Franklin was a Civil War engagement fought in Tennessee, 1863. It was a Union victory.
The 1863 engagement at Franklin was a reconnaissance in force by Confederate cavalry leader Maj. Gen. Earl Van Dorn coupled with an equally inept response by Union Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger. Van Dorn advanced northward from Spring Hill on May 10, making contact with Federal skirmishers just outside Franklin. Van Dorn's attack was so weak that when Granger received a false report that Brentwood, to the north, was under attack, he believed it, and sent away most of his cavalry, thinking that the Confederate general was undertaking a diversion. When the truth became known-there was no threat to Brentwood- Granger decided to attack Van Dorn, but he was surprised to learn that a subordinate had already done so, without orders. Brig. Gen. David S. Stanley, with a cavalry brigade, had crossed the Harpeth River at Hughes's Ford, behind the Confederate right rear. The 4th U.S. Cavalry attacked and captured Freeman's Tennessee Battery on the Lewisburg Road but lost it when Brig. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest counterattacked. Stanley's troopers quickly withdrew across the Big Harpeth River. This incident in his rear caused Van Dorn to cancel his operations and withdraw to Spring Hill, leaving the Federals in control of the area.
On November 30, 1864, Union and Confederate forces clashed at Franklin, Tennessee, in an engagement that formed part of the larger Franklin-Nashville Campaign of the Civil War. Few episodes in the conflict brought the Confederate States Army closer to catastrophe. Lieutenant General John Bell Hood threw his Army of Tennessee into a series of frontal attacks against entrenched Union lines held by Major General John Schofield, yet the assaults failed to stop Schofield from carrying out an orderly, pre-arranged retreat toward Nashville.
Eighteen brigades drawn from six infantry divisions, comprising roughly one hundred regiments and nearly 20,000 soldiers, took part in the Confederate offensive, an effort some have likened to a western counterpart of Pickett's Charge. The cost proved staggering: fourteen Confederate generals fell as casualties, six killed outright, seven wounded, and one taken prisoner, while fifty-five regimental commanders were also lost. When the Army of Tennessee later suffered defeat at the hands of George H. Thomas during the Battle of Nashville, it withdrew with only about half the strength it had possessed at the campaign's outset, leaving it broken as an effective fighting force for the rest of the war.
This clash in 1864 was not the first time armies had met near Franklin. An earlier and much smaller confrontation had taken place there on April 10, 1863, when Confederate cavalry under Major General Earl Van Dorn carried out a reconnaissance in force.
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