Nashville

At Nashville, Tennessee, Union and Confederate forces clashed over December 15 and 16, 1864, in an engagement that closed out major military operations west of the coastal states during the Civil War, marking the climactic episode of the Franklin-Nashville campaign. Major General George H. Thomas led the Union Army of the Cumberland, also known as the Dept. of the Cumberland, against Lieutenant General John Bell Hood's Confederate Army of Tennessee. Thomas's assault shattered Hood's forces so thoroughly that the army ceased to function as a viable fighting unit, giving the Union one of its most decisive triumphs of the entire war.

Military situation

After his setback in the Atlanta campaign, Hood turned northwest in an effort to sever the supply lines feeding Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman's forces from Chattanooga, hoping this would draw Sherman into a fight on favorable terms. Sherman briefly gave chase, but then chose a different course: he would sever his own army from those supply lines and live off the countryside during his now-famous march from Atlanta to Savannah. This approach let him avoid the burden of guarding hundreds of miles of rail against endless raids, a struggle he believed would cost "a thousand men monthly and gain no result" in the effort to beat Hood. So Sherman broke contact and headed east, leaving Thomas to deal with Hood's army and the protection of Tennessee.

Hood's strategy called for pushing into Tennessee and striking Thomas's scattered command before it could unite. He chased Maj. Gen. John M. Schofield's force from Pulaski through Columbia, aiming to trap and destroy it at Spring Hill. Thomas had ordered Schofield to slow Hood's advance as much as possible while keeping his army intact, buying time for Thomas to gather his scattered troops at Nashville. Thanks to a string of Confederate communication failures paired with capable Union leadership, the fighting at Spring Hill on November 29, 1864, ended with Schofield pulling out of Columbia and slipping past Hood's forces largely undamaged.

Enraged by the missed opportunity at Spring Hill, Hood chased Schofield northward and caught up with him at Franklin, where the Union troops had dug in behind formidable defenses. On November 30, at the Battle of Franklin, Hood threw close to 31,000 soldiers at these fortifications, trying to strike before Schofield's men could

Thomas prepares to attack

Numbers favored Thomas, yet he understood that Hood's battered force could not simply be dismissed. Even after the costly fighting at Franklin, the Army of Tennessee still had the capacity to move and menace, and that alone made it dangerous. Thomas recognized the need to strike, but he moved with deliberate caution. The cavalry under his command, led by the spirited young Brig. Gen. James H. Wilson, lacked adequate weapons and mounts, and Thomas refused to commit to a major engagement without securing his flanks first. This mattered greatly, since Wilson's troopers would soon confront the redoubtable cavalry of Forrest. Getting the Union horsemen properly equipped simply took additional time.

In the capital, officials grew increasingly frustrated by what looked like delay. Earlier, when Sherman had floated his plan to march to the sea, both Grant and Halleck worried that Hood might seize the chance to push into Tennessee. Sherman brushed off the concern, saying that such a move suited him fine and that if Hood chose to march "all the way to Ohio," he would gladly furnish him with rations. Still, once Sherman vanished into Georgia's interior, Grant's old worry resurfaced, this time centered on a possible thrust toward Kentucky or Ohio. Grant later reflected that had he been in Hood's position, he would have pressed on toward Louisville and kept going until reaching Chicago. His unease mirrored that of Lincoln, who had grown weary of cautious commanders and compared the situation to the inertia once shown by McClellan and Rosecrans, letting rebel forces roam freely.

As criticism mounted from Washington, a harsh ice storm hit Nashville on December 8, making any advance impossible. Freezing conditions lingered until December 12. Grant received word of this, but when Thomas still had not acted by December 13, Grant ordered Maj. Gen. John A. Logan to head for Nashville and take over command should Thomas remain idle upon his arrival. Logan reached only Louisville by December 15, the very day fighting at Nashville finally erupted. Grant himself had departed Petersburg on December 14 intending to take charge in person, but he had gotten no farther than Washington when the battle opened, and he went no further.

Along the Cumberland River south of Nashville, Confederate gunners established batteries at Bell's Bend on December 2, 1864. Success came quickly, as they seized two Union transport vessels loaded with horses, mules, and feed that same day. The Union river squadron answered on the night of December 3 into December 4. Most vessels focused on the upper battery, while the ironclad Carondelet and the tinclad Fairplay pushed toward the lower position, where they retook and hauled away the captured transports.

Command of the Union squadron fell to Lt. Cmdr. LeRoy Fitch, who received orders to clear the blockade. On December 7 he sent his two most powerful vessels,

Battle

Thomas devised a feint against the Confederate right flank, hoping it would pull enemy strength away from his true target on their left and perhaps tempt them into shifting units from one side to the other. Two brigades from Steedman's Provisional Division carried out this diversion: the First Colored Brigade, made up of three United States Colored Troops regiments who had earlier served guarding railroads or garrisons, alongside a brigade of rear-area white soldiers whom their own commander labeled "new conscripts, convalescents, and bounty jumpers."

On the Confederate side, the right flank held firm along the western edge of a deep railroad cut on the Nashville & Chattanooga line. A thin line of skirmishers held ground east of the tracks, and by December 14 this had been reinforced with a solid four-gun lunette staffed by Granbury's Texas Brigade (led by Houghton following Granbury's death at Franklin). Trees and brush concealed this lunette effectively.

Union forces pushed forward and broke through the skirmish line, only to face punishing artillery fire from a battery positioned west of the tracks. Passing near Granbury's lunette brought them under intense flanking fire at close quarters, and both brigades fell back in disarray. They regrouped, however, and spent the remainder of the day firing on Confederate positions from their original skirmish line. Though the diversion failed to draw Confederate attention away, prompting Hood instead to send reinforcing brigades from Lee's and Cheatham's Corps toward his threatened left, Steedman's men nonetheless seized the fortifications there, rendering that flank impossible to hold and forcing a Confederate withdrawal once night fell.

Meanwhile, Thomas orchestrated a sweeping maneuver designed to land squarely on the Confederates' vulnerable left. Wilson's Cavalry Corps rode west along Charlotte Pike, moving through the Belle Meade Plantation grounds, where several hundred horsemen clashed in a brief engagement.

As morning fog lifted, Confederate cavalry patrols stationed between their left flank and the Cumberland River were pushed back. Behind them came Smith's XVI Corps detachment, which after roughly a mile turned southward toward the enemy flank, with cavalry forming up on Smith's right side. Schofield's XXIII Corps trailed in reserve; as the advance continued south, a gap emerged between Smith's and Wilson's forces, and Schofield received orders to close it. Around 2:30 in the afternoon, Union soldiers struck the five redoubts protecting the Confederate left. Four brigades, split evenly between cavalry and infantry, swept through Redoubt No. 4 despite fierce resistance there, then took Redoubt No. 5 as well. Another brigade under Smith seized Redoubt No. 3, though its commander, Col. Sylvester G. Hill, fell to Confederate artillery fired from Redoubt No. 2, making him the highest-ranking Union casualty of the entire battle. Smith's men pressed on and captured Redoubt No. 2 without much difficulty.

Simultaneously, the IV Corps carried out a frontal assault along Granny White and Hillsboro Pikes against the Confederate left, timed to coincide with Smith's push against the redoubts. Confederate defenses were expected on Montgomery Hill north of Brown's Creek, where the line had initially been drawn, but exposure to artillery from Nashville's forts had pushed the Confederates back to equally defensible ground south of the creek. IV Corps troops climbed Montgomery Hill cautiously, discovering only a light skirmish line waiting there. After pausing to regroup, they advanced against the main Confederate position just as Smith's detachment was overrunning the redoubts to the west.

In this way Redoubt No. 1, the final stronghold on the Confederate left, fell under simultaneous pressure from Union troops approaching from north, south, and west alike. Stewart's corps, shattered by that day's combat, pulled back to a fresh defensive line a mile or two south. Reinforcements from Lee's Corps fought delaying actions that prevented the withdrawal from turning into a rout

Aftermath

The fighting at Nashville effectively finished off the Army of Tennessee as a fighting force. As historian David Eicher put it, Hood had mortally wounded his army at Franklin, only to finish it off two weeks later at Nashville. Hood placed the blame for the whole disaster on his subordinates and his men, but there was no saving his own career at that point. His shattered force withdrew all the way to Tupelo, Mississippi, and on January 13, 1865, he stepped down from command. He would never lead troops in the field again.