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

by Hood, Stephen

  As noted earlier, when the Confederates initially approached the two hills south of Franklin and Stewart flanked the initial enemy positions by moving east, Schofield’s rearguard retreated. Hood concluded the Federal deployment was a delaying tactic, an appearance of holding ground at Franklin to buy time for a successful retreat across the Harpeth River to Nashville. When Stephen D. Lee had arrived in Spring Hill earlier that day, he recalled Hood telling him, “I have put the troops in motion but the enemy will not probably make another serious stand short of Nashville.” Although Hood knew that fortifications had been constructed in Franklin two years earlier, he also knew that Schofield had little time to restore and strengthen them. Hood later explained his reasons for risking a frontal assault, stating plainly that he would rather fight the Federals at Franklin, where they had only eight hours to fortify, than at Nashville, where they had been building defenses for three years.44

  Although certain portions of the Federal positions, such as Wagner’s advanced line, could be clearly seen from Winstead Hill, other areas of the line, including the details of fortifications in some areas, were not so easily discernible; some were completely hidden from view. Exactly what Hood was able to see through the field glasses of the period is difficult to discern. Today, large trees populate residential neighborhoods constructed where Federal entrenchments once stood; structures from modern commercial development cover most of the plain south of Franklin, which is softly sculpted with gentle rises and shallow depressions. From atop Winstead Hill, it was (and remains) difficult to see detail in the area of the Carter House.

  What was clearly visible to Hood and his generals was Wagner’s advance line, which did not boast natural or significant improvised defenses. Cleburne reportedly rode to the top of Privet Knob, well in front of Winstead Hill, to view the enemy’s main fortifications, but it is not known if any other Confederate commanders did likewise. Nor is it known whether Cleburne conveyed specific information to Hood about what he saw. Forrest purportedly advised Hood against an attack, but it isn’t known what specific intelligence Forrest was able to provide to Hood regarding the strength of the Federal fortifications.45

  What Hood and other Confederate commanders saw depended upon where they were standing. Cleburne reportedly said that the Federal works were strong, yet many of the Federals described their own defenses as slight. “We had but fairly begun to throw a temporary work, with the very limited means at our disposal,” confessed Lt. Col. Milton Barnes of the 97th Ohio. A letter penned by Maj. Henry Learning of the 40th Indiana Infantry six weeks after the battle agreed with Barnes’s observation: “Our works were very hastily put up, and not finished when the attack was commenced.” In condemning Hood’s assault at Franklin, Stanley Horn wrote in The Army of Tennessee that “Schofield had already made himself strong in his works.” Schofield’s own assessment, however, flatly contradicts Horn. The Federal army commander’s memoir stated frankly that his Franklin fortifications were “of the slightest character,” and that it was impossible to strengthen them adequately in the short time available to him before Hood attacked. Horn’s direct contradiction of Schofield’s own words is perplexing, especially since Horn utilized Schofield’s account extensively elsewhere in his book. Federal Gen. Thomas Wood described just how close Hood’s men came to carrying the hastily constructed fortifications early in the battle: “The enemy had come on with a terrific dash, had entered our entrenchment, and victory seemed almost within his grasp. Our line had been broken in the center, two 4-gun batteries had fallen into the hands of the enemy, and it seemed that it was only necessary for him to press the advantage he had gained to complete his success.”46

  What was Hood’s mood and demeanor just prior to launching the large attack at Franklin? Contrary to the highly embellished and often fabricated portrayals of many later authors, eyewitness accounts of Hood’s words and deportment in the critical moments immediately preceding the assault described a confident commander encouraging his officers and men. Hood rode along the lines as his army formed for the assault, stopping at several points to tell his soldiers, “These lines must be broken boys, they are weak and cannot stand you.” Promising the men that if they carried the Federal position the campaign in Tennessee would be over, Hood is also recorded as having said, “No enemy will exist who will dare to oppose your march to the Ohio.” A short time earlier, a witness recalled Hood giving Cleburne final instructions before concluding with, “Franklin is the key to Nashville, and Nashville is the key to independence.” Another soldier recorded in his diary, “General Hood’s last words to his generals were: ‘Now, go down to the work to be done and go at it.’” Virtually every eyewitness testimonial, largely ignored by most historians, unambiguously describes Hood’s demeanor as soldierly and rational on the afternoon of November 30. And yet, as we have seen, Hood’s understandable and brief early-morning anger and frustration at Schofield’s escape has been both exaggerated and extended without any evidence up to the time of the attack.47

  Like other authors, Thomas Hay’s own observations on Franklin often conflicted. On the one hand, Hay described the Franklin battle as “an unnecessary and bloody fight, waged in an effort to make up for the hesitation of the day before at Spring Hill, a battle in which men’s lives were given up in the vain hope of retrieving errors of the high command that were committed, primarily, because of lack of personal supervision on the part of the one responsible for the execution of orders.” Yet, here is what he wrote in the following paragraph:

  To a certain extent Hood was justified in his attack at Franklin… . He knew of Thomas’s concentration at Nashville and that if he allowed Schofield to get away he would not again have so great an opportunity, on equal terms. Schofield was only a night’s march from Thomas’s advanced defenses in front of Nashville. A. J. Smith, just arrived in Nashville, could meet him and together they would move on Hood or take up an advanced defensive position, as circumstances dictated. Under these conditions Hood felt he must attack or lose his advantage. Schofield had a river, spanned by poor and inadequate bridges, at his back; the defenses at Franklin were of a hasty and slight character; and the opposing forces were about equal.48

  How is one to make sense of these conflicting statements? What, then, in Thomas Hay’s judgment should Hood have done that evening? He was damned for attacking, and it seems just as likely he would have been damned for not doing so.

  Some authors rarely shared Hood’s own words verbatim with their readers, preferring instead to act as a filter for their own analysis and interpretation. According to Wiley Sword, Hood’s memoir “is merely a bitter, misleading, and highly distorted treatise” replete with “distortions, misrepresentations, and outright falsifications.” As demonstrated several times earlier in this study, however, Sword’s own statements and analysis evidenced a distinctly anti-Hood bias, were often misleading and incomplete, and consistently omitted or ignored important facts. In his memoir, Hood clearly explained his decision to attack at Franklin, a decision supported by many Confederates and Federals alike. “I thereupon decided, before the enemy would be able to reach his stronghold at Nashville,” explained Hood matter-of-factly, “to make that same afternoon another and final effort to overtake and rout him, and drive him into the Big Harpeth river at Franklin, since I could no longer hope to get between him and Nashville, by reason of the short distance from Franklin to that city, and the advantage which the Federals enjoyed in the possession of the direct road.”

  Hood’s official Tennessee Campaign report explained his decision this way:

  I learned from dispatches captured at Spring Hill, from Thomas to Schofield, that the latter was instructed to hold that place till the position at Franklin could be made secure, indicating the intention of Thomas to hold Franklin and his strong works at Murfreesboro. Thus I knew that it was all important to attack Schofield before he could make himself strong, and if he should escape at Franklin he would gain his works about Nashville. The nature of the posit
ion was such as to render it inexpedient to attempt any further flank movement, and I therefore determined to attack him in front, and without delay.49

  An officer serving on A. P. Stewart’s staff that day concurred with Hood:

  It has been charged that he [Hood] gave the order to attack at Franklin because of chagrin at his failure at Spring Hill. This supposition does Hood great injustice. A Federal courier had been captured bearing dispatches between Thomas and Schofield of the Federal army. The tenor of the dispatches led Hood to believe that Franklin was not in a defensible position, and that therefore, as he expressed it, he thought his “time to fight had come.”50

  Texas cavalryman James Wood Baldwin, who served as a scout for Hood, recalled an incident that occurred before the combat at Franklin commenced. It is not conclusively known whether or not the dispatches captured by Baldwin were those alluded to in Hood’s campaign report. According to Baldwin:

  On the 2nd day before the battle of Franklin [Nov. 28], while acting as a scout for Gen. Hood, I was directed by him to take twelve men and reconnoiter in the vicinity of Murfreesboro and as near Nashville as I could safely go, for the purpose of locating the enemy and finding out his plans…. I was instructed after making my tour to report to Gen. Cleburne the following morning who would be encamped at Caney Springs. About daylight of the morning before the battle of Franklin we rode into Caney Springs and as we approached it, we discovered that an army was encamped there. Naturally we thought it was Gen. Cleburne. However, we soon learned that it was a Yankee outfit. We reconnoitered and located the Marque or headquarters of Gen. Hatch and we decided to capture the general. We quietly and silently dismounted walked up to the headquarters, disarmed the sentinel, went into the tent and captured the adjutant and his body guard. We then took them out and mounted them on horses which were tied to a corral and carried them to Gen. Hood’s headquarters. We also captured many papers which disclosed their plans and purposes. We met Gen. Hood about fifteen miles from Caney Springs on the road to Columbia.51

  Tennessee Governor Isham Harris, who accompanied the army on the invasion into his state and served as a volunteer aide to Hood, wrote to Jefferson Davis after the campaign ended. “I have been with General Hood from the beginning of the campaign, and beg to say, disastrous as it has ended, I am not able to see anything that General Hood has done that he should not, or neglected anything that he should have done… . and regret to say that if all had performed their parts as well as he, the results would have been very different.”52

  In The Confederacy’s Last Hurrah, Wiley Sword related a conversation that took place between Schofield and captured Col. Virgil S. Murphey of the 17th Alabama Infantry. Quoting from Murphey’s diary, Sword revealed to his readers that Schofield called Hood a butcher. Murphey responded, “butchery always seemed to involve a considerable mixture of the Rebels’ enemies.” What Sword did not provide was the rest of what Murphey wrote, which in fact supported Hood’s decision to attack: “Had Hood succeeded, Nashville would have opened her gates to the head of his victorious legions and the throat of Tennessee released from the grasp of remorseless despotism. It was worth the hazard. Its failure does not diminish the value of the prize.” Sword also failed to include additional Murphey entries that prove the Alabama colonel informed Schofield that Hood’s orders had been disobeyed at Spring Hill, which in turn enabled the Federal escape.53

  Many of Colonel Murphey’s opponents at Franklin also understood Hood’s dilemma that late afternoon, but historians writing about the battle utilize precious few of these Federal accounts. “By the way, I was somewhat surprised, and may say pained, during my recent trip South, to note the disposition among soldiers of the late Confederate Army to criticize and disparage the merits of Gen. Hood,” recalled Washington Gardner of the 65th Ohio Infantry, a veteran of Franklin who would survive the war and be elected a U.S. congressman from Michigan. Gardner continued:

  That he [Hood] made mistakes no unprejudiced student of the War Between the States will deny, but that he was possessed of some of the best qualities that belong to great military commanders is equally indisputable. As between the General and his critics touching the Battle of Franklin, my sympathies are entirely with the former; while my admiration for the splendid valor exhibited by his heroic legions on that bloody field is not diminished by the fact that they were Americans all … Franklin, from the Confederate standpoint of view, must ever remain one of the saddest tragedies of the Civil War; on the other hand, there were in that battle possibilities to the Confederate cause, and that came near being realized, scarcely second to those of any other in the great conflict. Had Hood won—and he came within an ace of it—and reaped the legitimate fruits of his victory, the verdict of history would have been reversed, and William T. Sherman, who took the flower of his army and with it made an unobstructed march to the sea, leaving but a remnant to contend against a foe that had taxed his every resource from Chattanooga to Atlanta, would have been called at the close as at the beginning of the war, “Crazy Sherman.” No individual, not even Hood himself, had so much at stake at Franklin as the hero of the “march to the sea.”54

  L. A. Simmons of the 84th Illinois Infantry agreed with Gardner’s assessment, adding additional details that confirmed Hood’s decision to attack heavily at Franklin:

  In speaking of this battle, very many are inclined to wonder at the terrible pertinacity of the rebel General Hood, in dashing column after column with such tremendous force and energy upon our center—involving their decimation, almost their annihilation. Yet this we have considered a most brilliant design, and the brightest record of his generalship, that will be preserved in history. He was playing a stupendous game, for enormous stakes. Could he have succeeded in breaking the center, our whole army was at his mercy. In our rear was a deep and rapid river, swollen by recent rains—only fordable by infantry at one or two places—and to retreat across it an utter impossibility. To break the center was to defeat our army; and defeat inevitably involved a surrender. If this army surrendered to him, Nashville, with all its fortifications, all its vast accumulation of army stores, was at his mercy, and could be taken in a day. Hence, with heavy odds—a vastly superior force—in his hands, he made the impetuous attack upon our center, and lost in the momentous game. His army well understood that they were fighting for the possession of Nashville. Ours knew they were fighting to preserve that valuable city, and to avoid annihilation.

  Simmons added that the Federals quickly withdrew northward to Nashville after the bloody battle because Franklin was “untenable.” He also stated that with Schofield’s force absent from Nashville, the city was “scantily protected.”55

  Lieutenant Henry Shaw of the 125th Ohio Infantry also agreed with these assessments. “Hood saw his opportunity, and true to his combative proclivity availed himself thereof. From a high hill he could easily see our position, and saw our forces gradually withdrawing to the opposite bank of the Little Harpeth. Military men will not condemn Hood’s generalship in launching heavy assaulting columns, as he did upon our line,” concluded the Buckeye officer.56

  Colonel Arthur MacArthur of the 24th Wisconsin described the battle as one of particular importance. Generals Grant’s and Sherman’s campaigns would have been drastically imperiled by a Hood victory at Franklin, explained MacArthur, who also wrote: “In a word, had Hood entered Nashville sword in hand at the head of a victorious army, which would have resulted from defeat of the Union army at Franklin, the Civil War in all its subsequent scenes might have been essentially varied.” MacArthur added, “Franklin was essentially a battle that saved [the Union], and as such must be classified as second only to Gettysburg in importance during the entire war.”57

  Private J. K. Merrifield of the 88th Illinois Infantry, part of Col. Emerson Opdycke’s brigade, understood the value of the Union victory at Franklin and why Hood fought there. “Opdycke’s Brigade at the battle of Franklin, Tenn., saved the Army of the Cumberland from destruction; for had the
break in the lines been successful, the two wings of our army would have been whipped in detail, and either driven into the river behind us or captured.” Merrifield continued: “Then what was there to stop Hood from going to Louisville? A. J. Smith, with his troops, was all; and with a victorious army as Hood would have had, he would have swept Smith’s troops aside, and Grant would have had to send troops from the East to intercept Hood.”58

  Hood’s counterpart, John Schofield, had little confidence that he could hold his position at Franklin. Just one hour before Hood attacked, the Union army commander sent a message to George Thomas that included this line: “A worse position than this for an inferior force could hardly be found.” Schofield explained Hood’s dilemma in a letter published in Confederate Veteran magazine in 1895: “Gen. Hood, on the other hand, designed to cut off or crush my command before I could unite with Gen. Thomas. This, in my judgment, fully justified his direct assault in front of Franklin, for which some have criticized him. He did not have time to turn that position before our concentration at Nashville would be effected. Hence, he had no alternative but the desperate one of a direct assault.”59

  Schofield elaborated in his memoir, dismissing Hood’s critics with a backhanded flair for failing to understand the facts on the ground that day:

  Hood’s assault at Franklin has been severely criticized. Even so able a general as J. E. Johnston has characterized it as “A useless butchery.” These criticisms are founded on a misapprehension of the facts, and are essentially erroneous. Hood must have been fully aware of our relative weakness of numbers at Franklin, and of the probable, if not certain, concentration of large reinforcements at Nashville. He could not hope to have at any future time anything like so great an advantage in that respect. The army at Franklin and the troops at Nashville were within one night’s march of each other; Hood must therefore attack on November 30 or lose the advantage of greatly superior numbers. It was impossible, after the pursuit from Spring Hill, in a short day to turn our position or make any other attack but a direct one in front. Besides our position with the river on our rear, gave him the chance of vastly greater results, if his assault were successful, than could be hoped for by any attack he could make after we had crossed the Harpeth. Still more, there was no unusual obstacle to a successful assault at Franklin. The defenses were of the slightest character, and it was not possible to make them formidable during the short time our troops were in position, after the previous exhausting operations of both day and night, which had rendered some rest on the 30th absolutely necessary.