Advancing With Scott's Brigade

At 4:35 pm on November 30, 1864, during the Battle of Franklin, Confederate Gen. Thomas M. Scott’s brigade was about 1,500 yards from the Union lines after marching more than 120 miles through winter weather over the previous nine days and fighting several skirmishes to reach the field. Made up of five regiments from Alabama and one from Louisiana, the brigade included many men without shoes, coats, or blankets, and food was scarce. In unusually warm late-November weather, Scott’s men marched in columns from the south and began spreading into battle lines to attack the Union defenses, while the rest of the Army of Tennessee extended westward in similar parallel lines across a front more than two miles wide, much of it hidden by rolling hills. Here the brigade had already come within range of Union rifled artillery, and percussion shells and fuse shells burst among them, splintering trees and shattering men. Their own return fire with rifled muskets was ineffective because they still had at least ten more minutes to march before reaching small-arms range, and the Federals’ high ground and earthworks required the Confederates to move even closer before their fire could have much effect.

Franklin, Tennessee · United States