- Joined
- May 18, 2005
- Location
- Spring Hill, Tennessee
This is another draft of my chapter on the Battle of Franklin. Tell me what you think please. This isn't the whole chapter, just the portion consisting of their fight. The title of the chapter is "Mowed down like grain before the sickle."
When Lane’s and Conrad’s Yankees turned rushing back to their main line of entrenchments, the vast majority of them converged on the one and only opening in the Federal line of works instead of maneuvering the array of obstacles that confronted them. A gap had been left open at Columbia Pike to allow baggage wagons, artillery and other passage through to the interior side of the works. Both east and west of this opening, the Federals had constructed strong works that consisted of an exterior ditch—about two to three feet deep and five to eight feet across—and a thick parapet made of the soil from the ditch with a convex face. The top of the works had been lined with head-logs of trees and timbers from deconstructed structures at the Carter Farm. Thirty to fifty feet in front of the ditch, the enemy had constructed an obstruction of fence posts that were planted in the ground at a forty-five degree angle—top toward the Rebels—planted so closely together that a man couldn’t squeeze between them without forcing two or more out of the ground. These obstructions, as well as a grove of Locust trees that had been cut down with their branches felled toward the attackers less than a hundred yards west of the pike, forced most of the Federal troops to take the path of least resistance with the Rebels in hot pursuit. The Rebel brigades of Gist, Gordon, Granbury and Govan similarly found themselves funneled by the obstructions while in pursuit of the Yankees that ran for dear life toward their comrades-in-arms. Additionally, no less than fourteen of the twenty-eight cannon confronting the Rebels occupied Brown’s division frontage. A Yankee battery of Kentuckians was stationed behind the works just east of Columbia Pike. One section of an Ohio battery was arriving in front of the Carter House. Four guns of the 20th Ohio were stationed adjacent to the Carter’s smoke house on a retrenched line in rear of the main line, and to their right, four more cannon of Bridges’ Illinois battery were placed on Carter Hill commanding all approaches from the south and west.
The Yankee rush back to the main line took only a few minutes. With the horde of friendly troops pouring back to the main line, the Federal troops occupying it were obliged not to fire for fear of killing their own men. However, massive volleys of musketry and cannon fire erupted both on the left and right flanks of the main line that dropped scores of men from Bate’s division on the west and two divisions of Stewart’s corps on the east. Strickland’s Yankee brigade that occupied the main line—due south of the Carter House—was overwhelmed by the multitude of friendly troops running pell-mell onto and over their lines. Soon, two regiments—the 50th Ohio and 72nd Illinois—began to waver and break to the rear in the face of the on-rushing Rebs. Suddenly and without warning, the troops at the retrenched line and the artillery—sixty yards in rear of the main line adjacent to the Carter smoke house—opened fire with a massive eruption of flame and sulfuric smoke. The Sixteenth—with Carter’s brigade—was just reaching the first line of works that had been taken when the concussion of the battle in the center shook the ground beneath them. Suddenly, their front was obscured in a thick cloud of smoke and flashes. What was happening? From their vantage, the scene had become so quickly and effectively enveloped in smoke that nothing could be discerned.
Unbeknownst the Rebels in Carter’s and Strahl’s brigades, the rush and convergence of Gist, Gordon, Granbury and Govan’s brigades had fractured the Yankee center. The main line had been abandoned for up to one-hundred yards on the west of the pike and another twenty-five yards east of the pike. The four hell bent brigades poured over and into the Federal center sweeping everything in its front. But two factors weighed heavily on the success of the breakthrough. The Rebels had just sprinted nearly five-hundred yards and were exhausted by the time they arrived at the opening at the pike. On both sides of the pike, many Confederates merely collapsed in the outer ditch to catch their breath. Of the hundreds that poured over the earthworks and pressed toward the Carter House, they were met by the fresh brigade of Colonel Emerson Opdycke. His blue-coats had been resting for nearly two hours in defilade on the north slopes of Carter Hill. When they heard the crash of musketry in their front, and saw troops rushing in disorder to the rear, they responded with an immediate rush to the works. This fresh brigade—with the assistance of two green regiments fresh from Ohio and Missouri—immediately plugged the massive hole torn in the retrenched line and poured staggering volleys into the suddenly overwhelmed and exhausted Rebels. A huge number of men from Gordon’s brigade found themselves cut off and surrounded by blue-coats. After a fierce hand to hand encounter with bayonets and clubbed muskets, most of them relented and surrendered. The Rebs that weren’t captured turned from the counter-attack, rushing back to the outer ditch of the main line where they continued to load and fire in the face of massive Yankee reinforcements.
Three-hundred yards south, Carter and Strahl continued a steady tread toward the earthworks. As they neared, the order to double-quick was given. Within a few hundred yards, random shells and spent bullets began to take a toll. Here and there, a man would be struck and abruptly drop to the ground—perhaps fortunate not to make it to the bowels of hell experienced in the outer ditch of the main line. At least two of the Sixteenth’s members fell in this advance. Robert Tucker of Company B was hit in the right hip by a shell fragment, and A. D. Ware of Company H was wounded by an exploding shell. One soldier described the cannon fire as “almost deafening.” Finally as they closed the distance to the works, the order to charge was given. They rushed through “a field and opening in which was no protection.” “The rebel yell was terrifying as we never heard it before,” wrote Lieutenant Talley. As the 8th/16th/28th Tennessee neared the main line and entered the thick billows of smoke, they were confronted by the obstruction of the felled Locust grove. Here, the regiment lost all semblance of organization. In this charge, the Sixteenth’s color bearer fell. Seeing him drop to the ground and the flag fall from his grasp, another of the boys rushed to seize the flag. This man carried it some distance further when he too was dropped by the heavy fire. Once again, another member of the regiment ran to seize the colors. Twenty-year old 2nd Sergeant Sam Lusk of Company D grabbed the colors and was struck and killed almost the moment he raised them. To a large degree, the boys tried to flank to the east of the obstruction of Locusts—some with success. Others found themselves entangled in the thorny branches of the trees while absorbing a devastating fire of canister and minnié balls that plowed into the branches and trunks all around them with a loud “crack.” Captain Holman, commanding one of the consolidated companies of the 28th Tennessee, fell killed in this charge—leaving Lieutenant Talley in command. In minutes that seemed like hours, the majority of the boys had made it through the obstructions and to the outer ditch of the main line under a murderous fire. The consolidated regiment’s approach brought them to a portion of the vacated main line that had been occupied by the 111th Ohio on the right and also to a portion of the line that was still occupied by the same regiment to their left. The battle raged with “fury and swiftness.” Talley wrote that, “Our men were mowed down like grain before the sickle.”[1]
At least a portion of the outer ditch where the regiment arrived was enfiladed by fire from an angle in the enemy’s works east of the pike over one-hundred yards away. This ditch was already nearly filled with survivors from the breakthrough of Gist and Gordon’s brigades. The boys on this portion of the line not only suffered from a heavy fire in their front, but the heavy fire from their right slaughtered the Rebels that could find almost no cover from the fire—except that gained from their dead comrades. Just as Lieutenant Talley reached the ditch, he was glanced by a ball in the head—breaking his skull—and dropped unconscious in the ditch. Strahl’s brigade—intermingled with them, but massed mostly on their right—was decimated by the fire from the angle at even closer range. However, the fight didn’t stop at the outer ditch of the main line. The initial contact between the opposing forces took place around sunset—4:34 P.M; by 4:45 P.M., the regiment was in the ditches of the main line. Daylight was rapidly fading, and in the dense smoke of battle, darkness came on even more quickly. Reaching the line and catching their breath, the surviving officers of the consolidated regiment urged the men over the works in an attempt to gain the retrenched line. Forty yards away under cover of hasty fortifications, thousands of Federal troops confronted the Butternuts. In one of several attempts to cross the Carter garden—that occupied the space between the main and retrenched lines—the boys poured over the works taking casualties at every step. Some were struck just mounting the earthworks, others were hit jumping to the ground, and still others as they took their first steps toward the Yankee position. They received fire from their right, front and left. The 111th Ohio that had withdrawn from a portion of the works refused their left flank and poured a devastating crossfire into the Rebel mob coupled with canister fired from the 20th Ohio battery at point-blank range directly in their front. Even with this unrelenting fire, the boys of the Mountain Regiment with their comrades of the 8th and 28th Tennessee were able to make it most of the way across the garden. When “within about 10 steps of the 3rd line of defense,” twenty-two year old Jeptha M. Fuston was hit by a ball in the left leg between the tibia and fibula. At almost the same time, he was struck in the right Achilles tendon above the ankle. He dropped hard to the ground writhing in pain. In the confusion of smoke and gunfire, he gained his feet and staggered back to the main line—rolling into the outer ditch of the earthworks. He soon found himself “fast failing” from loss of blood. As darkness continued to fall, the enemy’s shots were not so much as aimed, but merely pointed in the antagonist’s direction. Perhaps it was this, coupled with the smoke and din of battle that enabled Fuston to cooperate “with a comrade who was wounded in the right shoulder, loaning his left” to make it to safety at the field hospital a mile back.[2]
Still, as the sun sank, the chaos and ferocity of battle failed to slacken. The dead and wounded from Gist’s and Carter’s brigades in the outer ditch continued to mount. Soon, Brigadier General Francis Cockrell’s Missouri brigade rushed into the center of the line with its left pouring in behind these two brigades. Once again, a large number of boys joined Cockrell’s men in their attempt to cross the main line and seize the retrenched line, but just as the times before, the mob melted away in ones, twos and piles in the attempt to cross the garden. Major Ben Randals struggled to keep the men supplied with ammunition helping to seize ammunition from the dead and wounded and passing it on to the survivors that continued to pour a heavy return fire toward the retrenched line. On the left of the Carter’s brigade, troops from no less than three different brigades hunkered in the outer ditch. There, they loaded and raised their rifles over the parapets and discharged their guns in the very faces of the enemy. As the last light of day faded from the horizon and darkness cloaked the field, only the flashes of rifle fire and artillery instantaneously lit the surroundings. Through the dense smoke, snapshots of figures could be seen at a single moment in time as they mounted the works to fire or reel from the impact of an enemy projectile. Many of the wounded now used the cover of darkness to remove to the rear. Some staggered back through the abatis and toward the field hospitals, others crawled. For the boys that remained in the ditch—some miraculously still unscathed and others only slightly wounded—the end was nowhere in sight. The thunderous crash of artillery and roar of musketry continued.
About 6 P.M. after more than an hour in the works with the fire escalating and then receding—during a lull in the gunfire, the boys were able to discern the snapping of branches, commands of officers and muffled sound of troops approaching in their rear once again. Suddenly, another massive eruption of fire from the Federal lines slammed into the interior side of the parapet and the whiz of minnié balls buzzed overhead. In moments, another brigade—this time Manigault and Deas’ brigades of Ed Johnson’s division—stumbled through the darkness and over dead and wounded from the previous attacks joining both Carter’s and Gist’s men in the ditch. They didn’t stop there; dropping ammunition boxes and sweeping forward, the surge of fresh Rebel troops pressed onto and over the works taking the survivors of Gist and Carter with them in another attempt to gain the retrenched line—forty yards away. General Manigault was wounded seriously in the head during the attack, as well as two of his successors. Unbeknownst to the boys in Carter’s brigade, General Carter had been gut shot just before darkness. He slumped from his saddle and was miraculously carried to the rear without being hit again. While the fight near the Locust grove and across the Carter garden surged back and forth, two more brigades of Johnson’s division slammed into the main Federal line to the left of Carter and Gist. Three times, the Rebels mounted assaults after being reinforced by Johnson’s division. At least one of the assaults met with limited success to the left of Carter’s brigade along the frontage defended by the 107th Illinois; but owing to the darkness, the success could not be exploited. Three stands of colors were taken by the Rebels in the bloody, chaotic fighting. An aide-de-camp of Johnson’s division later wrote a brief account of the battle from his vantage in rear of the struggle.
…our noble fellows, notwithstanding they were worn out with fatigue and loss of sleep, swept like an avalanche over the breastworks and fortifications, carrying everything before them. The conflict was terrible. The two lines now met face to face about ten feet apart, and poured into each other’s ranks murderous volleys of musket balls. The ground was covered with the dead and dying. It was now dark and still the battle raged with unabated fury. Oh! what a scene now presented itself. Along the extended line, from right to left, was heard the roaring musketry, while flashes from thousands of guns could be seen like lightning bugs on a summer’s night, while the whole heavens seemed filled with bursting bombs and crashing grape and canister. Onward and still onward pressed our noble men until the flashing muskets revealed the combatants engaged hand to hand, whilst the Union and Confederate flags were rustling together amid the deadly conflict. We conquered, and the enemy was driven from their works…[3]
On the left flank of the 8th/16th/28th Tennessee, the 4th Confederate/6th/9th/50th Tennessee occupied the outer ditch directly in front of the 111th Ohio. As the final attempt to take the works by Deas’ Brigade failed, “a strippling [sic] lieutenant of Johnson’s division, leaped on top of the works, sword in hand, and called to his men to follow, this they endeavored to do but were hurled back, by the storm which burst in their faces from the enemy’s line, but the young man stood there under the fire of a thousand rifles and appealed to his men to try again. He was finally pulled back in the trenches by Major Wilder, of Carter’s Brigade.” The valor shown in that brief, bloody engagement was not limited to a few men. Adjutant and 2nd Lieutenant Joseph Leipshuts of the Eighth was killed on the works in an attempt to storm the Yankee line. William Buchanan of the same regiment was severely wounded in one of the attacks within feet of the retrenched line. During a lull in the firing, he was carried into the Federal lines and taken captive. He had shown “great bravery” in the fight according to one of his comrades. Pendleton Huff—also of the Eighth—was shot in the mouth with the ball nearly shearing his lips off. 2nd Lieutenant James F. McCue was killed late in the fight at the angle of the works. Joseph Hamlet had enlisted in the 8th Tennessee in December of 1862. A friend of his dreamed that he would be killed in battle that day and begged him not to go into the fight. Joe replied that “he had rather be killed than disgrace his children.” His comrade’s premonition was verified when he was killed at the works during a Federal attempt to retake the portion of the line occupied by he and his comrades.[4]
The consolidated regiment of Tennesseans occupied a limited frontage in the ditch—probably not more than one-hundred yards in length. All the Tennesseans displayed great courage in the fight. The casualties in the Sixteenth and Carter’s entire brigade mounted steadily as the fight continued. Adjutant Alfred Claywell of the Sixteenth was wounded as well as another member of the field and staff—Horace McGuire who was the regimental bugler. Tennessee M. Hooper was shot in the left arm and hand; James Johnson was wounded seriously in the left leg; John Meadows was struck with a horrible wound in the right leg and foot in one of the attacks; John Sutton was shot in the left shoulder. The list continued to grow. In the hours past about 7:30 P.M., the fire began to slacken but would increase for brief periods of time whenever an unusual commotion was detected in front of the Federal lines. By 10 P.M., the fire was nominal, and the steady tread of wounded that could move continued in ones and twos to the rear. While some of the seriously wounded drifted into unconsciousness and death, others—exhausted from the hard march and immediacy of battle—attempted to make their way out of the ditches and to the rear. Some of the boys remained in the ditch—surrounded by dead and wounded piled three or four deep in some places. The moans and groans of the wounded tore at the hearts of the boys. Finally, as the fight gradually came to a close, the smoke dissipated and the smallest amount of ambient starlight was cast across the field. The slightest silhouettes of frozen figures littered the landscape. The motion of a wounded man swaying a leg or arm grabbed the attention of the naked eye in the darkness. Most of the men had chosen to remain in the ditch and let the battle end around them. They knew the commotion or racket created in going to the rear may bring on another deadly volley. And so the last few hours passed with only sporadic gunfire that punctuated the stillness of night.
Near midnight, Lieutenant Talley regained consciousness. Realizing he was wounded in the head, he tried to gain his feet several times, “but in every attempt I would fall back to the ground.” His vision was so impaired that “it seemed I must climb a very steep hill.” “The ground and everything I could see was right up in front of me and I could only be convinced of my impaired vision by trying to place my hands on objects that I apparently saw.” After maintaining his balance on his knees for some time, he crawled from the ditch and moved into the Locust thicket, “and it was by holding to these little bullet shattered trees that I could stand and stagger along by holding to them.” Finally after a time consuming undertaking through the thicket, Talley was assisted by the litter corps and placed in an ambulance. Although the day had proved comfortable, night brought on a chill, and shortly after midnight, a frigid north-westerly wind began to gently blow across the battlefield. It was about this time that soldiers in Johnson’s division became aware of the absolute silence in their front. When small parties of Rebels advanced without bringing on any gunfire, it was quickly established that the enemy had withdrawn. As the word spread back to the boys in the ditches, whole groups of men began to wander back to the rear through the darkness. Others went in immediate search of the dead and wounded friends and comrades. Next, fires began to spring up haphazardly across the field of battle. Torches were lit, and many dozens of them were wielded across the battleground with an occasional pause while a comrade turned bodies over for identification or called out men’s names.[5]
[1] Talley, Final Segment; Stan Castles, E-mail Correspondence.
[2] Fuston, Tennessee Civil War Veterans Questionnaires, Vol. 2, p. 871-3.
[3] “An Error Corrected.” The Richmond Dispatch (Richmond, VA) December 28, 1902, p. 19; “The Battle of Franklin, Tennessee.” Yorkville Enquirer (Yorkville, S.C.) January 4, 1865, p. 2.
[4] “An Error Corrected.” The Richmond Dispatch (Richmond, VA) December 28, 1902, p. 19; Quarles, Memoirs of Captain John S. Quarles, p. 3, 25.
[5] Talley, Final Segment.
When Lane’s and Conrad’s Yankees turned rushing back to their main line of entrenchments, the vast majority of them converged on the one and only opening in the Federal line of works instead of maneuvering the array of obstacles that confronted them. A gap had been left open at Columbia Pike to allow baggage wagons, artillery and other passage through to the interior side of the works. Both east and west of this opening, the Federals had constructed strong works that consisted of an exterior ditch—about two to three feet deep and five to eight feet across—and a thick parapet made of the soil from the ditch with a convex face. The top of the works had been lined with head-logs of trees and timbers from deconstructed structures at the Carter Farm. Thirty to fifty feet in front of the ditch, the enemy had constructed an obstruction of fence posts that were planted in the ground at a forty-five degree angle—top toward the Rebels—planted so closely together that a man couldn’t squeeze between them without forcing two or more out of the ground. These obstructions, as well as a grove of Locust trees that had been cut down with their branches felled toward the attackers less than a hundred yards west of the pike, forced most of the Federal troops to take the path of least resistance with the Rebels in hot pursuit. The Rebel brigades of Gist, Gordon, Granbury and Govan similarly found themselves funneled by the obstructions while in pursuit of the Yankees that ran for dear life toward their comrades-in-arms. Additionally, no less than fourteen of the twenty-eight cannon confronting the Rebels occupied Brown’s division frontage. A Yankee battery of Kentuckians was stationed behind the works just east of Columbia Pike. One section of an Ohio battery was arriving in front of the Carter House. Four guns of the 20th Ohio were stationed adjacent to the Carter’s smoke house on a retrenched line in rear of the main line, and to their right, four more cannon of Bridges’ Illinois battery were placed on Carter Hill commanding all approaches from the south and west.
The Yankee rush back to the main line took only a few minutes. With the horde of friendly troops pouring back to the main line, the Federal troops occupying it were obliged not to fire for fear of killing their own men. However, massive volleys of musketry and cannon fire erupted both on the left and right flanks of the main line that dropped scores of men from Bate’s division on the west and two divisions of Stewart’s corps on the east. Strickland’s Yankee brigade that occupied the main line—due south of the Carter House—was overwhelmed by the multitude of friendly troops running pell-mell onto and over their lines. Soon, two regiments—the 50th Ohio and 72nd Illinois—began to waver and break to the rear in the face of the on-rushing Rebs. Suddenly and without warning, the troops at the retrenched line and the artillery—sixty yards in rear of the main line adjacent to the Carter smoke house—opened fire with a massive eruption of flame and sulfuric smoke. The Sixteenth—with Carter’s brigade—was just reaching the first line of works that had been taken when the concussion of the battle in the center shook the ground beneath them. Suddenly, their front was obscured in a thick cloud of smoke and flashes. What was happening? From their vantage, the scene had become so quickly and effectively enveloped in smoke that nothing could be discerned.
Unbeknownst the Rebels in Carter’s and Strahl’s brigades, the rush and convergence of Gist, Gordon, Granbury and Govan’s brigades had fractured the Yankee center. The main line had been abandoned for up to one-hundred yards on the west of the pike and another twenty-five yards east of the pike. The four hell bent brigades poured over and into the Federal center sweeping everything in its front. But two factors weighed heavily on the success of the breakthrough. The Rebels had just sprinted nearly five-hundred yards and were exhausted by the time they arrived at the opening at the pike. On both sides of the pike, many Confederates merely collapsed in the outer ditch to catch their breath. Of the hundreds that poured over the earthworks and pressed toward the Carter House, they were met by the fresh brigade of Colonel Emerson Opdycke. His blue-coats had been resting for nearly two hours in defilade on the north slopes of Carter Hill. When they heard the crash of musketry in their front, and saw troops rushing in disorder to the rear, they responded with an immediate rush to the works. This fresh brigade—with the assistance of two green regiments fresh from Ohio and Missouri—immediately plugged the massive hole torn in the retrenched line and poured staggering volleys into the suddenly overwhelmed and exhausted Rebels. A huge number of men from Gordon’s brigade found themselves cut off and surrounded by blue-coats. After a fierce hand to hand encounter with bayonets and clubbed muskets, most of them relented and surrendered. The Rebs that weren’t captured turned from the counter-attack, rushing back to the outer ditch of the main line where they continued to load and fire in the face of massive Yankee reinforcements.
Three-hundred yards south, Carter and Strahl continued a steady tread toward the earthworks. As they neared, the order to double-quick was given. Within a few hundred yards, random shells and spent bullets began to take a toll. Here and there, a man would be struck and abruptly drop to the ground—perhaps fortunate not to make it to the bowels of hell experienced in the outer ditch of the main line. At least two of the Sixteenth’s members fell in this advance. Robert Tucker of Company B was hit in the right hip by a shell fragment, and A. D. Ware of Company H was wounded by an exploding shell. One soldier described the cannon fire as “almost deafening.” Finally as they closed the distance to the works, the order to charge was given. They rushed through “a field and opening in which was no protection.” “The rebel yell was terrifying as we never heard it before,” wrote Lieutenant Talley. As the 8th/16th/28th Tennessee neared the main line and entered the thick billows of smoke, they were confronted by the obstruction of the felled Locust grove. Here, the regiment lost all semblance of organization. In this charge, the Sixteenth’s color bearer fell. Seeing him drop to the ground and the flag fall from his grasp, another of the boys rushed to seize the flag. This man carried it some distance further when he too was dropped by the heavy fire. Once again, another member of the regiment ran to seize the colors. Twenty-year old 2nd Sergeant Sam Lusk of Company D grabbed the colors and was struck and killed almost the moment he raised them. To a large degree, the boys tried to flank to the east of the obstruction of Locusts—some with success. Others found themselves entangled in the thorny branches of the trees while absorbing a devastating fire of canister and minnié balls that plowed into the branches and trunks all around them with a loud “crack.” Captain Holman, commanding one of the consolidated companies of the 28th Tennessee, fell killed in this charge—leaving Lieutenant Talley in command. In minutes that seemed like hours, the majority of the boys had made it through the obstructions and to the outer ditch of the main line under a murderous fire. The consolidated regiment’s approach brought them to a portion of the vacated main line that had been occupied by the 111th Ohio on the right and also to a portion of the line that was still occupied by the same regiment to their left. The battle raged with “fury and swiftness.” Talley wrote that, “Our men were mowed down like grain before the sickle.”[1]
At least a portion of the outer ditch where the regiment arrived was enfiladed by fire from an angle in the enemy’s works east of the pike over one-hundred yards away. This ditch was already nearly filled with survivors from the breakthrough of Gist and Gordon’s brigades. The boys on this portion of the line not only suffered from a heavy fire in their front, but the heavy fire from their right slaughtered the Rebels that could find almost no cover from the fire—except that gained from their dead comrades. Just as Lieutenant Talley reached the ditch, he was glanced by a ball in the head—breaking his skull—and dropped unconscious in the ditch. Strahl’s brigade—intermingled with them, but massed mostly on their right—was decimated by the fire from the angle at even closer range. However, the fight didn’t stop at the outer ditch of the main line. The initial contact between the opposing forces took place around sunset—4:34 P.M; by 4:45 P.M., the regiment was in the ditches of the main line. Daylight was rapidly fading, and in the dense smoke of battle, darkness came on even more quickly. Reaching the line and catching their breath, the surviving officers of the consolidated regiment urged the men over the works in an attempt to gain the retrenched line. Forty yards away under cover of hasty fortifications, thousands of Federal troops confronted the Butternuts. In one of several attempts to cross the Carter garden—that occupied the space between the main and retrenched lines—the boys poured over the works taking casualties at every step. Some were struck just mounting the earthworks, others were hit jumping to the ground, and still others as they took their first steps toward the Yankee position. They received fire from their right, front and left. The 111th Ohio that had withdrawn from a portion of the works refused their left flank and poured a devastating crossfire into the Rebel mob coupled with canister fired from the 20th Ohio battery at point-blank range directly in their front. Even with this unrelenting fire, the boys of the Mountain Regiment with their comrades of the 8th and 28th Tennessee were able to make it most of the way across the garden. When “within about 10 steps of the 3rd line of defense,” twenty-two year old Jeptha M. Fuston was hit by a ball in the left leg between the tibia and fibula. At almost the same time, he was struck in the right Achilles tendon above the ankle. He dropped hard to the ground writhing in pain. In the confusion of smoke and gunfire, he gained his feet and staggered back to the main line—rolling into the outer ditch of the earthworks. He soon found himself “fast failing” from loss of blood. As darkness continued to fall, the enemy’s shots were not so much as aimed, but merely pointed in the antagonist’s direction. Perhaps it was this, coupled with the smoke and din of battle that enabled Fuston to cooperate “with a comrade who was wounded in the right shoulder, loaning his left” to make it to safety at the field hospital a mile back.[2]
Still, as the sun sank, the chaos and ferocity of battle failed to slacken. The dead and wounded from Gist’s and Carter’s brigades in the outer ditch continued to mount. Soon, Brigadier General Francis Cockrell’s Missouri brigade rushed into the center of the line with its left pouring in behind these two brigades. Once again, a large number of boys joined Cockrell’s men in their attempt to cross the main line and seize the retrenched line, but just as the times before, the mob melted away in ones, twos and piles in the attempt to cross the garden. Major Ben Randals struggled to keep the men supplied with ammunition helping to seize ammunition from the dead and wounded and passing it on to the survivors that continued to pour a heavy return fire toward the retrenched line. On the left of the Carter’s brigade, troops from no less than three different brigades hunkered in the outer ditch. There, they loaded and raised their rifles over the parapets and discharged their guns in the very faces of the enemy. As the last light of day faded from the horizon and darkness cloaked the field, only the flashes of rifle fire and artillery instantaneously lit the surroundings. Through the dense smoke, snapshots of figures could be seen at a single moment in time as they mounted the works to fire or reel from the impact of an enemy projectile. Many of the wounded now used the cover of darkness to remove to the rear. Some staggered back through the abatis and toward the field hospitals, others crawled. For the boys that remained in the ditch—some miraculously still unscathed and others only slightly wounded—the end was nowhere in sight. The thunderous crash of artillery and roar of musketry continued.
About 6 P.M. after more than an hour in the works with the fire escalating and then receding—during a lull in the gunfire, the boys were able to discern the snapping of branches, commands of officers and muffled sound of troops approaching in their rear once again. Suddenly, another massive eruption of fire from the Federal lines slammed into the interior side of the parapet and the whiz of minnié balls buzzed overhead. In moments, another brigade—this time Manigault and Deas’ brigades of Ed Johnson’s division—stumbled through the darkness and over dead and wounded from the previous attacks joining both Carter’s and Gist’s men in the ditch. They didn’t stop there; dropping ammunition boxes and sweeping forward, the surge of fresh Rebel troops pressed onto and over the works taking the survivors of Gist and Carter with them in another attempt to gain the retrenched line—forty yards away. General Manigault was wounded seriously in the head during the attack, as well as two of his successors. Unbeknownst to the boys in Carter’s brigade, General Carter had been gut shot just before darkness. He slumped from his saddle and was miraculously carried to the rear without being hit again. While the fight near the Locust grove and across the Carter garden surged back and forth, two more brigades of Johnson’s division slammed into the main Federal line to the left of Carter and Gist. Three times, the Rebels mounted assaults after being reinforced by Johnson’s division. At least one of the assaults met with limited success to the left of Carter’s brigade along the frontage defended by the 107th Illinois; but owing to the darkness, the success could not be exploited. Three stands of colors were taken by the Rebels in the bloody, chaotic fighting. An aide-de-camp of Johnson’s division later wrote a brief account of the battle from his vantage in rear of the struggle.
…our noble fellows, notwithstanding they were worn out with fatigue and loss of sleep, swept like an avalanche over the breastworks and fortifications, carrying everything before them. The conflict was terrible. The two lines now met face to face about ten feet apart, and poured into each other’s ranks murderous volleys of musket balls. The ground was covered with the dead and dying. It was now dark and still the battle raged with unabated fury. Oh! what a scene now presented itself. Along the extended line, from right to left, was heard the roaring musketry, while flashes from thousands of guns could be seen like lightning bugs on a summer’s night, while the whole heavens seemed filled with bursting bombs and crashing grape and canister. Onward and still onward pressed our noble men until the flashing muskets revealed the combatants engaged hand to hand, whilst the Union and Confederate flags were rustling together amid the deadly conflict. We conquered, and the enemy was driven from their works…[3]
On the left flank of the 8th/16th/28th Tennessee, the 4th Confederate/6th/9th/50th Tennessee occupied the outer ditch directly in front of the 111th Ohio. As the final attempt to take the works by Deas’ Brigade failed, “a strippling [sic] lieutenant of Johnson’s division, leaped on top of the works, sword in hand, and called to his men to follow, this they endeavored to do but were hurled back, by the storm which burst in their faces from the enemy’s line, but the young man stood there under the fire of a thousand rifles and appealed to his men to try again. He was finally pulled back in the trenches by Major Wilder, of Carter’s Brigade.” The valor shown in that brief, bloody engagement was not limited to a few men. Adjutant and 2nd Lieutenant Joseph Leipshuts of the Eighth was killed on the works in an attempt to storm the Yankee line. William Buchanan of the same regiment was severely wounded in one of the attacks within feet of the retrenched line. During a lull in the firing, he was carried into the Federal lines and taken captive. He had shown “great bravery” in the fight according to one of his comrades. Pendleton Huff—also of the Eighth—was shot in the mouth with the ball nearly shearing his lips off. 2nd Lieutenant James F. McCue was killed late in the fight at the angle of the works. Joseph Hamlet had enlisted in the 8th Tennessee in December of 1862. A friend of his dreamed that he would be killed in battle that day and begged him not to go into the fight. Joe replied that “he had rather be killed than disgrace his children.” His comrade’s premonition was verified when he was killed at the works during a Federal attempt to retake the portion of the line occupied by he and his comrades.[4]
The consolidated regiment of Tennesseans occupied a limited frontage in the ditch—probably not more than one-hundred yards in length. All the Tennesseans displayed great courage in the fight. The casualties in the Sixteenth and Carter’s entire brigade mounted steadily as the fight continued. Adjutant Alfred Claywell of the Sixteenth was wounded as well as another member of the field and staff—Horace McGuire who was the regimental bugler. Tennessee M. Hooper was shot in the left arm and hand; James Johnson was wounded seriously in the left leg; John Meadows was struck with a horrible wound in the right leg and foot in one of the attacks; John Sutton was shot in the left shoulder. The list continued to grow. In the hours past about 7:30 P.M., the fire began to slacken but would increase for brief periods of time whenever an unusual commotion was detected in front of the Federal lines. By 10 P.M., the fire was nominal, and the steady tread of wounded that could move continued in ones and twos to the rear. While some of the seriously wounded drifted into unconsciousness and death, others—exhausted from the hard march and immediacy of battle—attempted to make their way out of the ditches and to the rear. Some of the boys remained in the ditch—surrounded by dead and wounded piled three or four deep in some places. The moans and groans of the wounded tore at the hearts of the boys. Finally, as the fight gradually came to a close, the smoke dissipated and the smallest amount of ambient starlight was cast across the field. The slightest silhouettes of frozen figures littered the landscape. The motion of a wounded man swaying a leg or arm grabbed the attention of the naked eye in the darkness. Most of the men had chosen to remain in the ditch and let the battle end around them. They knew the commotion or racket created in going to the rear may bring on another deadly volley. And so the last few hours passed with only sporadic gunfire that punctuated the stillness of night.
Near midnight, Lieutenant Talley regained consciousness. Realizing he was wounded in the head, he tried to gain his feet several times, “but in every attempt I would fall back to the ground.” His vision was so impaired that “it seemed I must climb a very steep hill.” “The ground and everything I could see was right up in front of me and I could only be convinced of my impaired vision by trying to place my hands on objects that I apparently saw.” After maintaining his balance on his knees for some time, he crawled from the ditch and moved into the Locust thicket, “and it was by holding to these little bullet shattered trees that I could stand and stagger along by holding to them.” Finally after a time consuming undertaking through the thicket, Talley was assisted by the litter corps and placed in an ambulance. Although the day had proved comfortable, night brought on a chill, and shortly after midnight, a frigid north-westerly wind began to gently blow across the battlefield. It was about this time that soldiers in Johnson’s division became aware of the absolute silence in their front. When small parties of Rebels advanced without bringing on any gunfire, it was quickly established that the enemy had withdrawn. As the word spread back to the boys in the ditches, whole groups of men began to wander back to the rear through the darkness. Others went in immediate search of the dead and wounded friends and comrades. Next, fires began to spring up haphazardly across the field of battle. Torches were lit, and many dozens of them were wielded across the battleground with an occasional pause while a comrade turned bodies over for identification or called out men’s names.[5]
[1] Talley, Final Segment; Stan Castles, E-mail Correspondence.
[2] Fuston, Tennessee Civil War Veterans Questionnaires, Vol. 2, p. 871-3.
[3] “An Error Corrected.” The Richmond Dispatch (Richmond, VA) December 28, 1902, p. 19; “The Battle of Franklin, Tennessee.” Yorkville Enquirer (Yorkville, S.C.) January 4, 1865, p. 2.
[4] “An Error Corrected.” The Richmond Dispatch (Richmond, VA) December 28, 1902, p. 19; Quarles, Memoirs of Captain John S. Quarles, p. 3, 25.
[5] Talley, Final Segment.