The Confederacy's Last Hurrah by Wiley Sword

Author:Wiley Sword
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781504042901
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2016-12-02T05:00:00+00:00

IV

John Bell Hood called a council of war at his headquarters for midnight. There the commanders of the three corps, Cheatham, Stewart, and Lee, told a tale of horror about the massacre of their commands. Hood, who had remained brooding over the army’s inability to crush Schofield’s forces during much of the evening, was unmoved by their plight. After listening to Stewart’s and Cheatham’s gloomy assessments, Hood turned to Stephen D. Lee and asked, “Are you, too, going back on me?” Lee answered that although one of his divisions had been badly cut up, he had two others that had not been engaged, and if Hood gave the word, at daylight he would charge the enemy works at bayonet point.50

According to another account Hood was almost savage in his fury and rage over the lack of an expected major victory. The conflict at Franklin would be renewed, he announced. At first light in the morning he would call upon all his artillery—a hundred guns, which had just come up from Spring Hill—to shell the Federal earthworks. Then, at 9:00 A.M., the entire army would assault the Yankee lines.51

There was no arguing with him. Hood desperately needed a victory, no matter what the cost. An aide left the meeting reflecting on what further agony the morning would bring—“it was a bitter prospect for our poor fellows,” he sadly reflected.52

Soon the orders went out. Hood would rely on his old tactical concept of attack and overwhelm. He ordered each piece of artillery to fire 100 rounds, beginning at 7:00 A.M. TWO hours later the entire army would make a general frontal assault.53

After midnight a myriad of staff officers and engineers began emplacing the Confederate artillery on high ground at Winstead and Breezy hills. At least one battery reportedly went forward close to the Federal earthworks, rolling over the bodies of dead and wounded Confederates in their rush to come into battery. The “agonizing shrieks” of the wounded as the heavy twelve-pounder Napoleon carriages and the horses’ hooves crushed their bones were appalling, wrote an artilleryman. By about 2:00 A.M. many of the Confederate batteries were in place and the gunners readied their ammunition for the dawn barrage.54

Due to the lack of noise within the Yankee lines during the early morning hours, several men crept forward and found no enemy present. Suddenly there was a glow on the horizon from the direction of Franklin. Within minutes a large fire blazed beyond the town, rivaling the earlier conflagration that had been put out about midnight. More Confederate scouts were ordered forward.55

At the time of the earlier fire it was felt that the enemy was evacuating the town and burning everything they could not haul away. But then it was discovered from the volleys of rifle fire that Schofield’s infantrymen were still present. Now, at 2:00 A.M., the scouts confirmed that the railroad bridge across the Harpeth River was on fire. The enemy had abandoned Franklin!56

Somehow, due to garbled communications or sketchy reports, it was

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.