The Franklin-Nashville Campaign (September-December 1864) was the last major military operation in the western theater of the American Civil War (1861 to 1865). After the Southern stronghold of Atlanta fell to Union forces, Confederate General John Bell Hood marched his army into Tennessee to disrupt the enemy supply lines and liberate Nashville from Northern occupation. It was a desperate gambit that met with bitter failure in the battles of Franklin (30 November) and Nashville (15 to 16 December). Following the campaign, Hood's Army of Tennessee ceased to exist as an effective fighting force, essentially ending the war in the West.

On 2 September 1864, a long line of blue-coated Union soldiers filtered into Atlanta, Georgia, their bayonets glinting in the late summer sun. Above city hall, the Stars and Stripes waved for the first time since Georgia's secession from the Union nearly four years before and, throughout the North, cannons fired off 100-gun salutes to celebrate the capture of yet another major Southern city. "Atlanta is ours, and fairly won," the Union commander, Major General William Tecumseh Sherman, wired to his superiors in Washington. Not only did the capture of Atlanta carry substantial military value – the city had been a major supply center and railroad hub for the Confederacy – but it had great political significance as well, boosting morale amongst the war-weary Northern population and contributing to the re-election of President Abraham Lincoln the following November.

But for the South, news of Atlanta's fall could hardly have been more dire. "Since Atlanta, I have felt as if all were dead within me, forever," wrote South Carolina diarist Mary Boykin Chesnut. "We are going to be wiped off the face of the earth" (quoted in McPherson, 775). Indeed, with Atlanta in Union hands, the soft underbelly of the Confederacy was now exposed, allowing Sherman free rein to push eastward to the sea or northward into the Carolinas. But as long as the Confederate Army of Tennessee remained intact, there was still a small glimmer of hope for the Southern cause. That army was currently at Palmetto, Georgia, licking its wounds after the long and hard-fought Atlanta Campaign. Its commander, the tawny-bearded, 33-year-old Lieutenant General John Bell Hood, had been widely castigated for the loss of Atlanta. His aggressive tactics in defense of the city had sent tens of thousands of soldiers to their muddy graves, losses that the South could not easily replace.

Still, Hood enjoyed the lukewarm support of Confederate President Jefferson Davis, who, in late September, made the trip down to Palmetto to confer with him. Hobbling along on his crutches – Hood had lost a leg at Chickamauga and the use of his left arm at Gettysburg – the general laid out his plan before the president. Rather than make a foolhardy attempt to retake Atlanta, Hood instead offered to march west and threaten Sherman's supply lines to Chattanooga, Tennessee. This, Hood believed, would force Sherman to follow him, after which Hood could easily maneuver the Union army into fighting a battle on ground of his choosing, where it would be destroyed. It was a risky plan, and the odds were certainly long. However, these were desperate times, and Davis gave his approval.

During his trip back up to the Confederate capital of Richmond, the president made several stops in Georgia and South Carolina to drum up support for Hood's westward march. "I see no chance for Sherman to escape," he told cheering crowds. "The fate that befell the army of the French Empire in its retreat from Moscow will be reenacted… plant our banners on the banks of the Ohio, where we shall say to the Yankee: ‘Be quiet, or we shall teach you another lesson'" (quoted in Foote, 610). Others were much less certain, fearing that Hood was about to march the wrong way. As one Richmond socialite despaired, "This movement of the western army is against common sense" (quoted in Sword, 52).

On 29 September, Hood crossed the Chattahoochee River with nearly 40,000 men. They moved along the Western & Atlantic Railroad, Sherman's main supply artery to Chattanooga, tearing up tracks as they went. At first, Sherman took the bait and pursued, leaving behind one corps to hold Atlanta while the rest of his 65,000 men pushed westward. On 5 October, one of Hood's divisions reached the supply depot of Allatoona, Georgia, which they expected to find undefended; instead, they encountered 2,000 Union soldiers under Brigadier General John M. Corse who had been rushed over to defend the place by Sherman with orders to "hold the fort." The rebels attacked only to find that the Federal troops were strongly entrenched and armed with Henry repeating rifles; after a few hours of fighting, the Confederates withdrew, leaving behind 900 men dead or wounded. Though he had taken a nasty facial wound, Corse rejoiced at his victory, reporting to Sherman that "I am short a cheekbone and an ear but am able to whip all hell yet!" (quoted in Sword, 59).

Frustrated by the hiccup at Allatoona, Hood continued to follow the railroad, coming to the supply base at Resaca, Georgia, on 12 October. This base, too, was held by a small but well-entrenched garrison of Federal soldiers; when the garrison refused Hood's demands to surrender, he decided to bypass the town rather than risk another costly skirmish. The next day, the Confederates succeeded in capturing the 751-man Federal garrison at Dalton, Georgia. Most of this garrison were African American soldiers from the 44th US Colored Infantry Regiment. The sight of Black men in uniform enraged Hood's soldiers, who had to be restrained from massacring the prisoners. Instead, the prisoners were stripped of their shoes and put to work, forced to rip up two miles (3.2 km) of railroad. One of the Black soldiers was summarily executed when he refused to work, and five others were shot for failing to keep up on the march. The treatment of these Black prisoners of war, according to their White colonel, "exceeded anything in brutality I have ever witnessed" (quoted in Sword, 57). Once he no longer needed them, Hood sold most of the Black soldiers into slavery.

On 20 October, Hood reached Gadsden, Alabama, where he began preparing for his showdown with Sherman. But that showdown would never come – considering his pursuit of Hood to be little more than a wild goose chase, Sherman instead preferred to turn around and ravage Georgia, telling Union general-in-chief Ulysses S. Grant that he could "cut a swath through to the sea" and capture Savannah, thereby cutting the Confederacy in two (quoted in McPherson, 808). Once Grant approved of his plan to "make Georgia howl", Sherman tasked his subordinate, Major General George H. Thomas, with continuing to keep an eye on Hood. Thomas, a burly Virginian who had stayed loyal to the Union, was already in command of 30,000 troops stationed around Nashville, Tennessee. To bolster these forces, Sherman ordered an additional 30,000 men under Major General John M. Schofield to march north from Georgia and link up with Thomas. So, having made these arrangements, Sherman turned around and marched back into Georgia to begin his infamous ‘March to the Sea'.

Faced with these developments, Hood adjusted his own plan. He would now strike north into Tennessee, where he would defeat Thomas and Schofield in isolation, before they had a chance to join forces. Then, he would liberate Nashville – which had been under Union occupation since 1862 – before pushing into Kentucky where he expected to rally 20,000 reinforcements to his banner. Finally, he would march into Virginia to add his strength to General Robert E. Lee's beleaguered army at Petersburg. It was, as many grimly realized, little better than a pipedream, but Hood knew he had to keep the momentum going or risk the dissolution of his army through desertion. On 22 October, he marched to the banks of the Tennessee River but did not cross for three weeks, preferring to wait for his cavalry under Major General Nathan Bedford Forrest to return from raiding into Middle Tennessee. On 13 November, after Forrest had returned, Hood began the river crossing but, due to a series of torrential storms, did not get the last of his troops across until a week later. At last, on 21 November, he set off for Columbia, Tennessee, to interpose his army between Thomas's and Schofield's forces.

Due to the slowness of Hood's river-crossing, the Federals had ample time to anticipate his movements. Schofield raced his army to Columbia, arriving on the morning of 24 November in time to entrench his men along the northern banks of the Duck River and take control of the single bridge across. On 26 November, Hood's army took up position on the opposite riverbank, and scattered skirmishing ensued as the rebels searched for a weak point at which to cross. Finally, on 28 November, Forrest's cavalrymen forded the Duck River to the east of Columbia, swatting away the Yankee cavalry that opposed them. Schofield, suddenly finding himself outflanked, decided to withdraw northward to the town of Franklin, where he hoped to link up with Thomas. Early on the morning of 29 November, Schofield stole away from Columbia and hastily marched up the road towards Franklin.

Hood recognized this as his golden opportunity to destroy Schofield. He ordered Forrest to ride on ahead and pin down the Yankee army while the rest of his soldiers marched in pursuit. At around 11 a.m., Forrest clashed with a Union division under Brigadier General George D. Wagner at Spring Hill. The ensuing skirmish lasted for several hours, as Forrest's cavalry troopers made repeated charges against the line of Yankee infantrymen. One Wisconsin soldier would remember the carnage:

You could see a rebel's head falling off his horse on one side and his body on the other…others you could see fall off with their feet caught in the stirrup, and the horse dragging and trampling them, dead or alive.

(quoted in Foote, 658)

At 3:45 pm, a Confederate division under Major General Patrick Cleburne arrived in support of Forrest. Cleburne's attack was initially successful, pushing back the Union line. But due to a series of miscommunications, no other Confederate division was available to support him, and his attack soon fizzled out. The Battle of Spring Hill was a small affair, costing only 350 Union and 500 Confederate casualties. Yet it was significant for depriving Hood of his best chance to destroy Schofield's army, lengthening the odds against him.

That evening, Schofield withdrew once again, pulling back to his original destination of Franklin. He spent the unusually warm morning of 30 November digging entrenchments in a semicircle around the town, leaving a gap in his line at the point where the Columbia Pike entered Franklin to allow his wagons to pass through. Hood's army arrived at around 1 p.m. Upon observing the enemy entrenchments, Hood ordered his men to prepare for a frontal charge. While some traditions hold that he ordered the attack in a blind fit of rage, angry to have lost the opportunity at Spring Hill, other scholarship asserts that Hood was thinking clearly and truly believed that he could destroy Schofield with a spirited frontal charge. His corps and division commanders were skeptical that such an attack could succeed – indeed, it appeared almost suicidal – but nevertheless began getting their men into position as ordered. Major General Benjamin F. Cheatham's corps made up the left wing of the Confederate line, while Lieutenant General Alexander P. Stewart's corps formed the right. Between them, they had 20,000 men.

At 4 p.m., the Confederate soldiers surged forward, beginning their charge over two miles (3.2 km) of open ground covered by only two batteries of artillery support. Immediately, the Union cannons roared to life and started punching holes in the rebel lines. When they got close enough to the Yankee entrenchments, the Southerners were mowed down by a murderous rain of musket fire. One Confederate soldier would recall the hellish scene:

A sheet of fire was poured into our very faces, and for a moment we halted as if in despair, as the terrible avalanche of shot and shell laid low those brave and gallant heroes, whose bleeding wounds attested that the struggle would be desperate.

(Watkins, 202)

Parts of Cleburne's division, along with another rebel division, managed to punch through the Union line at the weak spot at the Columbia Pike, leading to bitter hand-to-hand fighting as brutal as anything yet seen in this war. The bloody, chaotic fighting continued well past sunset until Hood called off the attack close to midnight. He had lost an astounding 6,200 men in one of the worst Confederate defeats of the entire war. 55 Southern regimental commanders had become casualties, as well as 14 generals, including the valiant General Cleburne, who was killed. Schofield, who had lost only 2,300 men, took advantage of the lull to slip away yet again, moving in the direction of Nashville.

The Battle of Franklin had devastated the Confederate Army of Tennessee, depriving it of a good chunk of its leadership as well as over 20% of its fighting strength. Yet Hood had gone too far to turn back now – he knew that to retreat would demoralize his army beyond salvation, leading his men to desert en masse. So, he pressed onward with his remaining 26,500 men in a final, desperate push toward Nashville. He arrived on 2 December and entrenched his troops in a strong position to the south of the city, hoping to draw the enemy army into a costly attack. In the meantime, he ordered Forrest to ride out and wreak havoc in the direction of Murfreesboro, hoping that this would siphon off some of the Federal soldiers that might otherwise be sent against him. Forrest's raid accomplished little, however, besides destroying a few miles of railroad track. With no other options, Hood hunkered down to await the inevitable Federal attack.

That attack was delayed for two weeks. Though he had finally joined forces with Schofield, General Thomas was hesitant to march out of Nashville, citing freezing temperatures, bitter ice storms, and the lack of cavalry support. But once it had become clear that General Grant's patience was wearing thin – indeed, Grant came close to firing him – Thomas finally got his army into gear and marched his 55,000 men out of their fortifications at Nashville to confront Hood's army. On the morning of 15 December, Thomas gathered his commanders and sketched out his battle plan: one division would pin down the right flank of Hood's army, while three infantry corps and his cavalry smashed into the rebel left flank. The fighting was long and hard, and lasted throughout the day; the rebels managed to withstand the repeated sledgehammer blows from the Union assaults and, when darkness fell, the Confederate line remained intact, albeit barely. That night, Hood pulled back two miles (3.2 km) to form a tighter defensive line, anchored by hills on both sides.

On the afternoon of 16 December, Thomas renewed his attack. He stuck to the plan of the first day, pinning down the Confederate right while slamming into the left with overwhelming numbers. This time, the attack proved successful – the Confederates held on until early evening, when their left flank finally broke. The entire rebel line then collapsed, its brigades toppling "like dominoes" (McPherson, 815); thousands of Confederate soldiers surrendered while thousands more ran off, tossing aside their weapons and equipment to get away faster. Darkness gathered, and cold rains began to fall on the broken and bleeding corpses of the men below. The Battle of Nashville was over; across the two days of fighting, Thomas had lost over 3,000 men killed or wounded, while Hood had suffered an additional 6,000 losses. Under the cover of night, the once proud Army of Tennessee limped away from Nashville. Having entered Tennessee with just under 40,000 men, barely 15,000 now remained.

Thanks to the heavy rains, Hood was able to retreat unmolested. On 18 December, he reunited with Forrest's cavalrymen, who screened the broken Confederate army for the rest of its retreat. On Christmas Day, Hood's army slunk back across the Tennessee River and made its way to Tupelo, Mississippi, to once again lick its wounds. But the Army of Tennessee had been beaten beyond recovery and would soon cease to exist as an effective fighting force. Hood tendered his resignation on 13 January 1865 and returned to Richmond a broken man, never again to hold an important command.

The defeat sent another shockwave of panic and despair throughout the South, one that grew worse as the true magnitude of Hood's failure became known. " the darkest and most dismal day," wrote a War Department clerk, "a crisis such as not been experienced before." "The deep waters are closing over us," diarist Mary Chesnut despaired, a pronouncement that was only too apt (quoted in McPherson, 815). Only a few months after Hood's army met its end in Tennessee, General Lee surrendered at Appomattox Court House, bringing an end to the American Civil War.