Middle Tennessee experienced small-scale battles and engagements throughout the war, many along present-day I-65. At Elkton, Federal forces controlled the Elk River Bridge and protected the Prospect Railroad Bridge with a fort. Pulaski and Columbia were major Union command centers. Fighting intensified in September 1864, when Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest's cavalry passed through here to attack a Union post at Athens, Alabama. He then returned, engaged Federal forces outside Pulaski, and destroyed a camp of escaped slaves near the town. Less than two months later, Confederate Gen. John Bell Hood invaded Middle Tennessee, intending to capture Nashville and then advance through Kentucky and across the Ohio River. Union Gen. John M. Schofield maneuvered from Pulaski to Columbia, briefly engaged Hood, and then escaped at Spring Hill to fortified positions at Franklin. There, on November 30, 1864, Hood suffered more than 6,000 casualties in a futile frontal assault that failed to break the Union line. The Federals next defeated Hood at Nashville in mid-December, virtually eliminating his army as a fighting force.