Nashville Three Battle of Nashville Sites


They clear it occasionally, maybe twice a year or so according to the lady in the visitor center; the problem is that the city is either too stupid or most likely cares nothing about it so they fund its maintenance inadequately. The very first time I saw it was (I think) in 1987 and it most resembled a long-abandoned Japanese bunker complex on some deserted Pacific isle, with trees growing everywhere and so weed-choked I couldn't tell anything about what I was looking at; needless to say there was absolutely NO interpretation at all. The present visitor center was built much more recently and the only way anyone could have an idea there was something inside the jungle was to already know about it. I knew because a friend of mine told me he had attended a reenactment there even earlier apparently soon after it was restored the first time, sometime in the 1970's.
 
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Another *BUMP* for the anniversary of the battle!
 
Stopped there last year when I passed through on a trip to Alabama. It wasn't badly overgrown but I wouldn't say well kept either. They did knock down the former minor league baseball stadium located next to the fort and they were planning to do a dig on the site if they had the funding according to the folks at the visitor center. Haven't heard anything more about it since the onset of COVID-19.
 
I wonder how many people go watch the Nashville Sounds play baseball without ever knowing what is just across the street.
They don't play ball there anymore. That property has been reclaimed by Fort Negley. A developer tried to grab it and had political support but the resistance was so great the developers and the politicians relented.
 
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Shy's Hill, scene of the climax of the Battle of Nashville, Dec. 16, 1864.

As with Atlanta and to a lesser extent Chattanooga and other towns and cities, the city and its transportation network have grown to cover and obliterate most of the Civil War-era sites, those related to the battle and otherwise. It seems the identity as Music City has erased all traces of the Southern Heritage so dear to its singer-songwriters! A few obscure places remain, however, for those persistant enough to look and savvy enough to realize what they are.

Fort Negley

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The Sally Port, main wartime entrance to Ft. Negley.

One such place is the huge and once-dominating Ft. Negley, built in the years following Union occupation of the State Capital. It was built along with nearby Ft. Casino ( now the location of the city's water cistern! ) on ajacent hills to protect Nashville from an approach from the southeast. The fort was named for brig. Gen. James Negley, at the time commanding the Nashville garrison and later a brigade and division commander in the Army of the Cumberland, and grew to cover four acres measuring some 600' X 300' in size. Negley was built mostly by contrabands, slaves, and even freemen dragooned for the job by engineer/General James St. Clair Morton, termed the Vandal general by citizens whose homes he cavalierly ordered destroyed to provide building materials and to clear fields of fire for the fort's guns.

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View from inside the fort showing the hills to the south occuppied by Hood's army during the Battle of Nashville.

Ft. Negley played no active role in the Dec. 15 - 16, 1864, battle, apart from shelling the Confederate lines with its 30-pounder Parrott at the beginning of the action. It remained in use into the early days of Reconstruction, however, as a symbol of Union power. Like many other such installations, Negley fell into decay and disuse following the war, occuppied by vagrants and stripped for building materials. It was largely forgotten until the 1930's and became a project for the Works Progress Administration or WPA. Because of its stone foundations, it had survived reasonably well and was somewhat restored to its wartime appearance to serve as a city park.

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Outline of the stone foundations, largely rebuilt in the 1930's by the WPA.

Unfortunately, by the time I first visited it in 1987, it had again fallen into neglect and decay; as I told people, it resembled far more a series of long-abandoned Japanese pillboxes on some forgotten Pacific jungle island than it did any Civil War fort! Once again it appears that Ft. Negley is being protected by the city of Nashville and even boasts its own Visitor Center. As you can see, however, it's not being maintained or mowed as befits one of the few remaining sites of Civil War Nashville.
Traveler's Rest

Otherwise known as the Overton House, this is one of a very few period structures on what was once the battlefield. Built by John Overton, one of Andrew Jackson's law partners, the oldest part of the house dates to prior to the War of 1812, as does Jackson's nearby much-better-known Hermitage. Now a house museum, it mainly interprets the life and career of Overton and his family, who continued to add to the original structure shown below. Before the war, the Nashville & Decatur Railroad passed just a little west of the house.

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By the time of Hood's approach to the outskirts of Nashville, his Army of Tennessee had been too eviscerated at Franklin to do more than position itself on hills overlooking the unassailable Federal works like Ft. Negley. Hood made the Overton House his headquarters for the two-week period it took Maj. Gen. George H. Thomas to prepare the expected counterattack to drive the Confederates away. Hood hoped in vain any such move would so weaken or derange Federal forces so as to make them vulnerable to a slashing counterattack, something he utterly failed to recognize his army was no longer capable of. It's easy to imagine the tense staff meetings and dinners held here in the dining room of which Mrs. Overton was so proud to have served so many distinguished Confederate guests!

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The opening of the battle, Dec. 15, 1864, saw Thomas hold Hood's right and envelop his left, driving the Confederate line for about two miles and uncovering the Overton House. Though Hood anchored his right on nearby Overton Hill ( now mainly a traffic intersection in a mostly residential neighborhood ), he abandoned the house as his headquarters. It has survived destruction largely because of its nearness to and association with the railroad, tucked as at is into a little pocket by the tracks, and provides one of the few glimpses into Antebellum Nashville.

Shy's Hill

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Small park and replica cannon guard the crest of Shy's Hill; in addition to the U.S. and Tennessee flags, that of Minnesota also flies here, in tribute to the losses suffered by the soldiers from that state storming the position.

Hood's line on the morning of Dec. 16, 1864, was now only about half as long as on the previous day, and ran on an east-west axis with Overton's Hill anchoring the right flank and what became known as Shy's Hill anchoring the left. Connecting the twin knobs in part is current Stonewall Lane, which runs through a residential neighborhood parallell with an actual stone wall reputed to be the same one used by the Confederate defenders. Unfortunately for them, their shortened line was all that much easier to flank in a late-afternoon duplicate of the previous day's action. Scofield's men completely surrounded the hill, overrunning it and causing the entire Confederate army to collapse and retreat, the only such instance in the war of such a Confederate rout.

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Shy's Hill is named for the 26-year-old colonel of the 20th Tennessee, William M.Shy, who was shot through the head and killed instantly here. Less fortunate perhaps, was Brig. Gen. Thomas Benton Smith who was captured and assaulted on his way to the rear by a vengeful Federal officer who struck the unarmed young general with his sword, cleaving his skull and leaving him mentally unbalanced for the rest of his long life. The location of the current park is totally unmarked from the main road, accessable by Shy's Hill Lane and Benton Smith Road; if I didn't remember its location from back in 1987, plus the 1964 guidebook I used then, I'd never have found it! There's little here, and what there is is reached only after a steep climb on a trail through a sheltering patch of woods amid another residential neighborhood. One can only wonder if there are any plans to somehow improve, tie together, or promiote that which remains in time for the Sesquicentennial of the battle next year.
Shy's Hill actually sits in a residential neighborhood. I have made the fairly steep climb on a few occasions to take part in Anniversary observances. These are good pictures. If I can find some of my own, I'll post them.
 
Shy's Hill actually sits in a residential neighborhood. I have made the fairly steep climb on a few occasions to take part in Anniversary observances. These are good pictures. If I can find some of my own, I'll post them.
Please do! (In this or another thread.)
 
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