Civil War History - The South & Western TheatersCheck this forum for all South and Western Theater Questions. Included are the Western, Pacific, Trans-Mississippi, & Lower Seaboard and Gulf Approach Theaters.
Ole, how can you say that the AOT was whupped before Franklin. Forget Gettysburg and Pickett, Franklin was THE charge of the war, and the whupped AOT nearly broke through those lines, with one more division and a few more hours of daylight (maybe somemore artillery), that part of the AOC would have been destroyed. Franklin was the AOT high point, it showed the Confederacy that this army was far from beaten, could charge breastworks and showed a valor that will not be surpassed in many years to come, and that’s eighteen months after the ANV high point.
Franklin was more a demonstration of the individual Reb's valor than it was evidence of an army's viability. The army was whupped, the soldier wasn't.
Compliments,
Ole
__________________ I never knew a man who wished to be himself a slave. Consider if you know any good thing that no man desires for himself. A. Lincoln
Ole, I'm afraid it went a bit further than that at Franklin. 7,000 Confederates lay dead in the frozen mud early on the morning of Dec 1. The rest, after cleaning up some of the mess, were about as demoralized as an army ever gets. Whupped is a good word. Shoes and food were conspiculously absent as well as supplemental clothing and gear. Forrest was away at the battle of the cedars in Murfreesboro on Dec 6 and 7, so his five or six regiments fared a bit better than the remainder of the army. These were the guys who later fought the rear guard on the removal into Alabama and Mississippi.
Hood, in Tennessee doing a winter campaign, was total imbicility. The Battle of Nashville was important because it was where a Confederate army was destroyed in the field. Only shattered remnants participated in South and North Carolina and in Alabama. Losing Atlanta and its western army, meant the Confederacy was doomed. It was only time, that the Union army needed.
I believe that Ft Donelson was the turning point of the war. Though it was the first major victory for the AotT I think it really laid the groundwork for the rest of the war in both theatres of battle. If I had to pick an alternate, the battle of Champion Hill was the Gettysburg of the west...no doubt.
__________________ 'If you don't read the newspaper you are uninformed,
if you do read the newspaper you are misinformed.'
Mark Twain
I believe that Ft Donelson was the turning point of the war. Though it was the first major victory for the AotT I think it really laid the groundwork for the rest of the war in both theatres of battle. If I had to pick an alternate, the battle of Champion Hill was the Gettysburg of the west...no doubt.
A case can be made for pretty much any battle being a turning point. The turning point leads to long discussions.
Ole
__________________ I never knew a man who wished to be himself a slave. Consider if you know any good thing that no man desires for himself. A. Lincoln
larry : IMHO reading battle reports can sometimes be a little misleading, if you read General Hoods report on the campaign, it seems that actually, things weren’t that bad!!
General Thomas was most definitely a tenacious fighter, but I don’t think that if I call him cautious I will cause too many ripples in civil war circles.
For the pursuit of General Hood, Thomas had available 12,500 (9,000 mounted) well mounted, well trained, well equipped troopers with seven shot repeaters, and around 20,000 infantry (still leaving a considerable garrison at Nashville), who were not less well equipped and trained. To hold back the pursuit, General Hood had 2,000 hungry, badly supplied infantry (400 being transported in wagons because they had no shoes) and less than 5,000 cavalry, who must have been badly mounted and just as badly supplied. General Forrest and Walthall were excellent officers, but let’s face it, if the pursuit had been determined, not even these excellent officers could have held that force.
I appreciate that the weather was bad, the roads were almost non-existent and the rivers were swollen (particularly the Duck River), but this was a race to the Tennessee River, if General Thomas had pushed with this infantry from behind and thrown his cavalry around the flanks to get in front of General Hood, as Grant did with Sheridan in Virginia in 1865, he would have bagged the whole army. The Union troops were not operating in an area unknown to them; they knew the roads and fords, they had been in Tennessee long enough.
General Thomas’s pursuit was lack luster; this was the only real chance in the war when a whole field army should have been captured, and he blew it.
Ole : I get what you are saying, but surely, the army is the troops, not the generals. Morale must have been high and there was a willingness to fight, otherwise the charge would fizzled out after the first Union volley, into a half hearted fire fight, as many charges did, say late in the afternoon at Jonesboro 1864. Was morale higher at Franklin than the late summer of 1864? Were there other factors other than morale? They must have thought that the chances of success were slim before going into battle, they knew what was waiting for them, maybe they did realise they were whupped, but why did they charge with such determination and then rally and come again?
OK after the ‘victory’ at Franklin, the army was demorolised, but I find it hard to accept that they were whupped before Franklin, if they could produce an offensive demonstration like that, then they could produce a defensive demonstration of equal strength. That is not a whupped army.
The Confederacy was whupped, the AOT could not change that fact, but the AOT was still viable.
Again:
It's testimony to the Confederate fighting man that he kept fighting long after his army was whupped.
My definition of whupped: no chance whatever of winning any major battle ever again. Almost breaking through doesn't count.
It was the soldier -- not the army nor the government -- that wasn't whupped.
Respectfully,
Ole
__________________ I never knew a man who wished to be himself a slave. Consider if you know any good thing that no man desires for himself. A. Lincoln
Actually most of the Confederate Army after Nashville was "whupped". Forrest had 6,000 - 8,000 cavalry and infantry who missed the battle of Nashville, plus J.R. Chalmers' cavalry who were on the flank in the battle at Nashville and survived for the most part. The weather and field conditions, reluctance from Thomas and all, was more of a factor than many of you can appreciate. Brutal cold, mud, sleet and snow for an army without equipment in total route except for Forrest and Walthall. A soldier who fell in the mud at Sugar Creek on Christmas Day 1864 was quoted " Now ain't we in a helluva fix; a one-eyed president, a one-legged general and a one horse confederacy".... A few weeks in sunny northern Mississippi helped both morale and weight gain before the trek across Alabama to the end at Bentonville. Johnston was able to wage a fight at Bentonville, but the war ended at Franklin as far as the west was concerned.
If I can chime in. All the posts are really thought provoking as well as interesting to the point of making one run to their civil war library and research the Franklin/nashville campaign. I would like to add that if Hood was victorious in cutting Schofield off prior to Franklin, there would not have been a Franklin and possibly a Nashville. (Just one man's opinion). By the fall/winter of 1864, I believe that the southern command was really biding for time, a draw if you will which I soundly disagree with Davis's decision to bag Johnston in favor of Hood. The southern force was still formidable enough to hold Grant in the Petersburg trenches, defeat the northern forces in the Red River campaign, Sherman was off on some adventure that bore no strategic merit. Would Johnston have proposed an offense in Tennessee? If so would he have been successful? Prior to Hood taking command, the army of tenn morale was still high but when it changed command to Hood, that in itself closed the door on the confederacy in spite of a good strategy in the beginning of the Franklin command. Hopefully I didn't ramble
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