John K. Shellenberger

“ As fast as the troops could be marched up from the rear Stewart extended his lines over towards the pike. We could see all their movements so plainly, while they were adjusting their lines, that there was not a particle of doubt in the mind of any man in my vicinity as to what was coming. Moreover the opinion was just as universal that a big blunder was being committed in compelling us to fight with our flank fully exposed in the midst of a wide field, while in plain sight in our rear was a good line of breastworks with its flank protected by the river. ”

“ The night was as dark, the men were as tired, the distance was as great, and the way was as difficult for Johnson as for Stewart. In view of these plain facts it is a fair inference that Stewart made a very lukewarm effort to accomplish Hood's orders; that it was possible for him, by a display of no more energy than Johnson displayed, to have extended his right across the Franklin pike as early as 8 o'clock, and then when Schofield started north with Ruger's division about 9 o'clock, he would have found the way effectually barred. ”

“ It is true that hundreds of brave men from the four broken brigades of Conrad, Lane, Reilly, and Strickland, who were falling back, when they met Opdycke’s advancing line, saw that the position would not be given up without a desperate struggle and faced about and fought as gallantly as any of Opdycke’s men in recovering and afterwards in holding our line; but if Opdycke’s brigade had not been where it was, the day undoubtedly would have closed with the utter rout and ruin of our four divisions of infantry south of the river. ”

“ A colonel of Johnson's division has stated that he held his regiment in line, momentarily expecting an order to open fire, until his men, one after another, overcome with fatigue, had all dropped to the ground to go to sleep. Some of Johnson's men, on their own responsibility, went out on the pike between the passage of the different divisions, to capture stragglers for the sake of getting the contents of their haversacks. They were the men who made it unsafe, as reported by General Stanley, for a staff officer or an orderly to ride along the pike when a column of troops was not passing. ”

“ When Hack had told what he wanted, Schofield sharply replied that the enemy had possession of the road north of Spring Hill, and the trains could not move. The report of Stanley and the statement of Hack concur in showing that it was then Schofield's belief that Hood had possession of the Franklin pike; that the army was caught in a trap; that the only way out was the desperate expedient of forcing a passage by a night attack, and, failing in that, he must fight a battle next day under so many disadvantages that ruinous defeat, with the probable loss of the army, was staring him in the face. ”

“ After crossing the river Schofield rode to the fort that had been built the year before on the high bluff which formed the north bank. From this elevated position he had a good view of a large part of the battle-field and the heavy guns in the fort were engaged in firing on the nearest flank of the enemy; but he was not only well beyond the range of every rebel bullet that was fired, but he was also so far away by the road which a staff officer must take to communicate with the firing line, that he was wholly out of touch with the troops that were fighting the battle. ”

“ When Bradley's brigade, the rear of Wagner's column, was nearing Spring Hill some of the cavalry approached the pike through the fields to reconnoiter, and the 64th Ohio was sent to drive them away. With the right wing deployed as skirmishers and the left wing in reserve, the regiment advanced steadily, driving before it the cavalry, without replying to the harmless long-range fire they kept up with their carbines, but always galloping away before we could get within effective range. ”

“ They were so tired that they seemed scarcely able to put one foot before the other and many of them stopped at the ditch utterly unable to go a step farther until they had rested. It was only the strongest among them who were still capable of the exertion of climbing over the breastwork. If the men behind that work had stood fast, not one of those tired rebels would ever have crossed that parapet alive. ”

“ In expressing their dissatisfaction with the situation they were always careful to mutter their curses in a tone so low as to be inaudible a short distance away, for, looking to our right, we could see the glow on the sky made by the bivouac fires of the enemy, and in some places could see the fires with a few men about them cooking something to eat, or otherwise engaged, while most of their men were lying on the ground asleep. ”

“ From Franklin next day he wired General Thomas at Nashville that he had come through, but that the least mistake on his part, or the fault of any subordinate, might have proved fatal, and he did not want to get into such a tight place again; that a worse position for an inferior force than the one at Franklin could hardly be found; that he had no doubt Forrest would be in his rear next day, or doing some worse mischief, and that he ought to fall back to Brentwood at once. ”

“ While I was cautiously making my way around one side of that heap of mangled humanity, a wounded man lying at the bottom, with head and shoulders protruding, begged me for the love of Christ to pull the dead bodies off him. ”

“ Captain Scofield, a member of Cox’s staff, in a paper entitled “The Retreat from Pulaski to Nashville,” published in the second volume of Sketches of War History, issued by the Ohio Commandery of the Loyal Legion.
“Misery loves company,” and these two officers of the twenty-third corps, undoubtedly working in collusion, sought to mitigate their misery by putting two brigades of the fourth corps into the same class with their corps, whose battle line had proved unequal to the strain of the two brigades passing over it when driven in from the front by the assaulting rebel army. ”

“ No doubt the fear of killing some of our own men caused our gunners to aim high, and it is probable that the noise made by so many guns and exploding shells had more to do with stopping the enemy than the execution that was done. Their after-actions showed that they believed Bradley's brigade to have been an outpost; that our main line was where the battery was posted, and that so much artillery must have a correspondingly strong infantry support. ”

“ Under the stimulus afforded by the sight of the enemy in our front preparing for attack, the men eagerly relieved each other in handling the spades. As soon as a man working showed the least sign of fatigue, a comrade would snatch the spade out of his hands and ply it with desperate energy. Yet in spite of our utmost exertions when the attack came we had only succeeded in throwing up a slight embankment, which was high enough to give good protection against musket balls to the man squatting down in the ditch from which the earth had been thrown ”

“ The escape of our army from this deadly peril was largely due to the great skill with which General Stanley handled the situation at Spring Hill, but manifestly no amount of skill on the part of Stanley could have saved us, where the disadvantages were so great, if the enemy had improved with a very ordinary degree of vigor and intelligence the opportunity opened to them by Schofield's delusion as to Hood's intention. General Hood rode with the advance of his column until after it had crossed Rutherford's creek, two and one-half miles south of Spring Hill. It was then about 3 o'clock. ”

“ If the brigades of Reilly and Strickland could have opened fire under the same conditions they would have done just as well as Casement’s brigade. A critical investigation of our losses will conclusively demonstrate that at Franklin the violation of the military axiom never to post a small body of troops in a way to hamper the action of the main body was directly responsible for the unnecessary loss of more than two thousand of our soldiers. That was the frightful butchers’ bill our army had to pay for a bit of incompetent generalship. ”

“ At Spring Hill the regiment had another opportunity to show its pluck. A division that had been sent forward in charge of the trains was drawn up to resist any attack the rebels might make while the regiment, being with the headquarters train, was ordered to support a battery so placed as to sweep an open field in front of the troops. The enemy, emerging from the woods, marched steadily up to the National lines, when the entire division broke and ran. ”

“ When General Hood assaulted, Conrad’s five regiments east of the pike proved to be in the direct pathway of his assault and they were overwhelmed before the line west of the pike, which was greatly refused as to that pathway, became fully engaged.
When Opdycke’s brigade, the last to withdraw, came up to the position occupied by Conrad and Lane, Wagner rode forward and ordered Opdycke into line with them. Colonel Opdycke strenuously objected to this order. He declared that troops out in front of the breastworks were in a good position to aid the enemy and nobody else. ”

“ About a mile east of the pike we crossed the Rally Hill road. This was the road by which Hood's infantry column approached. It there runs north nearly parallel with the pike to a point 500 yards east of Spring Hill, where it turns west to enter the village. Leaving one of the reserve companies to watch the road, the rest of the regiment kept on in pursuit of the cavalry until our skirmishers were abreast of the Caldwell house, about 800 yards east of the road, when a halt was called. ”

“ The rebels were all gone and the ditch was filled with our men as far as I could see. If the rebels had succeeded in firing those two cannon they would have widened the breach in our line so much farther to our left that it might have proved fatal, since the two brigades holding our line, from the vicinity of the cotton-gin to the river, had each but a single regiment of reserves. ”

“ Elias Bartlett of the 36th Illinois, was on picket on the pike at the bridge across the creek a half mile south of Spring Hill, and he informed me that when Schofield came to his post he began eagerly to inquire what had happened, saying that he had feared everything at Spring Hill had been captured; that while they were talking, a Confederate picket, near enough to hear the sound of their voices, fired on them, and Schofield then rode on. ”

“ If a rebel raised his head above the breastwork, down it would instantly go with one or more bullets through it, fired by these rear rank men.
In this close fighting the advantage was all on our side, for our front rank men, standing up close against the perpendicular face of the breastwork on our side, could poke the muzzle of a gun over the headlog and by elevating the breech could send a plunging shot among the rebels who filled the outside ditch and expose for an instant only the hand and a part of the arm that discharged the gun. ”

“ Bradley had in his immediate front the main body of Forrest's three divisions of cavalry and the three divisions of infantry composing Cheatham's corps, while four more divisions of infantry were within easy supporting distance. In brief, ten of the twelve divisions, cavalry included, composing Hood's army, were in front of Spring Hill, and at 4 o'clock Hood was attacking with his infantry Wagner's lone division, guarding all our trains, while Schofield was still waiting for Hood at Duck river with four divisions from eight to twelve miles away. ”

“ The body of one dead rebel was lying between the barricade and the Carter house and this body no doubt indicated the high water mark reached by Hood’s assault. It is only fair to the gallant rebels, who penetrated our line, to state that Opdycke’s charge was made too promptly to give them any time to recover their wind, and that therefore in the hand-to-hand struggle, they were laboring under the great disadvantage of the physical fatigue already described. ”

“ It is notable that Brown's only excuse for not attacking was that he was out-flanked on his right, for the claim has been made that Hood arrived in front of Spring Hill too late in the day to accomplish anything, and Schofield himself has stated that his action was based on a cool calculation, made from his intimate knowledge of Hood's character, who had been deficient in mathematics as a cadet, and could make no accurate computation of the time required to overcome difficulties ”

“ Many of the bodies thus exposed were hit so frequently that they were literally riddled with bullet holes.
Our men were nearly all directed towards the pike as if with the intention of entering the breastworks through the gap there. I reasoned, however, that the hottest fire would be directed where the crowd was densest, and I veered off in an effort to get away from there. While running rapidly with body bent over and head down, after the involuntary manner of men retreating under fire, I came into collision with a man running in a similar attitude, but headed towards the gap. ”

“ The attack was pressed with so much vigor that in a few minutes after the 42d had opened fire Bradley's entire brigade was in rapid retreat towards Spring Hill, with Cleburne in close pursuit, and pouring in a hot fire. In falling back we had to cross the valley of a small stream, and I14 never think of our strenuous exertions to get out of a destructive cross-fire, while running down the easy slope leading to the stream, without recalling the story of the officer who called to a soldier making the best time he could to get out of a hot fire: "Stop, my man! What are you running for?" ”

“ By one o’clock Wagner had fallen back so close to Cox’s line that he began a movement to withdraw his division behind that line. Conrad’s brigade had been called in from the left flank and was marching in column of fours along the Columbia Pike, with the head of the column approaching the breastworks, when Wagner received an order from Schofield to take up a position in front of Cox’s line. In obedience to this order Conrad counter-marched his brigade a short distance and then deployed it in a single line of battle, having a general direction nearly parallel with Cox’s line. ”

“ The Administration gave a reluctant consent to Sherman's plan on the condition that he would leave with General Thomas, commanding in Tennessee, a force strong enough to defeat Hood. On paper Thomas had plenty of men, but Sherman had taken his pick of infantry, cavalry, artillery and transportation, leaving the odds and ends with Thomas, consisting largely of post troops garrisoning towns; bridge guards in block-houses along the railroads ”