Virtue Magazine

Such a situation faced the Confederate Army of Tennessee in the autumn of 1864. For three years they had fought against an army that had invaded their homeland, struggling time and time again against heavy odds to defend their hearths and homes. In the early days of the war, the Tennesseans had seen nearly their whole state fall to the enemy. Worst yet was the condition of the Orphan Brigade, natives of Kentucky who had left their state in 1861 to fight for the South. They had not seen their state since, having been on duty elsewhere when Bragg’s legions invaded Kentucky in 1862. But still they marched and fought, hoping against hope that their efforts would free not only Tennessee, but also Kentucky from the armies of Abraham Lincoln, who spread destruction and poverty in their wake.

In 1864, though the army was still intact, hopes of success were all but gone. The Army of Tennessee had been depleted severely by the “hundred day’s campaign” that ended when Union General Sherman captured Atlanta. Soon Sherman was marching off on an orgy of destruction, which would “make Georgia howl.” The new commander of the Army of Tennessee adopted a strategy born out of desperation. Instead of opposing Sherman’s carnival of desolation, he would recapture Tennessee, and perhaps even Kentucky. But even without facing Sherman, he would be outnumbered by the armies of John Schofield and George Thomas. It was a desperate gamble, with scant hope of success. But Hood’s worn, hungry regiments stepped off with a will, motivated to free their state from the enemy army that had so long occupied it.

Opposing them was the army of John Schofield, who withdrew before Hood’s troops up the turnpike towards Nashville. Hood hoped to entrap them in front of the town of Franklin, Tennessee, but a series of bungles by Confederate commanders allowed Schofield’s troops to slip out of the trap in the night, and they entrenched around Franklin, intending to withdraw the next day to join George Thomas at Nashville.

John Bell Hood, who was out of his depths as an army commander, was enraged. He denounced his commanders, including such stalwarts as Patrick Cleburne and Nathan Bedford Forrest. Accusing the army of having lost will, he determined to reinvigorate his forces by a head-on attack against Schofield’s defenses. He underestimated the determination of his army, their love of the land of their nativity. They had not lost their will, they only suffered from poor leadership. Hood topped off all his other mistakes by rejecting Forrest’s offer to flank Schofield out of his defenses. His officers, incensed by Hood’s accusations, determined that they would prove their loyalty and competence by driving home the attack against all odds.

What followed was a massacre. We often hear about Pickett’s Charge, but the slaughter at Franklin may have even been worse. The troops, numbering 20,000 covered twice as much ground, and fought for five hours, including more than three hours after dark. Much of the combat was hand-to-hand, in the Federal trenches. But droves of Southerners had already fallen to the hurricane of Union cannon and musket fire. The determination to press home an attack, in the face of death and destruction, when the war was all but lost, is among the ultimate examples of an army sacrificing itself for its home and kinfolks.

There is no need to describe the battle in detail. A few sentences from Co. Aytch, Confederate Private Sam Watkins’ classic memoir of the war, suffice to show us the abject horror of it:

It was the finishing stroke of the Southern Confederacy. I was there. I saw it. My flesh trembles, and creeps, and crawls when I think of it today. My heart almost ceases to beat at the horrid recollection. Would to God that I had never witnessed it!

I cannot describe it. It beggars description. I will not attempt to describe it. I could not. The death-angel was there to gather its last harvest. It was the grand coronation of death…

It was four o’clock on that dark and dismal December day when the line of battle was formed, and those devoted heroes were ordered forward, to “Strike for their altars and their fires, for the green graves of their sires, for God and their native land.” As they marched on down through an open field toward the rampart of blood and death, the Federal batteries began to open and mow down and gather into the garner of death, as brave, and good, and pure spirits as the world ever saw. The twilight of evening had begun to gather as a precursor of the coming blackness of midnight darkness that was to envelop a scene to sickening and horrible that it is impossible to describe it. “Forward, men,” is repeated all along the line. A sheet of fire was poured into our very faces, and for a moment we halted as if in despair, as the terrible avalanche of shot and shell laid low those brave and gallant heroes, whose bleeding wounds attested that the struggle would be desperate. Forward, men! The air loaded with death-dealing missiles. Never on this earth did men fight against such terrible odds. It seemed that the very elements of heaven and earth were in one mighty uproar. Forward, men! And the blood spurts in a perfect jet from the dead and wounded. The earth is red with blood. It runs in streams, making little rivulets as it flows. Occasionally there was a little lull in the storm of battle, as the men were loading their guns, and for a few moments it seemed as if night tried to cover the scene with her mantle. The death-angel shrieks and laughs and old Father Time is busy with his sickle, as he gathers in the last harvest of death, crying, More, more, more! While his rapacious maw is glutted with the slain.

A more terrible description was never given. But what can it mean for us? Simply this. The Scripture says, “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friend.” If these tired, jaded, hungry men, fighting for a cause that was transparently doomed to failure, would so courageously lay down their lives for the sake of their country, what can we do? Nobody asks us to march into the teeth of a storm of flying lead and steel. But there is much we can do. There is much that needs to be opposed, in our society, in our communities, in our churches. Will we stand up for what is right and true? Or will we look at the daunting odds, decide the situation is hopeless, and go with the flow?

The men of the Army of Tennessee long ago showed their way. One thousand seven hundred and fifty of them never came back, including six generals who had led the assault on horseback. Nearly 4,000 were maimed in the defense of their country. We are not called upon to make such sacrifices as they. But let us follow their footsteps, and stand up for what is right, regardless of the cost. Like them, let us follow the words of the great Israelite general Joab, found in II Samuel 10:12: “Be of good courage, and let us play the men for our people, and for the cities of our God: and the Lord do that which seemeth Him good.”