During the Battle of Franklin on November 30, 1864, as the sun set, Confederate Gen. John Bell Hood’s army engaged Union Gen. John M. Schofield’s troops in five horrific hours of fighting marked by hand-to-hand combat and artillery fire that caused roughly 10,000 casualties. From this vantage point at Fort Granger, Schofield had a commanding view of the battlefield while also overseeing the construction of pontoon bridges across the Harpeth River so troops and supply wagons could move to Nashville after the battle. Protected by the fort’s walls, Capt. Glen J. Cockerill’s three-inch rifled guns of Battery D, 1st Ohio Light Artillery, struck crippling blows against the advancing Confederates. Union Lt. Frederick W. Fout, a German immigrant, later recalled that from Fort Granger the garrison could see every troop and gun in their line as long as daylight and the smoke allowed, and after sundown the sparks of rifle fire and the thunder of heavy cannon were splendid and awe-inspiring. As the guns at Fort Granger poured heavy fire into Confederate Gen. A.P. Stewart’s advancing line, with his right flank pinned by the Harpeth River, Confederate regiments including the 35th Alabama, 12th Louisiana, Thomas Scott’s Brigade, and the 43rd Mississippi in John Adams’s brigade suffered especially heavy losses. Stewart’s Corps sustained nearly 3,000 casualties in the battle, many inflicted by Fort Granger’s fire, and Schofield reported that the attack by about two corps lasted from 4 P.M. until after dark, was repulsed with very heavy loss, probably 5000 or 6000 men, and resulted in the capture of about 1,000 men, including one brigadier general.