The Battle of Franklin was fought on November 30, 1864, in Franklin, Tennessee, as part of the Franklin–Nashville Campaign of the American Civil War. Confederate Lieutenant General John Bell Hood's Army of Tennessee launched this engagement against Union forces in a critical phase of the war's western theater. The battle represented a major confrontation between Hood's offensive operations and Union defensive positions in middle Tennessee.
The engagement saw Confederate forces under Hood conduct numerous frontal assaults against fortified positions held by Union Major General John Schofield. The Confederate assault involved six infantry divisions containing eighteen brigades with 100 regiments numbering almost 20,000 men. The assault, sometimes called the "Pickett's Charge of the West," consisted of repeated attacks against entrenched Union defenses. Schofield commanded the Union forces defending their fortified positions while preparing to execute a planned, orderly withdrawal to Nashville. The battle was characterized by intense combat as Hood attempted to prevent this withdrawal and destroy the Union force.
The Battle of Franklin resulted in one of the worst disasters of the war for the Confederate States Army. The Confederate assault resulted in devastating losses to both enlisted men and the leadership of the Army of Tennessee, with fourteen Confederate generals becoming casualties—six killed, seven wounded, and one captured. Additionally, 55 regimental commanders were casualties. Despite the intensity of the Confederate attacks, Schofield successfully executed his planned withdrawal to Nashville. Following Hood's subsequent defeat against George H. Thomas at the Battle of Nashville, the Army of Tennessee retreated with barely half the men with which it had begun the short offensive, rendering it effectively destroyed as a fighting force for the remainder of the war.
The American Civil War (1861–1865) was the deadliest conflict in American history, killing an estimated 620,000 to 750,000 soldiers and an unknown number of civilians. The Confederate States of America, formed by eleven seceding Southern states, faced the Union in four years of warfare across 23 states and territories. Major engagements included First and Second Bull Run, Antietam (the bloodiest single day in American history, September 17, 1862), Chancellorsville, Gettysburg (July 1–3, 1863), Vicksburg (surrendered July 4, 1863), and Sherman's March through Georgia and the Carolinas (1864–1865). President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, transforming the war's stated purpose to include the abolition of slavery and enabling the enlistment of approximately 180,000 Black men in the United States Colored Troops. Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865. The war resolved the question of secession and ended American slavery, though Reconstruction would face sustained resistance in its attempt to secure civil rights for formerly enslaved people.
Fourteen Confederate generals (six killed, seven wounded, one captured); 55 Confederate regimental commanders were casualties; Union casualty figures not provided in article
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