Battle of Franklin, Eastern Flank

The Nashville & Decatur Railroad, about 600 yards in front of this position, was only a few years old during the war but formed the most direct north-south transportation route through Middle Tennessee, making it a major reason Federals and Confederates fought so fiercely for this area. After the Union army captured Nashville in 1862, it controlled the route to this point in Franklin, and in the spring of 1863 Federal troops built Fort Granger one mile to the east to protect the line. Throughout 1863 and 1864, Confederate forces launched several attacks north and south of Franklin in an effort to sever this vital rail link. In November 1864, as Gen. John Bell Hood moved north from Alabama, his 30,000-man army destroyed every railroad bridge and several miles of track along the way, but when his soldiers reached these fields they had to cross the rail bed, which ran diagonally across their line of attack and complicated their approach. Gen. Winfield S. Featherston’s Mississippi brigade suffered especially heavy losses when it crossed the rail bed and was exposed to direct artillery fire from Fort Granger, whose guns could fire almost lengthwise down the long basin. After the battle, the railroad again aided the Union cause when its bridge across the Harpeth River became a primary evacuation route as the army withdrew to its fortifications in Nashville eighteen miles away.

Franklin, Tennessee · United States