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.”
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