them repeatedly forward and contributed to the horrible casualty toll. The intensity with which so many of the Confederates fought was perhaps best described by Capt. Daniel Turney of the 2nd Kentucky (Confederate) Infantry at the battle of Murfreesboro. “As well might you ask the winged lightnings to quit their celestial course or the planetary worlds to change their orbits as to bid the Southern patriot to withdraw from the slaughter of the destroyer of his peace, despoiler of his land and desecrator of his home,” explained Turney, a member of the Kentucky Orphan Brigade, part of the Army of Tennessee. “No; revenge was in his heart and vengeance was in his eye and he sped recklessly on regardless of his own safety’s fate.”63

  Hood fully understood the valor and commitment to honor of the Confederate soldier. “The troops would, I believed, return better satisfied even after defeat if, in grasping at the last straw, they felt that a brave and vigorous effort had been made to save the country from disaster,” explained Hood.

  A Confederate veteran of the battle of Franklin agreed:

  It has been said that the battle of Franklin was bad generalship, and a mistake. It was neither the one nor the other. It was the inevitable. Had Hood failed to attack Thomas here, the Confederate soldier could never have been made to believe that he had not lost his supreme opportunity, and that a beaten, demoralized and routed foe had been let slip from his grasp. It was the crowning wave of Southern valor, endurance and vengeance sweeping northward, that dashed its crest into bloody foam on the breastworks at Franklin; and sixteen days later it was the undertow of defeat that drove it south again, beaten, vanquished and discomfited forever.64

  The late-night reports that reached Hood were nothing but discouraging, and his reaction the next morning when he rode out to inspect the forward lines confirmed his shock and despair at the sheer magnitude of the casualties his army had sustained. “His sturdy visage assumed a melancholy appearance,” recalled one soldier, “and for a considerable time he sat on his horse and wept like a child.”65

  Around midnight, after the fighting at Franklin had died down to fitful firing, senior Southern leaders met to discuss the day’s events. During the meeting, Hood announced his intention to renew the attack the next morning. Thomas Connelly boldly asserted that the decision indicated a “deterioration of Hood’s mental condition” and claimed that he was even “disappointed that he could not renew the attack.” Connelly’s source for these astounding statements is two pages of Hood’s own memoirs that only offer a composed, detailed, reasoned explanation of his limited options after Franklin, and his difficult decision to proceed on to Nashville. In their narrative Five Tragic Hours, Connelly and McDonough proclaimed, “Of course Hood intended to continue the fight,” and was prepared “to renew an assault that would have proved as suicidal as the first attack, and gave orders to do so.”

  Wiley Sword described Hood at this time as “almost savage in his fury” at the lack of success of the battle, citing Henry Field’s 1890 travelogue Bright Skies and Dark Shadows as his source. Field, a New England minister who first visited Franklin in 1889, was of course not present at this command meeting and provided no specific source in his own book. Generals Stephan D. Lee, Frank Cheatham, and A. P. Stewart, however, were all present at the meeting, and none of them mentioned anything about Hood’s specific mood in any of their extensive postwar writings. Field’s credibility nonetheless satisfied Sword, even though the clergyman claimed that the effectively one-armed Hood impossibly “raised his hands, clasping them together” in despair when hearing of the heavy casualties incurred by Cheatham’s corps. As often happens with portrayals of Hood, credible primary sources are disregarded in favor of unlikely secondary sources, especially when they yield to melodrama.66

/>   During the night, two of Lee’s infantry divisions arrived from Columbia, as did all of the army’s nearly 100 artillery pieces. Hood ordered an artillery barrage to commence at daybreak, followed by a renewed infantry attack. The artillery barrage took place, but because of Schofield’s withdrawal that night across the river toward Nashville, no infantry or cavalry operations were initiated.67

  Hood is widely criticized for intending to renew the assault at Franklin. It was impossible for him to know the magnitude of his casualties at the time he announced his intentions, however, and it cannot be assumed that he would have attacked Schofield with the same tactics after learning the extent of his losses when dawn arrived. Considering that Schofield abandoned Franklin during the night, it is nothing more than conjecture to state that Hood would have in fact carried out his plan to renew the attack had the Federals remained in place, or, if an attack had been made, what tactics he would have ultimately employed.

  Most of the Confederate casualties occurred immediately in front of the second of Schofield’s two inner lines, and the Federals were still in possession of the works. It was therefore impossible for Confederate staff officers (or anyone wearing Southern gray) to view and calculate casualties in the dark of night within only short distance of the enemy guns. Although Cheatham and Stewart reported significant losses during the midnight meeting, they could not have known just how badly things had gone for their corps. It wasn’t until morning, after the planned attack had been canceled, that Hood—and everyone else—realized the severity of the Confederate casualties. All Hood and his staff could have seen before darkness, smoke, and haze obscured their visibility was the rout of Wagner’s two brigades and the second enemy line being broken near the Carter House. Most Federal casualties were incurred in Wagner’s division— far behind the high water mark of the Confederate assault, so it is likely that Hood overestimated the magnitude of enemy casualties before nightfall. Schofield ultimately reported 2,300 casualties, including 1,100 missing, but only 189 were officially reported as killed. Modern research, however, has concluded that approximately 400-450 Federals were killed or mortally wounded in the battle. Most of these men were from Wagner’s division and left on the field during Schofield’s nighttime evacuation of Franklin. Most Federal losses were sustained before darkness and smoke obscured the view, while most of the Southern casualties occurred later and in close proximity to the Union lines— the farthest point from Hood’s observation post, initially on the northerly slope of Winstead Hill some two miles away, and later to the Neely house on the Columbia Pike, approximately one mile north of the Carter House.68

  The battle of Franklin ended in a typical Civil War bloodbath, with the attackers sustaining about three casualties to every one suffered by the defenders. What was atypical about Franklin was the concentration of the carnage in terms of time and space. In its intensity, Franklin rivaled any Civil War battle. Scholars have been debating Hood’s assault for decades, and his dilemma that afternoon offers a target-rich environment for critics.

  What is too often downplayed is the desperation of the overall Confederate cause and the short amount of time Hood had to make up his mind at Franklin. As S. A. Cunningham wrote of Hood’s decision, “It was all important to act, if at all, at once.”69

  1 Sherman, Memoirs, 152.

  2 News Herald (Hillsboro, OH), December 23, 1909.

  3 Repeated inquiries by the author to identify who was responsible for the text on the city’s historical sign were unsuccessful.

  4 OR 39, pt. 2, 862.

  5 Wilson, Under the Old Flag, 43.

  6 Jacobson, For Cause and For Country, 203; S. D. Lee letter to John Bell Hood, April 16, 1879, John Bell Hood Personal Papers.

  7 J. P. Young, “Hood’s Failure at Spring Hill,” 36.

  8 Samuel French, Two Wars: An Autobiography of General Samuel G. French (Nashville, TN: published by Confederate Veteran, 1901), 292.

  9 Hood, Advance and Retreat, 293.

  10 Craig L. Symonds, Stonewall of the West: Patrick Cleburne and the Civil War (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1997), 254.

  11 Quoted in Jamie Gillum, Spring Hill: Twenty-Five Hours to Tragedy (Franklin, TN: Jamie Gillum, 2004), 211; Copley, A Sketch of the Battle of Franklin, 34-35.

  12 Jacobson, For Cause and For County, 200.

  13 Connelly, Autumn of Glory, 504. These pages from Hood’s Advance and Retreat (161,162,181, 290, 292, 294, and 297) are reproduced in Appendix 1 for the convenience of the reader.

  14 John McKay, James Bradford, Rebeccah Pawlowski, The Big Book of Civil War Sites: From Fort Sumpter to Appomattox, a Visitors Guide to the History, Personalities, and Places of America’s Battlefields (Guilford, CT: Globe Piquot, 2011), 195.

  15 Steven Woodworth, Jefferson Davis and His Generals: The Failure of Confederate Command in the West (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1990), 299.

  16 Hay, Hood’s Tennessee Campaign, 149.

  17 Wide Awake Films.

  18 Lundberg, The Finishing Stroke, 86; Elliott, Soldier of Tennessee, 237.

  19 Sword, The Confederacy’s Last Hurrah, 156,157,177,179,263; Sword, Courage Under Fire, 199.

  20 Sword, The Confederacy’s Last Hurrah, 179.

  21 McDonough and Connelly, Five Tragic Hours, 59; Wide Awake Films; Elliott, Doctor Quintard, 181.

  22 Jacobson, For Cause and For Country, 254; personal interview with Jacobson, December 11, 2010; Elliott, Soldier of Tennessee, 257.

  23 Lundberg, The Finishing Stroke, 86.

  24 Sword, The Confederacy’s Last Hurrah, 177, 179; OR 45, pt. 1, 731; Buck, Cleburne and His Command, 280. Those two sources simply say where each corps and division was in relation to one another, which is common in all such records dealing with any battle at any location.

  25 Ibid.; OR 45, pt. 1, 742.

  26 Hood, Advance and Retreat, 26-27, 296.

  27 W. A. Washburn, Confederate Veteran, vol. 13 (January 1905), 27.

  28 Jacobson, For Cause and For Country, 379; Horn, The Army of Tennessee, 398; Dyer, The Gallant Hood, 291; Hay, Hood’s Tennessee Campaign, 120.

  29 Sword, The Confederacy’s Last Hurrah, 262.

  30 Hay, Hood’s Tennessee Campaign, 133-134; Symonds, Stonewall of the West, 256.

  31 Wide Awake Films; Horn, The Army of Tennessee, 398.

  32 OR 19, pt. 1, 981.

  33 Hood, Advance and Retreat, 15-18; Richmond Daily Dispatch, August 8, 1863: “The Petersburg Express states that Gen. Hood, of Texas, has been appointed Commander in Chief of all the cavalry in the army of Northern Virginia, and that Generals Stuart and Wade Hampton will rank as MajorGenerals under him.”

  34 Cunningham, Reminiscences of the 41st Tennessee, 96-97.

  35 Cunningham, “The Battle of Franklin,” Confederate Veteran, 101-102.

  36 Hillsboro News Herald (Hillsboro, OH), December 23, 1909.

  37 Cunningham, “The Battle of Franklin,” Confederate Veteran.

  38 Ibid.

  39 Ibid.

  40 Clark, Opdycke’s Tigers, 331.

  41 Watkins, Company Aytch, 201; Dyer, The Gallant Hood, 289.

  42 Ibid.; Cunningham, Reminiscences, 96.

  43 Hay, Hood’s Tennessee Campaign, 134; Hattaway and Jones, How the North Won, 646.

  44 S. D. Lee letter to John Bell Hood, April 16, 1879, John Bell Hood Personal Papers; Horn, Army of Tennessee, 398.

  45 Mauriel Joslyn, A Meteor Shining Brightly: Essay on the Life and Career of Major General Patrick R. Cleburne (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2000), 174.

  46 OR 45, pt. 1, 265; Catherine Merrill, The Soldier of Indiana in the War for the Union, 2 vols. (Merrill and Company, 1889), vol. 2, 764-766; Horn, Army of Tennessee, 398; John M. Schofield, Forty-Six Years in the Army (New York: The Century Company, 1897), 184; OR 45, pt. 1, 124.

  47 Augusta Constitutionalist, December 16, 1864; Jacobson, For Cause and For Country, 257; article in the May 3, 1902 edition of the Atlanta Journal by Army of Tennessee veteran Dr. W. T. Bur
t, formerly of the 46th Georgia Infantry, quoted from his wartime diary of Hood’s final orders at Franklin. Carter House files.

  48 Hay, Hood’s Tennessee Campaign, 130-131.

  49 Sword, The Confederacy’s Last Hurrah, 179, 438; Hood, Advance and Retreat, 291, 329-330.

  50 B. L. Ridley, Battles and Sketches of the Army of Tennessee (Mexico, MO: Missouri Publishing, 1906), 416.

  51 James Wood Baldwin, typescript provided by Jamie Gillum, author and historian of the battle of Spring Hill, Franklin, TN.

  52 Jefferson Davis, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, 2 vols. (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1881), vol. 2, 491.

  53 Sword, The Confederacy’s Last Hurrah, 252; Virgil Murphey diary.

  54 Washington Gardner, letter in Confederate Veteran, vol. I (December PAGE1893), 375.

  55 L. A. Simmons, The History of the 84th Regiment Illinois Volunteers (Macomb, IL: Hampton Brothers, 1866) 112.

  56 “The Battle of Franklin,” The Herald (Cleveland, OH), December 8, 1864.

  57 Clark, Opdycke Tigers, 446-447.

  58 J. K. Merrifield letter, Confederate Veteran, vol. 13 (December 1905), 564.

  59 John M. Schofield letter, Confederate Veteran, vol. 3 (September PAGE1895), 274.