The Battle of Spring Hill

i think understanding spring hill is the heart of understanding franklin because i think without without really understanding what happened it didn't happen on november 29th it's i think much more difficult to understand why john bell hood does what he ultimately decided to do so here we are at the spring hill battlefield and we're standing really just a bit inside of part of the u.s defensive position george wagner's division gets here just before noon and he deploys his troops southeast town where we are east of town and to the north of town the troops that were set up in this area were part of luther bradley's brigade he has a handful of regiments up on this hill which at the time the troops were here they were hidden up in this timber and then off to my front which is a bit west of here where two regiments of bradley's brigade he really has dual purpose he's watching monitoring for for activities toward columbia pike and also monitoring activities up the rally hill pike because the confederate troops who had crossed the duck river earlier in the day were moving up the davis ford road and the davis ford road links up with rally hill pike and so this is logically where the confederates are going to come from and sure enough they do and at about a quarter to four that afternoon frank cheatham's corps begins arriving on the field not far south of here kind of beyond the tree line pat claiborne's division begins advancing and claiborne's division begins moving toward columbia pike because hood's objective is to block the road and prevent scofield's army from retreating from colombia north toward franklin well when i started researching it and then ultimately started writing about it i was interested in not just what happened on that day but why why did john belhood launch this invasion of tennessee this late in the war and i think that's really at the heart of it nashville had been the first capital to fall to u.s soldiers early in the war so it's trying to drag it out it's trying to prolong the war trying to keep hope alive when john bell hood makes this effort to move into tennessee there's a lot of discussion going on between president lincoln and general grant and general sherman about what to do and so ultimately they begin developing a sort of defensive strategy and that's where john schofield comes into play so scofield and hood have a sort of equal number of troops hood slightly more than scofield but scofield's job was to slow hood down and that's what he's attempting to do between really pulaski and colombia claiborne's men run into bradley's troops in this general vicinity and west of here in a very sharp fight erupts claiborne's division alone takes uh 250 300 casualties bradley's brigade is badly mauled one of his regiments the 42nd illinois which was positioned west of here suffered almost 50 casualties just in a matter of moments bradley himself in fact is badly wounded and barely dragged off the field what happens here is clyburn's men push bradley's troops off this hill in in this direction toward the north and this running pursuit begins to play out and claiborne's men advance several hundred feet north of here i don't think that john bell hood or jefferson davis who ultimately sanctioned the movement would have ever attempted it had they believed for a moment that they couldn't possibly be successful and not just that the campaign could be successful but they could still win the war i think sometimes it's easy to forget this campaign actually goes on for the better part of two months from very late october until late december so down into this area is really one of not just one of my favorite parts of this battlefield but i think really one of the the more poignant pat claiborne's men largely two of his brigades dan govans and mark lowry's pursue bradley's troops into this area pushing down toward this low ground and it's in this area that claiborne's men begin taking artillery fire a battery of four guns positioned just north of here near at the time martin shares his home begins shelling claiborne's troops furiously and begins to break up his advance and of course you can see the terrain's not exactly conducive to effective pursuit as they come under fire over this ground claiborne's men begin hitting the creek which is right here in the tree line they really don't get much further than that some of them did advance beyond the creek into what was then a cornfield but they're quickly pushed back and why i think this area of the battlefield is so important is because anybody who's studied spring hill or franklin or just the western theater the civil war in general knows who pat clyburn was and i've for many years informally called this area clyburn's last bivouac because pat clyburn and many of his men spent their last night on earth camped down in this area and stretching out for several hundred yards in each direction because let's not forget cleveland commands three thousand men so they're they're not just in this really small area but in this general vicinity many of them spent that night on november 29th as the entire u.s army is moving up the road northward toward franklin they don't have any idea what's really transpiring four five six hundred yards west of here we are at least 500 yards from the road and that's important to point out because when the us army was moving if you were in this area and especially when you consider the terrain hills and ridge lines tend to mask not just what you can see but they also tend to mask sound and so in this area you would likely not have been able to hear very much at all and add to that the idea that an entire army moving under cover of darkness was not a normal occurrence so almost everything is playing against the confederate troops that evening what happens on the night of november 27th this hood lays out the plans for for what would happen on november 29th throughout the next day november 28th the confederate cavalry begins aggressively pushing out to try and screen this movement that hood has planned for november 29th and so the southern army advances on the morning of november 29th leaving a portion of the army in colombia the remaining two-thirds of it swings out to the east in an effort to to use a military term to flank john scofield's army and the goal is midway between columbia and franklin this little place called spring hill and so late that afternoon the confederate army with hood at the head of it is approaching the southeast side of town and little could any of them know what was about to unfold well when you get right down to it is there was so much confusion about not only what did not happen but what did happen and then the whole thing is overshadowed by the just horrific bloodshed the next day frankly it's easy to to oversimplify it to look at and say well it was this and there was this series of mistakes or a series of successes and then you get to the end result and and i think spring hill is a case of this misunderstanding it wasn't just what the confederates were doing it was what john schofield and the u.s army was doing that has much to do with that night as anything john schofield moves his entire army well over 25 000 men from columbia tennessee through spring hill all the way to franklin so somewhere 25 26 miles he does it under cover of darkness on one single road moving thousands of animals hundreds of wagons scores of artillery pieces within a couple hundred yards of the enemy talk about daring we're now in the area where confederate troops came closest to columbia pike this ground was slated to be developed and the trust rescued it it's adjacent to ripavilla which is the scene of a rather well-known meeting the next morning between hood and several of his subordinate commanders but that's how close we are to the columbia pike today u.s highway 31 it's that road that was used by the u.s army that night as they escaped but just before sundown on the 29th of november william bates troops part of cheatham's corps had come within maybe 100 yards of the road so they're right out here in the field bait actually had the road within sight but he like pat claiborne and like john brown were ordered to pull back reposition for a later attack which never which never came i think that john bell hood tried to block the columbia turnpike tried to get his subordinates to block columbia turnplay they made their earnest efforts to try to do so but nobody actually got the roadblock somewhere between oaklawn and ripavilla john bell hood must have been boiling over that morning on the 30th it was every possible way to either minimize spring hill or to turn it into something that it never was one of the things i always thought was interesting is the people who would argue that john scofield had multiple escape routes that night no he did not john schofield certainly never considered that he had any other alternatives other than columbia pike he certainly couldn't go east he wasn't going to go west he wasn't going to move up the railroad bed he knew what faced him that night and hood knew full well the opportunity that had been lost spring hill was a casualty of time in fact until 20 years ago you would have found people who would even argue that there was ever a battle there never somewhere in the neighborhood of 700 750 casualties now that pales in comparison to franklin but this wasn't some minor little skirmish this was an incredibly sharp intense fight i think the best thing that's happened to spring hill is that franklin's story has been resurrected to some degree which allows us to look at the battle of spring hill and allows us to look at the campaign in a more proper perspective that's a place where you can actually see how opportunity is frittered away and how soldiers sometimes we view them as these immortals like there are some greek and roman gods battling it out they were just like us placed in unbelievably unique dangerous confusing circumstances you almost see the war winding down you see an army grappling against time you see a commander in above his head he's the peter principal he's a great division and brigade commander in command of an army that wasn't acting cohesively and then on the other side an army that knows they have one chance to get away there is no doubt that there's something present in the army of tennessee on the afternoon of november 30th 1864 that ties directly to spring hill but i think it also ties all the way back to the early days of the war and this was it can you hear me sound good yes no tell me when you're ready i'm ready there you go want to get the creek i find your lack of faith disturbing are you ready

Channel: The Battle of Franklin Trust

Views: 5,398

Rating: 4.8814816 out of 5

Keywords: civil war, battle of spring hill, franklin, battle of franklin, tennessee campaign, battlefield tour, 1800, eric jacobson, history, historian, john bell hood, myths

Id: opsa1nk2IkY

Length: 12min 10sec (730 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 30 2020