A major Blackwater River crossing stood here at Franklin during the Civil War, and Confederate forces guarded it from 1862 to the end of the war as part of the Blackwater defensive line. Several skirmishes were fought around the pontoon bridge here in 1862 and 1863. On the morning of 11 April 1863, Maj. Gen. John Bell Hood's division crossed the river on the bridge on its way to aid Lt. Gen. James Longstreet's siege of Suffolk, and Hood's division recrossed here on 4 May 1863 after the end of the siege.