Today is the 137th. Anv. of the Battle of Spring Hill.. A battle hardly mentioned in most history books. Please take the time today to remember those sons and fathers that gave their life on this Hollowed Ground..

By November of 1864 Gen. Hood was in a bind. He was faced with too many choices of too many places to go, and too few ways of getting to any of them. Should he head towards Atlanta to face Gen. William T. Sherman's army directly, or threaten Gen. George Thomas in Nashville, in hopes that Sherman had left too few troops there to hold the town against determined attack? In that case, a threat to Nashville would force Sherman to return there, freeing Atlanta and reducing the threat to the
southern Confederacy.

On Nov. 7 Hood's boss took a hand in the matter. Jefferson Davis wrote to Hood: "No troops can have been sent by Grant or Sheridan to Nashville. ...that fact will assure you as to their condition and purposes. The policy of taking advantage of the reported division of his [Sherman's] forces, where he cannot reunite his army, is too obvious to have been overlooked by you. I therefore take it for granted that you have not been able to avail yourself of that advantage during his march northward from Atlanta. ... If you keep his communications destroyed he will most probably seek to concentrate for an attack on you. But if, as reported to you, he has sent a large part of his force southward, you may first beat him in detail, and, subsequently, without serious obstruction or danger to the country in your rear, advance to the Ohio River."

We, today looking back on events, know that Jefferson Davis' dream of the Army of Tennessee marching to the Ohio River, across all of Tennessee and Kentucky, with winter coming on, was pure wishful thinking.

Hood knew better even at the time. As he wrote years later in his book "Advance and Retreat" (1880; condensed version appearing in "Battles & Leaders" Vol. 4 p425):

"The President was evidently under the impression that the army should have been equal to battle by the time it reached the Alabama line, and was averse to my going into Tennessee. He was not...acquainted with its true condition. Therefore, a high regard for his views notwithstanding, I continued firm in the belief that the only means to checkmate Sherman, and cooperate with General (Robert E. ) Lee to save the Confederacy, lay in speedy success in Tennessee and Kentucky, and in my ability finally to attack Grant in rear with my entire forces."

Whatever Hood or Davis might have wanted as an ultimate objective, the road to it led through Nashville. Of the many roads to Nashville, one passed through the village of Spring Hill, Tennessee. Spring Hill had figured to the detriment of Confederate forces once before, when Gen. Earl Van Dorn, CSA, was shot and killed there by Dr. George Peters, who believed the general had engaged in improper activities with Mrs. Peters.

As James Lee McDonough and Thomas L. Connelly put it in their classic
study Five Tragic Hours: The Battle of Franklin:

"Traditionally the Confederate army at Spring Hill...has been credited with an outstanding opportunity, somehow botched, to trap Schofield's Union force and deal it a mortal blow. What went wrong in the Rebel army has been one of the great mysteries of that conflict. Long after death had silenced the voices of the longest-lived veterans, the perplexing enigma would continue to attract countless students of the war. Explanations of Confederate failure have run the gamut from the providence of the Lord to the work of Federal spies. "God just didn't want 'at war to go on no longer," was the solution given by an old black preacher who had been one of the slaves around the Absalom Thompson house when General Hood spent the night. Some elderly residents of Spring Hill, as well as old veterans, said that Hood was drunk; or that the commander of his lead corps, General Benjamin F. Cheatham, was
intoxicated or spending the night with the famous Mrs. Peters--she was in town and her husband was not--or both."

Different historians, equally reputable and revered, have even described the action at Spring Hill in very contradictory terms, some saying that Hood's forces reached the town first (Bruce Catton) and others stating that Schofield did (Stanley Horn). Even those who were indisputably present before, during and after the event give very contradictory reports, in large part because there was no such thing as standard time
and reliable, synchronized watches to refer to in the 1860's. We will herein rely on the description of events as given by McDonough and Connelly while acknowledging that other accounts may differ.

Hood's objective, as best as can be determined, was to get his forces across the main road to Franklin and Nashville, just north of Spring Hill, so as to put his men between Schofield and Nashville. Either Schofield would have to attack, or Hood would attack him, and in either case, Hood assumed, his forces would triumph and the Union contingent would be accordingly reduced.

The Confederate high command appears to have been under the impression that the vast majority of Union troops had gone to Atlanta with Sherman, leaving few in Nashville. Hood's chaplain, later Bishop, Charles Quintard, wrote in his diary of a conversation he had with Hood before the fight: Hood said his men would "press forward with all possible speed and...would either beat the enemy to Nashville or make them go there double quick....the enemy must give me a fight, or I'll be in
Nashville before tomorrow night."

Spring Hill still stood in the way. Schofield, or at least a part of his force, was indeed already there. The first Confederates to find this out were the famed horsemen under Nathan Bedford Forrest, who came in from the east then down out of the north after cutting off the Union cavalry and sending them off towards Franklin. Hearing of this, Schofield sent his artillery and supply wagons to Spring Hill while he stayed in Columbia in case Hood headed in that direction instead. Columbia was in fact the
most logical place for Hood to go, since the road from there to Nashville was paved with macadam, a rare luxury for armies used to marching, and hauling heavy cannon and wagons, along roads paved with logs or mere dirt.

About the same time that Forrest arrived from the north, the first elements of Union infantry also drew near Spring Hill. It was around noon (an easy time of day to estimate even for men without timepieces) on a beautiful fall day. As Five Tragic Hours describes events:

"General [David Sloane] Stanley was riding at the head of Wagner's division, about two miles south of the town [Spring Hill], when he was advised by a breathless courier that Forrest's cavalry was galloping toward Spring Hill on the Mt. Carmel Road, only about four miles out.

Responding instantly with "the biggest day's work I ever accomplished for the United States," Stanley brought the infantry into Spring Hill on the double-quick, Colonel Emerson E. Opdycke's leading brigade arriving at about 12:30, in the nick of time to help the garrison defenders stop General Abraham Buford's division of Forrest's troopers from seizing the village. Following the bloody repulse of this initial attack by
Forrest's leading division, Stanley hurried to strengthen his position. Parking the wagon train between the turnpike and the railroad, west of town, he deployed Wagner's three brigades, led by Opdycke, General Luther P. Bradley, and Colonel John Q. Lane. Forming a long, semicircular line covering the high ground, the Yankees were positioned, at the farthest point, a third of a mile or so east of Spring Hill, with both flanks withdrawn to cover the pike above and below the village.
Opdycke was on the left, protecting the wagons, Bradley in the center, facing east, and Lane on the right, looking south.

"Forrest probably did not realize how close he had come to capturing the town...If Hood had really intended to seize the pike for the purpose of trapping Schofield, Forrest could have swept around Spring Hill and made a lodgment on the pike to the north. Instead, he wasted some men in assaults on the village until nearly 3 p.m., when his ammunition ran low."

Around this time Hood sent his lead division, the crack troops of Gen. Patrick R. Cleburne, in to attack. Cleburne never caught up with Forrest so had no idea what to expect.

"..his [Cleburne's] right brigade soon blundered into the Yankee line southeast of Spring Hill. Cleburne swung his division northward toward the town and, around four o'clock, barely half an hour before sunset, made the first infantry assault on Stanley's position....Cleburne drove the Federals back from their fence-rail works only to be swept by a galling artillery barrage from three batteries massed on the southern outskirts of the village in anticipation of just such a situation. With...Cleburne's infantry disarranged by the attack, the division commander had to fall back and reform before he could assault again. The Federal general was worried, and he warned Wagner to brace his soldiers for the Rebels return, probably with substantial reinforcements."

Other historians and participants have a clearer view of the battle than the present mayor. The much admired historian Shelby Foote describes the action this way:

It was a near thing, and a bloody one as well, according to a Wisconsin infantryman who watched the charge get broken up, for the most part by artillery. "You could see a rebel's head falling off his horse on one side and his body on the other, and the horse running and nickering and looking for its rider. Others you could see fall off with their feet caught in the stirrup, and the horse dragging and trampling them, dead or alive. Others, the horse would get shot and the rider tumble head over heels, or maybe get caught by the horse falling on him."

Although the day was clear, the battle took place in what is known as "the fog of war." Messages containing vital information, orders for future activities, or reports of what the results of those activities had been, had to be written on a piece of paper by a man on horseback, given to a courier and sent off. Sometimes the courier could not find the officer to whom the message was to be sent. Other times the courier would himself be captured. Sometimes the courier, having delivered the message and received a response, could not then find the man who sent the original message because troops had moved in the meantime.

And now the fog of war was complicated by the fall of night. Sundown comes early in late November, around 4:30 p.m. Twilight bright enough to see in lasts perhaps another 40 minutes. By the time the Confederate forces were positioned to attack it was too late.

Who was supposed to do what at this point was apparently unclear in 1864, and completely impossible to determine with any accuracy in 2000. Hood went to a nearby house owned by Absalom Thompson to spend the night, under the impression that he had ordered the road blocked. It was not, and during the night the entire Federal force, artillery, supply wagons and all, walked quietly down it and escaped the trap.

They were not even completely unnoticed. Sentries came to Hood and awoke him to report that they heard the troops moving out. Hood, who had had one leg amputated earlier in the war and lost the use of an arm at Gettysburg, was using laudanum, a derivative of opium, to dull his pain.

He told an aide to order Gen. Cheatham to send skirmishers to shoot at the Yankees "to confuse them". By the time the order went further down the chain of command, the skirmishers did not find any Yankees to shoot at, so they didn't.

The next morning Hood's rage was indescribable, nearly unbearable. "Wrathy as a rattlesnake" one observer called him. He left Absalom Thompson's house and marched his army to doom at Franklin, obliteration at Nashville.

Our purpose in writing the preceding accounts of the battle are not, of course, to convince you the reader of it's existence, but rather to show those living in a cloud of denial that what they are denying is indeed fact - whether their high school teacher taught it or not. Those interested in further details of the battle might wish to consult The Sound Of Brown's Guns: The Battle Of Spring Hill written by Alethea Sayers. By the way, the publisher is located, where else, in Spring Hill!

(Added Note:)
Being the author of "The Sound of Brown's Guns; The Battle of Spring Hill, November 29, 1864." I spent four years researching this event in Civil War history. My reason for doing so was the hope that those who died in supposedly "a battle that never happened" could finally be remembered. During this four years, an archeological survey of the battlefield confirmed, with physical evidence, that firsthand accounts were accurate. In Chapter 11 of Dyer's Compendium, under greatest losses sustained by a regiment, it list the 42nd Illinois Infantry as losing over one-third of its regiment at Spring Hill. Even Private William Keesy, of the 64th Ohio, Wagner's division, who wrote a poignant and detailed description of the battle, commented later; "Strange to say, this fight at Spring Hill has scarcely any notice in the annals of war." Union general, Luther P. Bradley, who was wounded during the battle, said, "It was the most critical time I have ever seen."

Rather than give a narrative of the events, I think this list of names is more telling -- though there are certainly many more names yet to be added.

CONFEDERATES
45th Alabama
Bird, Alfred A. Mortally wounded 11/29
Haden, Evan T. Mortally wounded 11/29
Jackson, Lt. Henry A. Mortally wounded "
Weaver, Capt. Daniel P. Mortally wounded "
Durdan, J.P. Wounded and captured "
Pitts, John Wounded and captured "
Adams, Thomas D. Wounded "
Martin, Zachary Wounded and captured "
Haden, Zach Wounded and captured "
Newman, R. D. killed 11/29
Lee, John H. Wounded and captured "
33D Alabama
Hathoway, W. H. Mortally wounded 11/29
Baldwin, Bryant F. Wounded "
McLeod, John Wounded "
Godwin, Elijah Mortally wounded 11/29
Smithson, Lt. Henry Wounded and captured "
46th Alabama
Manley, Thomas J. Mortally wounded "
35th Alabama
Downs, Sgt. Daniel L. Mortally wounded "
16th Alabama
White, Lt. John W. Wounded "
Gibson, D. W. Wounded and captured "
6th Texas
Jones, A. W. Wounded "
Ludwig, Conrad Wounded "
Linkenhoker, William Wounded and captured "
Sanchz, Marion Wounded "
18th Texas Dismounted
Bast, N. W. Wounded "
25th Texas Dismounted
Reed, Lt. James D. Wounded "
7th Texas
Cantrell, J. L. Wounded and captured "
14th Mississippi
Edwards, G. W. Wounded and captured "
32D Mississippi
Houston, Lt. John K. Wounded "
3D Mississippi
Reid, Lt. J. S. Wounded "
1st Arkansas
Stafford, Frank Wounded "
Hickox, James Wounded "
Hillman, Lt. Louis Wounded "
7th Arkansas
Ryan, C. M. Captured "
3D Confederate (P.A.C.S.)
Shipley, Sgt. Robert Killed "
1st Miss, Cavalry
Wiles, Richard Mortally wounded "
Cole, William B. Mortally wounded "
28th Miss. Cavalry
Raffington, Augustus B. Killed "
Allen, James Daniel Killed "
22nd Tenn. Cavalry
Polk, Tump Killed "
Shields, Moses W. Killed "
6th Tenn. Cavalry
Johnson, Lt. Gerald Killed "
Revier, James Killed "
6th Texas Cavalry
Waldman, Sgt. Charles Killed "

UNION
65th Ohio
Howenstine, Capt. Andrew Mortally wounded "
Rosenberger, Randolph Killed "
64th Ohio
Drake, Corp. Andrew Killed "
Faber, Christ Killed "
Rusk, Wilson Shannon Killed "
42d Illinois
Heitman, Christopher Wounded "
Batt. G. 1st Ohio Light Artillery
Allen, Daniel Mortally wounded "

The 42nd Illinois reported 16K, 64W and 90Missing. The 65th reports 9K, and the 15th Mo. reported 3K, 11W & 3M. The entire Co. C. of the 124th Indiana was reported missing, presumably captured. Most of the Confederate casualties were buried in the town cemetery, which the UDC later erected a marker to honor those in the unmarked mass grave. However, inadvertently perpetuating the myth of "no battle" they indicated the casualties were from the Battle of Franklin. The Union dead were gathered up and buried on the field, some of them later being removed and taken to Stones River National Cemetery.

For anyone to say that there was no battle, and would discount modern day historian accounts of it, should read Union, Captain John K. Shellenberger's (65th Ohio) book, entitled "The Battle of Spring Hill." After all, he was there.

Regards,
Alethea D. Sayers

The history of this heroic struggle will be written by the enemy, our youth will be trained by Northern Schoolteachers, Learn from Northern Schoolbooks their version of the war To regard are gallant dead as traitors --- Maj. Gen. Patrick R. Cleburne January 1864