Chapter XXV: The Beginning of Dark Days

Returning from the Johnsonville raid, we met the army of General Hood. We were ordered to take the advance, and on November 19, 1864, our command was assembled at Florence, Ala., on the north bank of the Tennessee River, at the foot of the great “Mussel Shoals.” General Forrest was placed in command of all the cavalry, and we began the advance on Nashville. During this march I suffered some of the severest hardships of my life.

Gen. George H. Thomas, one of the ablest of the Union commanders, had collected a large force of all arms, and was confronting Hood at every turn of the route. We, in advance, came in contact with his cavalry a number of times, and I had many thrilling and narrow escapes. General Wilson, of the Union Army, had a well-equipped cavalry force of 10,000 men, and Forrest had to contend with this force with about half its number.

We kept the Union column moving backward day by day until we reached Spring Hill, Tenn. Here we came in contact with Slocum’s Corps; and after a severe fight, we pushed them back into the town, and had that column of the enemy separated from their main force, which had retreated on Franklin, Tenn., a short distance beyond.

Here a great mistake was made by some one other than General Forrest. It is not my purpose to criticize, but I shall state facts and let the reader judge for himself.

At Spring Hill night came on soon after or about the time the battle closed, and Forrest moved his command around parallel to the pike that connected Spring Hill and Franklin.

Hood’s main army came up after nightfall.

Thomas had pushed on to Franklin, leaving Slocum and Wilson to hold the Confederates in check at Spring Hill until night, when they were to withdraw under cover of darkness.

I have no personal knowledge of what took place on that night between our commanders, but it was current talk, and has been published many times since the war, that General Forrest sent a message to General Hood urging that either our command or an infantry division be ordered to take position across the Franklin and Spring Hill Pike to prevent the uniting of the two Union columns. That this was not done was a blunder that laid the foundation for disaster to Hood’s army.

While I do not know what passed on that fateful night in the high councils of our leaders, I do know that, as Forrest’s command lay through the long, uneasy night along that pike, we plainly heard the artillery and wagons of the enemy’s army marching out of Spring Hill and away from sure defeat and capture, which would have been their fate had they kept their position until daylight of another day.

The next day General Hood arrayed his army in battle order under the expectancy that the enemy would make a stand at Franklin.

After the lucky escape from Spring Hill, our foe utilized to the fullest possible extent every natural advantage in preparing for a defense at Franklin. Earthworks were hurriedly thrown up, and every house and fence was intelligently utilized to retard the momentum of an open attack.

The soldier who undertakes to tell what he actually sees of a battle as extensive and terrible and bloody as was the battle of Franklin has but little to tell, and so I shall attempt no description; but that dreadful conflict of November 30, 1864, is known to every student of history as one of the great disasters of the Confederacy. There were a greater number of Confederate officers killed at Franklin than at Shiloh, Chickamauga, or Gettysburg, to say nothing of the bloody and one-sided slaughter of our men.

I never shall forget the gloom that settled over the ranks of our beaten troops. The blunder at Spring Hill seemed to smite the hearts of our men as they contemplated its deadly cost; and yet that great mass of men, with embittered souls, prepared to press onward.

The night following the battle the Union Army withdrew to Nashville and entrenched for the expected assault.

Though vastly outnumbered, Hood moved at once and invested the city of Nashville.

From the 2d to the 15th of December we held the enemy within his fortifications. On the 15th he moved out and tried in vain to break our line. On the 16th he renewed the sortie with increased masses of troops, and our left wing collapsed and forced Hood to retreat. And what a retreat! No one who participated in it can ever forget the suffering and hopeless anguish of that weary, running march.

The cause for which this grand army had so nobly fought, tottering toward its every battle field, was now living only by the gameness of its defenders.

Defeated and shattered amid the desolation of winter, hungry, half-naked, and foot-sore, this suffering host turned sadly from the capital city of one of its own loyal States, and followed its haggard gaze toward the deeper South, with the benumbed feeling that somewhere, somehow it would make another stand, if only to give the last impulse of its fast-ebbing energies to the spirit of its dying cause and perish with its hopes.

General Forrest was ordered to cover the retreat, and the brigade of General Walthall’s Mississippians was assigned as his infantry support.

Knowing our sad plight, flushed with victory, and eager for the finish, the Union Army started in pursuit with 10,000 well-mounted and well-equipped cavalry under General Wilson.

Forrest had about 5,000 cavalry, and Walthall’s men numbered about 2,800; but as they were almost destitute of shoes and clothing of every kind, we had to carry many of the men in the wagon train, using them only when we were forced to stop and fight.

Hood had planned to get to the Tennessee River, where we had a pontoon bridge, at Mussel Shoals.

With what consummate genius General Forrest kept the ravenous foe from the heels of that almost helpless host as it marched and stumbled and fell forward toward its goal of temporary safety, is a matter of record and need not be here set forth.

After many days of rear-guard fighting, in which the skill and daring of General Forrest parried and blocked and retarded the swiftness of our pursuers, we succeeded in holding the enemy in check until the gray remnant of Hood’s once magnificent army crossed the Tennessee at Bainbridge, Ala. The pontoon bridge was quickly destroyed, and the Union Army, foiled in further pursuit, turned down the river to Eastport, to which place boats brought supplies and troops.

Here General Wilson prepared to march against Selma, Ala., then the “heart of the Confederacy.”