The Carter Farm

Built early in the 1850s, F.B. Carter’s old cotton gin stood at the angle during the Battle of Franklin and became central to stories of the heaviest fighting there. Before the battle, Federal soldiers stripped weatherboards and timber from the gin to strengthen breastworks that angled along the building’s south side, while Federal engineers formed the angle between the Columbia Pike and the gin so the line could pass around the front of the building without obstructing small arms and artillery fire. The angle became the focal point of the battle. Just before sundown at 4:35 P.M., two Confederate divisions totaling more than 5,000 veteran soldiers under Gens. Samuel French and Patrick Cleburne struck the Federal line and Gen. James W. Reilly’s troops there. Confederate losses were severe from the outset, but the force of the attack broke the Federal position before a Union counterattack retook that section of the line. As the sun set, ferocious fighting continued amid smoke, confusion, fear, and death, with the cotton gin looming above it all. For Southerners, the memories were bitter because Cleburne was dead and his division lay wrecked on the field; for Northerners, the path to the war’s final outcome became clearer there. Twenty-five years after the Battle of Franklin, the gin was torn down, and its foundation was unearthed in 2015.

Franklin, Tennessee · United States