- Joined
- Feb 23, 2013
- Location
- East Texas
Five Tragic Hours - The Battle of Franklin
by James Lee McDonough and Thomas L. Connelly
Pub. by The University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville, Tennessee
218 pp.total; 185 pp. narrative, the rest notes, sources, orders-of-battle, and index
Paperback ed. 1983, third printing 1991
ISBN 0-87049-397-3
The aptly-named Five Tragic Hours is a relatively brief account of the November 30, 1864 Battle of Franklin, Tennessee which effectively wrecked General John Bell Hood's once-proud Army of Tennessee and along with it any hopes of Confederate reconquest of its eponymous state. It is largely in the tradition of author James Lee McDonough's previous books on that army, Shiloh - In Hell Before Night, Stones River - Bloody Winter in Tennessee, and Chattanooga: A Death Grip on the Confederacy, all studies of often-neglected Western battles that shaped the course of the conflict. Like them, this later volume is somewhat short on many details and is therefore best-suited for a reader trying to get a basic understanding of the events and is therefore perhaps not for the more advanced reader looking for minutiae or obscure facts. Personally, I found it overall satisfactory though somewhat a letdown for its brevity.
I think the trouble with Five Tragic Hours is its very concentration on simply this particular battle rather than telling the entire story of Hood's Nashville Campaign of which this was only a part, although likely the most critical. Naturally, events leading up to the action at Franklin must be described in some detail, and it is in the pretty complete examination of the preceding day at Spring Hill that is probably the most interesting part of the book. In this analysis of the failure of Hood's subordinates to trap and possibly destroy the Federal force led by Maj. Gen. John M. Schofield in their retreat from Columbia to Franklin, Ben Cheatham emerges as the principal but not sole culprit; as army commander, Hood is charged with the ultimate failure in command. Perhaps oddly enough, considering the period in which this was written, the frequent accusation of Hood's dependency on opiates and pain-killers plays no real role in the explanation for either the failure or the subsequent bloodbath the following day. That is not to say that Hood escapes blame for what transpired there; his actions are considered more in the light of those of a desperate gambler who knew his time was running out and not the drug-besotted villain he is sometimes portrayed.
The battle itself is reasonably well-presented, and I thought the sequence of events that caused it to degenerate into a bloody stalemate that lasted the five hours of the title became clear for the first time. From the time the Confederate assault went in around 4 pm until it sputtered out in exhaustion around 9 pm there was more or less continual firing and fighting somewhere along the line. One important criticism, though: although this book is illustrated with a number of full-page portraits of principals and modern-day photographs of some locations the number and quality of maps is especially poor. There is essentially a single historic map of the battlefield prepared by a Confederate cartographer that does very little to supplement the text and is almost a decoration rather than a helpful tool; one would hope in vain for a modern topographic map with detailed troop placements by the Battlefield Trust!
Overall, the writing is somewhat uneven, with events presented sometimes out-of-chronological order that might prove confusing to someone not already pretty familiar with them; how much this may be attributable to the dual authorship is unclear. (Co-author Thomas L. Connelly is best-known for his two-volume study of the Army of Tennessee, so it's difficult to know exactly where their respective responsibilities may lie.) At times I got the feeling that portions or even chapters may have been written for some specific purpose, then edited or simply collected together in book form. I was also disappointed to have less than expected in the way of primary accounts of the battle included in the text. Although Franklin suffers especially from a Confederate perspective in a relative dearth of official reports due to the incredibly high casualty rate among the higher command levels, some accounts like that of Captain Sam Foster of Granbury's Brigade are absent; even Federal primary accounts or comments are few. Although events post-battle are described, relatively well-known experiences like those of the Lotz family whose home located on the Union front line was severely damaged and turned into a field hospital are mostly absent. Even the McGavock's of Carnton receive relatively little attention; only the Carters are truly well-represented among the civilians who were caught up in the struggle.
This account is so short that it would have profited greatly if it followed the Union retreat and Hood's advance all the way to the outskirts of Nashville with at least as complete a description of the debacle that occurred there and brought the entire campaign to a close. As it is, Five Tragic Hours stands as a rather uneven introduction to the Spring Hill-Franklin portion of the Confederacy's last offensive; it is in no way a comprehensive and complete account of its designated subject, the Battle of Franklin.
James N.
Last edited: