Franklin, 30 November 1864

The battle, stage by stage

1. 30 November 1864, about 2:30–3:45 PM

   Hood looks down from Winstead Hill

   Schofield's army reached Franklin before dawn after slipping past the Confederates at Spring Hill. With the Harpeth River bridges unusable, his men spent the day digging a crescent of earthworks around the southern edge of town, from the river east of the Lewisburg Pike, across the Columbia Pike just south of the Carter House, and west past the Carter's Creek Pike to the river again, while engineers repaired the bridges and the wagon trains crossed. Two brigades of Wagner's division (Lane and Conrad) were left in a weak forward line about half a mile out; Colonel Emerson Opdycke refused to join them and halted his brigade behind the Carter House. On Winstead Hill, about two miles south, Hood studied the line and, over the objections of Forrest, Cheatham and Cleburne, ordered a frontal attack. Cheatham's corps formed astride the Columbia Pike and Stewart's corps moved to the right through woods and fields toward the Lewisburg Pike; Lee's corps was still on the road from Spring Hill.

2. About 4:00 PM

   Two miles of open ground

   At about 4 o'clock a signal flag on Winstead Hill started the advance: about 20,000 men of eighteen brigades, flags uncased and bands reportedly playing, walked north across almost two miles of open, gently rising farmland on a still Indian-summer afternoon, with only about an hour of daylight left. Cleburne's division went forward east of the Columbia Pike and Brown's west of it; French, Walthall and Loring of Stewart's corps came on to their right, Loring's men passing the McGavock house, Carnton, beside the Lewisburg Pike. Bate, on the far left, had farther to go toward the Carter's Creek Pike. Because the Harpeth River bent in on the east, the Confederate front narrowed from more than two miles to under one as it closed on the works. Union guns in Fort Granger, across the river, opened on the right of the advance.

3. About 4:15–4:30 PM

   Wagner's brigades swept away

   Lane's and Conrad's men, in shallow rifle pits on a low ridge astride the pike, fired a volley or two and were flanked on the east and broken in the center, Granbury's Texas brigade reportedly first through. Wagner's order to fall back came too late, and the two brigades ran for the main line with Cleburne's and Brown's men on their heels, the cry 'Go into the works with them!' passing along the Confederate ranks. Hundreds were captured. Because the defenders in the main works held their fire so as not to hit their own men, the attackers covered the last half mile almost unchecked. To the east, Loring's division came past Carnton under fire from Fort Granger and the batteries on the Union left.

4. About 4:30–4:45 PM

   Breakthrough at the Carter House and the gin

   Mixed with Wagner's fleeing men, Cleburne's and Brown's divisions broke into the main line on both sides of the Columbia Pike, around the Carter farm office and smokehouse and at the salient built around Fountain Carter's cotton gin. Parts of Strickland's and Reilly's brigades gave way, the 1st Kentucky battery was briefly overrun, and a gap a few hundred yards wide opened in the center. Cleburne, on foot after two horses were shot under him, was killed near the gin; Granbury fell nearby. French's and Walthall's men struck the line east of the gin, while on the far right Loring's division was stopped by canister, rifle fire and a sharpened hedge of Osage orange in front of Stiles's Indiana regiments. The Carter and Lotz families sheltered in the Carter cellar.

5. About 4:45–5:00 PM

   Opdycke's counterattack

   Without waiting for orders, Opdycke led his brigade forward from its rest behind the Carter House into the gap, joined by rallied men of other regiments; IV Corps commander David S. Stanley, who rode in with them, was wounded. In a short, savage fight around the house, the farm buildings and the gin, hand to hand with bayonets, clubbed muskets and pistols, the Federals drove the Confederates back over the works, retaking the Kentucky guns. By one count Opdycke's men took 394 prisoners and nine flags; Major Arthur MacArthur of the 24th Wisconsin was badly wounded. The Confederates clung to the outer face of the works and the ditch in front of them, in places only the parapet between the two sides.

6. About 5:00–9:00 PM

   Along the works in the dark

   The killing went on long after sunset. Confederate brigades charged the works again and again, by some accounts a dozen or more times in places, while men crouched in the ditch fired across the parapet at point-blank range. Bate's division, late into position, attacked the Union right along the Carter's Creek Pike and across the Bostick farm and was repulsed; Chalmers's dismounted cavalry pressed the far right. Edward Johnson's division of Lee's corps came up the Columbia Pike and attacked west of it at about 7 o'clock, also without success. East of the Harpeth, Wilson's Union cavalry drove back Forrest's attempt to turn the flank. Generals Gist, Strahl, Adams and John C. Carter fell in these attacks, and Gordon was captured.

7. 30 Nov, 11 PM – 1 Dec 1864, 2 AM

   Withdrawal to Nashville

   Schofield had never meant to stay. Beginning at about 11 PM, with skirmishers left in the works, his divisions slipped out brigade by brigade, marched through the dark streets of Franklin, crossed the repaired Harpeth bridges under the guns of Fort Granger and took the pike north toward Brentwood; Grose's brigade was the last off the line, and the army was clear by about 2 AM, reaching Nashville and Thomas's army on 1 December. The Confederates found the works empty at first light. Around the Carter House and the gin lay thousands of dead and wounded; Carnton became a hospital, and on its back porch lay the bodies of four of the six Confederate generals killed. Captain Tod Carter, mortally wounded within sight of his family's house, was carried home and died there on 2 December. Hood followed to Nashville, where his army was routed on 15–16 December.