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

Author:Hood, Stephen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HISTORY / United States / Civil War Period (1850-1877)
ISBN: 9781611211405
Publisher: Savas Beatie
Published: 2013-07-18T16:00:00+00:00

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.

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