Exploring the Franklin Battlefield with the Men Who Fought There

Each November for more than a decade, I take a few minutes throughout the goings on to think of what was occurring in Middle Tennessee in the fall of 1864. I have spent time on the battlefield every November since 2014, and, for three years, I was extremely fortunate to work on the Franklin Battlefield with the Battle of Franklin Trust. To strengthen both my professional and personal research, I spent countless hours on the field (even if some portions are part of someone’s yard now), taking measurements, judging distances, comparing late 19^th-century and early 20^th-century photographs, and reading personal accounts of the battle on the ground where select soldiers fought. I can think of no better way to make their words feel alive than to trace their footsteps and read their words.

Of course, over the years, I’ve found my favorite spots and my favorite accounts. For this 161^st anniversary, I thought I’d share five spots on the Franklin Battlefield that you have to visit and a few remarks from the men who fought there.

1) Collins Farm

Starting off with the obscure, Collins Farm is one of those “blink and you miss it” locations on the battlefield. Adjacent to the railroad tracks and the Lewisburg Pike, most people speed right by it, but thanks to one of my best friends, Pat Landrum, one of my first battlefield memories occurred right here. It was also a section of the battlefield where George Estes came face-to-face with his well-entrenched foe:

We moved on, the Yankees cannon and muskets mowing us down like grass before the scythe, but nothing deterred. We moved on not firing a gun nor hearing a sound of anything but roar of cannon and musketry, No commands could be heard, but we moved on to so near the breastworks that the fire and smoke of the Yankees’ guns would blind us and almost scorch our halt.[1]

2) Wagner’s Line

I suppose I am biased, but I have spent a lot of days and nights with George Wagner and his division at Franklin. Even now, six filing boxes of research material take up some serious square footage in my office closet. There are few other places on the battlefield where the intensity and the desperation of the fight were more evident than the U.S. Army’s advanced line. Here, two forward brigades of the 2^nd Division were overwhelmed by the speed and tenacity of the Confederate attack. When I first began writing about Wagner’s Division at Franklin, my friend and eventual boss Eric Jacobson shared the letter Lt. Col. Milton Barnes wrote to his wife following the battle. Since then, I have quoted Barnes whenever and wherever possible:

The charge was so sudden and so fierce that it came very near stampeding our whole army…We had to fall back or all be captured. I never came so near being captured before. Night came on as soon as we reached the main works and the fighting kept up until 10 o’clock, so dark we couldn’t recognize each other…the men fought like demons [and] so did the rebels. Their heavy columns came surge after surge & every successive time were sent reeling back until their dead and wounded lay in perfect heaps.[2]

3) The Cotton Gin Assault Site

Artillery won the Battle of Franklin for the U.S. Army. Nowhere is that clearer than at the site of the Cotton Gin where just paces east sat two guns of the 6^th Ohio Battery commanded by Capt. Aaron Baldwin. A hardware storekeeper before the war, Baldwin stood his ground as bullets whizzed by him and waves of Confederate infantry rushed toward him. Baldwin wrote later:

At last, when the enemy’s lines were within fifteen feet of our works, the command was given to fire…A terrible and indescribable roar followed the belching of the guns; it sounded like the crashing of an immense forest tree, which had been chopped down, when its branches struck the ground…The enemy seemed to be swept out of existence with every discharge and yet re-formed their lines and repeatedly charged to the muzzles of our guns, only to be swept away by the terrible storm of canister.[3]

4) Intersection at Jennings and Fristoe Lane

My personal bias will probably show through yet again, but I have been drawn to Brig. Gen. Francis Cockrell’s Missouri Brigade since day one. They are by far the toughest, hardest-fighting soldiers in the Army of Tennessee – and it is not even close. Cockrell and his 697 men took the field at Franklin, and as the battle raged on, his ranks were dramatically reduced. Standing south of the Cotton Gin in what is now a neighborhood of barking but very friendly English bulldogs and a Golden Retriever, it can be hard to imagine what Capt. Joseph Boyce of the 1^st and 4^th Missouri saw as he crossed the last 100 yards before he struck the earthworks and fell wounded:

Finding myself alone, I cried out: “Who is going to stay with me?”…In another second our men were on top of the parapet…But our triumph was very short. With empty guns, without officers, out of breath, our thin line rested a few seconds, when it was assailed by the enemy’s second line…Night put a stop to the slaughter.[4]

5) Carter Farm Office and McGavock Confederate Cemetery

I have always thought of these two places as the best way to end any visit to the battlefield. On tours of either location, I always made sure these two locations were the last stops. They present viewers with a space safe enough for a moment of reflection and contemplation about war and loss. They are silent reminders of the battle that stained the landscape red with blood on a November day not all that long ago. While so many are quick to make up a single hero of the battle or claim a single individual saved the day, I think of the countless bullet holes in the Farm Office or the seemingly endless column of headstones. Each bullet hole, each headstone, has a story. As the anniversary draws near every year, part of my annual reading comes from an eyewitness to the battle and historian, Jacob D. Cox.

It would be hard to find a better test of what courage, nerve, and discipline are capable of. It helps to establish a practical limit where the sense of hopelessness and impossibility quenches will. Beyond that point continued struggle is not heroism, it is insanity. The men who held the works and restored the line when broken may also fairly claim that they too showed what nerve and will may do to retrieve an error and turn a threatened disaster into victory.[5]

[1] George E. Estes, “Some Incidents as Recorded by a Private Soldier in the Southern Army of the Civil War.” Unpublished Manuscript ca. 1910. The Battle of Franklin Trust Collection.

[2] “Milton Barnes to Rhoda Barnes,” December 3, 1864. Milton Barnes Civil War Collection Special Collections & Archives, George Mason University.

[3] Aaron Baldwin, edited by Wilbur F. Hinman, “What the Battery Did.” The Story of the Sherman Brigade: The Camp, the March, the Bivouac, the Battle; and how the Boys Lived and Died During Four Years of Active Service, (Wilbur Hinman, 1897) 664.

[4] Joseph Boyce, “Missouri Brigade at the Battle of Franklin.” The Confederate Veteran, (Nashville, TN: S.A. Cunningham, 1916), 101-103.

[5] Jacob D. Cox, The Battle of Franklin, Tennessee, November 30, 1864: A Monograph, (NY: Charles Schribner’s Sons, 1897), 219.