The Battle of Nashville (15-16 December 1864) was the last major battle in the western theater of the American Civil War (1861-1865). After suffering a catastrophic defeat at the Battle of Franklin (30 November), Lieutenant General John Bell Hood led the once-proud Confederate Army of Tennessee onward in a desperate attempt to capture Nashville, a major supply and manufacturing center. He clashed with a 55,000-man Union army under Major General George H. Thomas a few miles south of the city, and, after a brutal two-day battle, the rebel lines crumbled. At Nashville, the Army of Tennessee was neutralized as an effective fighting force, bringing an end to the war in the West.
The Killing Fields of Franklin
A pale sun clawed its way into a frosty sky on the morning of 1 December 1864, shining its light over a carpet of bloodied corpses in the fields outside Franklin, Tennessee. Mere hours before, these fields had been alive with the blaring of bugles and the banging of drums, the clatter of musket fire and the roar of artillery, the thunderous footfalls of thousands of soldiers and the bitter screams of the dying. Now, as the morning mists dissipated, an eerie silence hung over the town of Franklin, broken only by the distant rush of the Harpeth River and the ambient calls of birds. Presently, details of weary Confederate soldiers went out with spades and shovels to get to work burying the dead, pouring dirt over the heads of men who had been their friends and comrades.
The Battle of Franklin had been the culmination of a ten-day Confederate invasion of Tennessee. Lieutenant General John Bell Hood had led 39,000 rebel soldiers across the Tennessee River, with wild dreams of liberating Nashville from Union occupation before pushing up through Kentucky to plant the Confederate flag on the banks of the Ohio River. All that stood in their way were two Union armies of 30,000 men each – one was under Major General George H. Thomas at Nashville, the other under Major General John M. Schofield, 75 miles away (120 km) at Pulaski. Hood hoped to destroy each of these Union armies piecemeal before they had a chance to join forces. He went after Schofield first – after failing to trap him, first at Columbia, then at Spring Hill, Hood finally cornered him at Franklin. Although he found Schofield's army strongly entrenched, Hood decided to attack anyway, ordering his men to embark on a frontal assault over two miles (3.2 km) of open ground with minimal artillery support. The result was catastrophic: the Confederates lost 6,200 men killed or wounded, including 55 regimental officers and 12 generals. It was one of the most devastating Southern defeats of the war.
Having held off Hood's assault at the cost of only 2,300 losses of his own, Schofield slipped away during the night. On 1 December, as the battered Confederates spent the day burying their dead, Schofield's tired troops marched into Nashville and linked up with General Thomas, bringing the total number of Union soldiers in the city to just about 55,000 men. Nashville had been occupied by the Union since February 1862, and, in the intervening two and a half years, the Yankees had worked to improve the city's defenses. By now, they had built a seven-mile-long (11 km) line of fortifications that formed a semicircle around the southern and western sides of the city, while the mighty Cumberland River served as a natural barrier on the northern and eastern sides. For Hood's weakened army to attack Nashville against these odds seemed borderline suicidal. Yet the yellow-bearded, one-legged Confederate general felt he had no other choice – if he were to retreat from Tennessee now, his demoralized army would surely melt away from desertion. So, Hood pressed on, arriving outside Nashville on 2 December. Rather than laying siege, he decided to goad the enemy into coming out of their fortifications and attacking him. He staked out a position to the south of Nashville and dug in, forming a four-mile-long (6.4 km) defensive line of his own. The rebel soldiers then hunkered down to await the attack that would decide the fate of the war in the West.
Old Slow Trot
George H. Thomas was a tall, burly Virginian who had remained loyal to the Union when his native state seceded. He had since built a reputation as one of the best, most steadfast field generals in the entire Union army; indeed, his ability to hold the line in the heat of battle had earned him the nickname 'the Rock of Chickamauga'. He was, however, also known by the decidedly less glorious nickname 'Old Slow Trot', earned during his days as a West Point instructor when he constantly urged the cadets to go easy on the academy's elderly horses. It was this second nickname that he lived up to now, in those bitter early December days; now in overall command of all Union troops in Nashville, he was ordered by his superiors in Washington to sally forth and meet the enemy. Thomas delayed, offering up a series of excuses, including ice storms, sub-freezing temperatures, and insufficient cavalry support for his lack of movement. While these excuses were certainly valid, they failed to appease his superiors, including Union general-in-chief Ulysses S. Grant. In a series of increasingly impatient telegraphs, Grant prodded Thomas onward, fearing the chance to destroy Hood was quickly slipping away.
In fact, Hood was going nowhere. He had completed his line of fortifications, which included five redoubts on his left flank, each garrisoned with four cannons and 150 men. All that was left was to induce Thomas to leave the safety of Nashville and launch a costly attack. To lure the Yankees out, Hood dispatched his cavalry under Major General Nathan Bedford Forrest to raid the railway line to Murfreesboro; Thomas refused to take the bait, however, and Forrest's raid accomplished little besides ripping up a few miles of railroad. 8 December saw a bitter ice storm that preceded several days of below-freezing temperatures. Some of the rebels, already weakened by their Franklin wounds, succumbed to these miserable conditions, while others shivered in their trenches, awaiting the Federal assault. Finally, on the evening of 14 December, Thomas gathered his corps commanders and laid out his plans for an attack the next day. His plan called for a demonstration to be made against the Confederate right flank before launching his main attack against the enemy left. This one-two punch would, hopefully, break the rebel line and end the threat to Nashville once and for all.
First Day: 15 December
The early morning fog had nearly dissipated at 8 a.m., when Thomas launched the first phase of his attack against the Confederate right flank. Two Union brigades, under Major General James B. Steedman, set out along the Murfreesboro Pike – one brigade consisted primarily of African American soldiers, while the other was made up of mostly White soldiers described by their colonel as "new conscripts, convalescents, and bounty jumpers" (quoted in Sword, 325). As these soldiers approached the Nashville & Chattanooga Railroad, they came under fire from a line of Confederate troops as well as from a hidden four-gun battery. The Federals were mowed down by the crossfire of rebel musket fire and canister shot and soon fell back in a "rather disorderly manner" (Foote, 690). However, this disorder did not last long; the Union soldiers reformed and came again, charging against the rebel lines with renewed determination. This back-and-forth lasted for two hours; although Steedman's attack failed in its purpose to distract the Confederates, it succeeded in proving the mettle of the soldiers, many of whom were experiencing their first taste of combat.
As the Union soldiers fought and bled and died on the Confederate right flank, the main assault against the left flank did not get going until around noon. Once it did, it made an awe-inspiring sight; three Union infantry corps and one cavalry corps, just under 50,000 men in all, moving across the frost-covered ground against the entrenched line of rebel soldiers. Major General Thomas J. Wood, commander of the Union IV Corps, would remember the sight with pride. "The grand array of troops began to move forward in unison," he wrote. "Far as the eye could reach, the lines and masses of blue, over which the national emblem flaunted proudly, moved forward in…perfect order" (quoted in Foote, 692). The Yankee troops swept up the hillside and assaulted the rebel redoubts. Redoubt No. 4 – defended by a determined company of Alabama troops – put up stiff resistance, holding out against 16 Federal regiments for quite some time before the blue-coated Union soldiers poured in the gaps between the cannons, their bayonets flashing. Redoubt No. 5 fell shortly thereafter, as did Redoubt No. 3; in the struggle for Redoubt No. 3, Colonel Sylvester G. Hill was killed by artillery fire, making him the highest-ranking Union officer to die in the battle.
By the time sunset forced Thomas to call off the assault, all five of the Confederate redoubts had been stormed, leaving Hood's left flank untenable. Rather than trying to continue to hold this position, Hood decided to withdraw two miles (3.2 km) further south, forming a new, tighter defensive line anchored by two hills: Peach Orchard Hill on the right and Compton's Hill on the left. Hood stationed Lieutenant General Stephen D. Lee's corps on the right flank; Lee's men, who had seen no fighting at Franklin and minimal fighting today, were expected to absorb the brunt of Thomas' renewed attack. The center would be held by Lieutenant General Alexander P. Stewart's corps, while Major General Benjamin F. Cheatham's corps, which had suffered heavy losses at Franklin, would hold the left at Compton's Hill. Although the defenses atop Compton's Hill appeared strong, Cheatham's troops were actually quite vulnerable there, exposed to Union artillery fire from all directions except southeast. As Hood's troops dug in, bracing for another attack the following morning, Thomas decided to repeat the previous day's tactics, demonstrating against the Confederate right while making his main thrust against their left.
Second Day: 16 December
Dawn on the second day found the Union army haphazardly spread out, most of the corps still positioned where they had wound up the day before. Thomas ordered them forward, and the Union soldiers groggily moved to get into their new positions; it was, therefore, not until noon that they were ready to strike. Mirroring the previous day, the battle began on the Confederate right flank, with two of Steedman's brigades and two of Wood's brigades surging up Peach Orchard Hill. These troops were ordered to "vigorously press" and "unceasingly harass" the rebels, and to look for an opportunity to turn their flank (quoted in Foote, 699). Between noon and 3 p.m., Steedman and Wood made repeated assaults up the muddy slope, taking heavy punishment from the rebel artillery fire. One unit, the 13th US Colored Infantry Regiment, lost 221 casualties, about 40% of its entire fighting strength. "After the repulse," Wood later recalled, "our soldiers, white and colored, lay indiscriminately near the enemy works at the outer edge of the abatis" (quoted in Foote, 700).
This time, the attack on Peach Orchard Hill had the desired effect; fearing that his right flank would break, Hood sent two of Cheatham's divisions to reinforce Lee, spreading the rest of his line dangerously thin. With the Yankee cavalry under Brigadier General James H. Wilson threatening the rebel left and rear, this would have been the perfect time to launch the main attack. But when Thomas ordered Schofield's corps to begin the assault, Schofield hesitated, falsely believing that he was outnumbered and in danger of being flanked himself. Schofield wasted precious hours begging for reinforcements and, as the sun began to inch closer to the horizon, it seemed as if the main Union assault might never occur at all. It was at this critical juncture that Brigadier General John McArthur decided to take the initiative. A 38-year-old Scotch-born Chicagoan, McArthur realized that the Confederates had spread themselves too thin on Compton's Hill. At 3:30 pm, he sent a note to Thomas, telling him that, unless he was given orders to the contrary, he was going to attack in the next five minutes. When he received no counterorder, McArthur gave the signal, and his three brigades began moving uphill.
By now, Cheatham's defenses atop Compton's Hill had been pretty well chewed up by the Union artillery. An icy rain had begun at midday and continued to fall, drenching the rebel defenders to the bone as they huddled in their trenches to avoid getting pulverized by an enemy shell. This was their condition when McArthur's troops clamored to the top of the hill. The first brigade to crest drew the brunt of the Confederate fire, freeing the other two to slam into the unsuspecting rebel line. In nearly an instant, the Confederate left flank crumbled beneath the weight of McArthur's attack. Like dominoes, the tattered rebel brigades fell, their troops tossing down their muskets so they could get away faster. Colonel William Shy, the 25-year-old commander of the 20th Tennessee, attempted to rally his men atop the hill but was shot dead by a Yankee bullet; from then on, Compton's Hill has been known as Shy's Hill in his honor. In the meantime, the panic spread across the entire rebel line until Hood's whole army was in full retreat. Some officers tried to stop this flood of fleeing troops, but, as one eyewitness put it, they may as well have tried "to stop the current of the Duck River with a fishing net" (Watkins, 209).
Aftermath
Thus, the two-day Battle of Nashville came to an end. It was a decisive victory for the Union, which had lost over 3,000 men killed or wounded, compared to the approximate 6,000 Confederate casualties. Thomas was ecstatic at the victory; watching his men roll the last of the Confederate troops off Compton's Hill, he lifted his saber in the gathering dusk and cried, "Oh, what a grand army I have! God bless each member of it" (quoted in Foote, 704). The atmosphere in the Confederate army was, understandably, much more grim. Under the cover of darkness, the rebels continued their disorderly retreat as the cold, black rain fell from above. That night, General Hood set up his headquarters along the Franklin Pike – one Tennessee private would recall that the commanding general "was much agitated and affected, pulling his hair with his one hand (he had but one) and crying like his heart would break" (Watkins, 209).
On 17 December, the remnants of the Confederate Army of Tennessee continued their retreat. Thomas sent his cavalry to pursue, though he knew that the rebel army was as good as beaten. Around this time, Hood linked back up with Forrest, whose cavalry troopers screened the rest of the army's retreat as it recrossed the Duck River. On Christmas Day, it crossed back over into Alabama, officially ending Hood's ill-fated offensive. Of the nearly 40,000 Confederate soldiers who had invaded Tennessee a little over a month before, less than half marched back out. The survivors would withdraw all the way to Tupelo, Mississippi, where Hood would resign his command on 13 January 1865. The losses sustained at Franklin and Nashville effectively destroyed the Army of Tennessee as a fighting force, ending the war in the West. Indeed, the Battle of Nashville was one of the last major battles of the entire war; less than four months later, the capital of Richmond would fall and, a few days after that, General Robert E. Lee would surrender to Grant at Appomattox. Nashville, therefore, marked the last, desperate attempt of the Confederacy to save itself from an inevitable destruction.
