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

by Hood, Stephen

  Corps commander Stephen D. Lee arrived from Columbia about the time Hood was departing Rippavilla. Lee wrote the following in a postwar letter to Hood: “I was careful and made careful notes as to events & time to impress permanently in my mind, and particularly on my arrival at Spring Hill the morning of the enemy’s escape, when the blunder was apparent and your well planned movement had come to naught in the execution at the critical moment [emphasis in the original].” Lee recalled Hood’s “chagrin and mortification” at what had occurred the previous night, but if Hood was angry to the point of rage or incoherence (as later writers who were not present would allege), Lee failed to note it. Instead, Hood announced, “They have eluded me,” and went on to inform Lee, “I have put the troops in motion.”6

  The only written account that claimed Hood was angry at any point on November 30 entered the historical record more than four decades after the event as tertiary evidence. Although such provenance and the total absence of any corroboration would normally raise serious doubt as to its credibility, this is the sole written source historians routinely cite to make the claim that Hood was incoherently angry on the day of the battle of Franklin. It is difficult to find a book or article on Franklin that does not include the famous description of Hood as being “wrathy as a rattlesnake” on the morning of the battle. This quotation is attributed to Gen. John Brown, and although conveyed into the historical record via a lengthy and multi-source route, its accuracy has never been questioned.

  The supposed Brown quote comes from a 1908 magazine article by Army of Tennessee veteran J. P. Young. In the article, Young recounts a conversation with Maj. Joseph Vaulx of Cheatham’s staff during which Vaulx claimed that Brown told him the following:

  General Hood is mad about the enemy getting away last night, and he is going to charge the blame of it on somebody. He is wrathy as a rattlesnake this morning, striking at everybody. As he passed along to the front a while ago he rode up to me and said, “General Brown, in the movement today I wish you to bear in mind this military principle: that when a pursuing army comes up with the retreating enemy he must be immediately attacked. If you have a brigade in front as advance guard, order its commander to attack as soon as he comes up with him. If you have a regiment in advance and it comes up with the enemy, give the colonel orders to attack him; if there is but a company in advance, and if it overtakes the entire Yankee army, order the captain to attack it forthwith; and if anything blocks the road in front of you today, don’t stop a minute, but turn out into the fields or woods and move up to the front.”7

  General Samuel French later recalled a brief and unremarkable conversation with Hood during the march from Spring Hill to Franklin, wherein Hood supposedly told him, “Well General French, we have missed the great opportunity of the war.” French, who was not an admirer of Hood and would certainly have noted any aberrational behavior, made no mention of Hood’s demeanor.8

  John C. Brown was the younger brother of a former Tennessee governor and a lawyer from Giles County, Tennessee. He had no formal military training and no military experience prior to the outbreak of the Civil War. Brown enlisted as a private in early 1861 and quickly rose to the rank of brigadier general in only 18 months. A lecture on fundamental offensive warfare principles from the West Point-educated Hood—a combat command veteran of frontier Indian wars, Gaines’s Mill, Second Manassas, Sharpsburg, Gettysburg, and Chickamauga—would not be unusual or inappropriate considering the debacle that had just unfolded the night before in front of Brown’s position at Spring Hill. Other than in a limited tactical sense, it is doubtful that Brown, whether serving in the capacity of brigade or division commander in the Army of Tennessee, had ever commanded troops in pursuit of a retreating enemy. Regardless of his mood, it would be understandable for Hood to want to deliver to Brown—neither a West Pointer nor a Mexican War veteran—a forceful lecture of basic military principles on the pursuit of a retreating foe. It is interesting to note that, just a few hours after his supposed lecture to Brown, Hood refused to order an assault against Schofield’s rearguard positions on the southerly slope of Winstead Hill. When the initial contact was made with the Federal rearguard, Hood resorted once again to a flanking maneuver by sending A. P. Stewart’s corps to the east. His decision forced the Federals to fall back from their positions with few, if any, Confederate casualties.9

  Even if we assume that Hood’s strong directive to Brown on the morning of November 30, recorded more than four decades after the event, is accurate, it is the sole piece of written evidence used by many authors to assert that Hood was enraged—not just in the morning but even as late as 4:00 p.m. when the final decision to attack at Franklin was made. We have established that Hood, like any reasonable commander, would have been justifiably upset that morning, but some authors have embellished Hood’s brief morning anger (which also remains in doubt) by extending it into the late afternoon and even into the early morning hours of the next day, in the complete absence of any evidence to support the assertion.

  On the day of the Franklin battle, Hood would have come in direct contact with dozens of officers and been observed by potentially thousands of soldiers. To date, no contemporary evidence has surfaced that describes Hood as acting unusual that day. Of the approximately 18,000 soldiers who fought at Franklin and survived the war, none other than Brown (as conveyed to Young by Vaulx) recorded that Hood was angry early that morning. Nevertheless, in his acclaimed biography of Patrick Cleburne Stonewall of the West, award-winning historian Craig Symonds wrote that Hood’s anger on November 30 “was the talk of the army.” Symonds made that statement without citing a single primary source. During the council of war meeting at the Harrison house, which is commonly portrayed as contentious, Hood dismissed the advice of his subordinates and decided upon an immediate assault. No one present left a written record of the event that portrayed Hood as enraged. In other words, there is no known contemporary evidence—the foundation of good historiography—sufficient to declare that Hood was enraged, or that his anger was “the talk of the army.” All that can be professed with certainty is that he disagreed with the opinions of his subordinates.10

  If Hood was indeed upset in the early morning of November 30, he was not alone. Chaplain James H. McNeilly of the 49th Tennessee Infantry described Nathan Bedford Forrest’s intense anger during the march to Franklin, stating, “He seemed to be in a rage … his face was livid, his eyes blazed… . He seemed to me the most dangerous animal I ever saw.” John Copley, also of the 49th Tennessee, described Forrest’s reaction to news that the Federals had escaped in much more detail:

  When we discovered their successful escape on the morning of the 30th, our chagrin and disappointment can be better imagined than described. General Forrest was so enraged that his face turned almost to a chalky whiteness, and his lips quivered. He cursed out some of the commanding officers, and censured them for allowing the Federal army to escape. I looked at him, as he sat in his saddle pouring forth his volumes of wrath, and was almost thunderstruck to listen to him, and to see no one dare resent it.11

  It is important to note that according to Copley, Forrest cursed and censured multiple Confederate commanders for the failure at Spring Hill. He did not mention General Hood at all.

  Another Confederate, a Mississippi soldier named Rhett Thomas, also placed the blame on multiple commanders, though not specifically the commanding general: “I have never seen more intense rage and profound disgust” among the troops “when they discovered that their officers had allowed their prey to escape.”12

  Unfounded accusations and hyperbole regarding Hood’s demeanor at the battle of Franklin abound in Civil War literature. “Probably he [Hood] intended the assault, in his own tormented way, as an exercise of discipline for the army,” speculated historian Thomas Connelly. “He [Hood] later admitted that he utilized frontal assaults for such a purpose, and reveled in the shedding of blood as a booster of morale. For him, the Franklin attack would be a last great effort
to mold the army into his image of the Virginia army as he had known it.” Connelly relies upon several pages of Hood’s own memoir for these eyebrow-raising statements, wherein Hood elaborated on the importance of offensive warfare. Nowhere did Hood accuse any soldier of cowardice, and he wrote nothing of penance, nothing of utilizing assaults—frontal or otherwise—to discipline troops, and absolutely nothing that even hinted that he “reveled in the shedding of blood.” I encourage all readers to turn to the pages cited by Connelly (and reproduced in Appendix 1 of this book) and compare them to his interpretation.13

  Authors John McKay, James Bradford, and Rebeccah Pawlowski described Hood at Franklin in their co-authored The Big Book of Civil War Sites: From Fort Sumter to Appomattox. According to McKay and company, “This is when Hood threw another one of his fits. He had habitually considered anyone who disagreed with him an enemy and was loathe to change any plan he had created, even in the face of overwhelming evidence that it was a poor one.” They continued, claming that Hood ordered his troops to attack the enemy works “even at the cost of their own lives, almost as a punishment for daring to disagree with him.” Not a single contemporary source is offered as proof for these claims.14

  Historian Steven Woodworth, who is normally very careful with the facts and an outstanding researcher and crafter of prose, made similar claims. “His [Hood’s] generals—Cheatham, Cleburne and the others—had let him down. They were incompetent and probably cowardly, too. The soldiers, cowardly and afraid to charge an entrenched enemy, had also failed him,” wrote Woodworth. “And Hood had their penance ready: They would catch the Federals and smash them, regardless of casualties. No more fancy flanking maneuvers—from now on, his men were going to go right down the enemy’s throat.” Although Woodworth, without qualification, informed his readers of Hood’s reasoning, the usually thorough academician failed to cite a single primary source. His support consisted of the subjective assessment written many years earlier by Thomas Connelly, who also did not provide a primary source for his harsh condemnation of Hood.15

  Thomas Hay, one of the earliest scholars to write about the Tennessee Campaign, wrote in Hood’s Tennessee Campaign (without citing a source) that Hood was “piqued” over the affair at Spring Hill, and that the army’s failure “perhaps temporarily unbalanced him and had so warped his judgment and distorted his conception of conditions that he could see no alternative course” than to attack at Franklin.16

  The writers of the documentary film “The Battle of Franklin” went even further, attributing Hood’s motivation to personal gratification. They alleged that Hood launched an assault at Franklin, “perhaps to restore his military glory.” There was no mention of the obvious: Hood’s desire to defeat his exhausted and trapped enemy before they could escape to the relative safety of Nashville and unite with Federal troops. The actual military situation Hood confronted at Franklin on November 30, 1864, and his viable options, are completely ignored by the producers (and most writers) in favor of a more sensational portrayal of events.17

  John Lundberg joined the chorus of many other historians when he provided a detailed analysis of Hood’s reasoning and his true intentions at Franklin without offering a shred of evidence. He wrote the following in his book The Finishing Stroke: “When the Army of Tennessee arrived in front of Franklin, Hood had already made up his mind … a direct, all-out frontal assault.” Lundberg completely disregarded a written account by corps commander A. P. Stewart, who recalled that Hood considered a flank attempt as the army arrived south of Franklin. According to Stewart, Hood asked if he could get troops north of the flooded Harpeth River (which blocked Schofield’s further hasty retreat). When Stewart answered in the affirmative, Hood directed him to “send some cavalry and infantry to drive the Federals out of a bend in the Harpeth to the south of the town, and to await further word.” Although Hood ultimately decided against undertaking a flanking operation, he had clearly not made up his mind before or as he arrived at Franklin, as Lundberg contended.18

  Of all the major books written on Spring Hill and Franklin, the one that most embellishes Hood’s anger is Wiley Sword’s influential The Confederacy’s Last Hurrah. In it, Sword described Hood as “morose” and that, “Throughout the morning Hood continued to chafe at and bitterly denounce his generals.” According to Sword, Hood was “still seething” in the afternoon and those subordinates who disagreed with his decision to attack at Franklin only accentuated his “smoldering resentment over the Spring Hill affair.” The intensity of Sword’s subjectivity is best illustrated by his repeated accusations of near-psychopathic behavior by the Southern commander. “Hood on November 30 was angry, overeager, frustrated and not reasoning well,” claimed Sword, who added that “his disabled personality” and “vindictive disposition” made him “a fool with a license to kill his own men.” In a later book entitled Courage Under Fire, Sword asserted first that Hood’s decision to attack at Franklin was merely a “remedial lesson in courage” before asking, “Where had been the moral courage to act upon what was right rather than upon unreasoned emotion?” For none of these accusations does Sword offer any contemporary firsthand accounts other than what has been heretofore described.19

  Sword made many inflammatory comments concerning Hood’s supposed vengeance mission against his own troops, but this may be the most sensational: “Cheatham, Cleburne and Brown, in particular, became the focus of Hood’s ire. If not outright punishment for their behavior on November 29, the assault at Franklin would be a severe corrective lesson in what he would demand in aggressive behavior.” Sword cites but a single page of Hood’s memoirs to support this astonishing claim. For the record, there is nothing on that page, or those before or after, where Hood says anything about using any commanders or troops anywhere for any reason.20

  Thomas Connelly and James McDonough used perhaps the most outlandish language describing Hood’s state of mind in their monograph Five Tragic Hours: The Battle of Franklin. Once again without offering a credible primary citation, these authors assert that after months of frustration, Hood was “Tired and distraught—perhaps sick is not too strong a term—he was too emotionally unhinged to command.” For the purposes of discipline, they continued, Hood decided “what the army needed was a frontal assault.” Similarly, the narrator of the film “The Battle of Franklin” recited in a dramatically ominous tone that Hood at Franklin “would sound a battle cry that many would call very peculiar behavior.” Records that do exist describe Hood as confident and robust—physically, intellectually, and emotionally. For example, Dr. Charles T. Quintard, a chaplain and physician with the 1st Tennessee Infantry, recorded in his diary on November 25 (just days before Spring Hill and Franklin) that after visiting Hood, “The General is in the best of health and spirits.” That was five days before Spring Hill. As one recent historian found out, evidence that Hood was “emotionally unhinged” immediately following that failure does not exist.21

  Eric Jacobson, the chief historian of the Battle of Franklin Trust and the latest to write a detailed campaign study of Franklin, mentioned Hood’s early morning anger in For Cause and for Country: A Study of the Affair at Spring Hill and the Battle of Franklin. Jacobson noted the absence of any eyewitness accounts. “There is no evidence that Hood was angry by the time he got to Franklin,” Jacobson honestly observed. “Surely he had been upset earlier in the day… . But the claims that Hood was still boiling by the time he viewed the Federal works from Spring Hill obscures the probable reality.” Jacobson routinely discusses during numerous public lectures and tours that, after personally reading thousands of pages of eyewitness accounts of the battle of Franklin, he has been unable to find any evidence of an angry or agitated Hood at any time after the early morning hours. A. P. Stewart’s biographer Sam Davis Elliott apparently agreed with Jacobson in this regard when he wrote that Stewart disagreed with Hood’s decision to attack at Franklin, “although he [Stewart] was willing to absolve Hood of the ill motive of taking the Spring Hill debacle out o
n the Army of Tennessee on Nov. 30, 1864.”22

  Of the many unfounded accusations made against Hood, the most notable is the claim that he intentionally positioned Cheatham’s corps to incur the heaviest casualties in the Franklin assault. An example of this accusation is provided by John Lundberg, who claims the following without a single credible source: “Because Cleburne’s and Brown’s divisions had been principally to blame for the debacle at Spring Hill, Hood reasoned, they would occupy the center of the Confederate attack in order to ‘eradicate this evil’ of unwillingness to assault breastworks.” There is absolutely no primary source evidence that Hood “reasoned,” believed, or felt that Cleburne was to blame for Spring Hill, or that he intentionally positioned his and Brown’s divisions to take the brunt of the Federal resistance. In fact, it was Gen. William W. Loring’s division of A. P. Stewart’s corps that faced the heaviest enemy fire and crossed the most difficult terrain at Franklin.23

  Wiley Sword also weighed in on this non-issue when he wrote, “By specific design … Cheatham, Brown and Cleburne would be thrust in the very storm center of any fighting; Hood would purge their ranks of their apparent reluctance to fight except when behind breastworks.” Once again Sword cited a page from Hood’s Advance and Retreat that makes no mention whatsoever of troop positioning or situating specific units to intentionally purge their reluctance to fight except when behind fortifications. Sword continued: “It was no accident when he assigned Cheatham’s Corps to make the frontal assault against the center of the enemy’s formidable fortifications. Brown and Cleburne were posted to the front rank and told to attack along the Columbia Pike, where the Federal lines were the strongest and the ground entirely open.” In reality, the ground was essentially entirely open in front of all six Confederate divisions attacking Schofield’s army—not just Brown’s and Cleburne’s commands. The source for these charges is a paltry single page in the Official Records that says nothing about Hood’s reasoning for specific troop positions, and a book by an author who described the configuration of the entire army—without any comment on the reasons for the alignment or any hint at anything out of the ordinary.24