Visitation to the Widow of the South

The Army of Tennessee under Lt. Gen. John Bell Hood launched a full frontal assault on well entrenched defenses around Franklin under the Federal command of General John Schofield. 20,000 Confederates and over 100 regiments charged across 2 miles of open field with little artillery support into the teeth of the Federal defenses. Carnton is situated on the left wing of that attack and soldiers in Stewarts Corps/Loring's Division had to break ranks to pass around the house. They were under artillery fire from Federal batterys. Artillery shells were landing on all sides of Carnton. It was commandeered as a hospital before the Confederates ever reached Federal lines so it was one of the first hospitals. Over 300 wounded would be inside Carnton with many more wounded and dead lying on the grounds. The battle claimed over 10,000 casualties in only five hours of fighting with 13 Confederate Generals and 54 Regimental commanders as part of the list. Six of the Generals were killed. Carnton still contains blood stains on the floors from the wounded. Visits to Carnton and The Carter House and Museum are a must if one visits Franklin or the Franklin battlefield. On an indian summer winter day in 1864, John Bell Hood watched from the heights of Winstead Hill as the Army of Tennessee marched across the fields and disappeared into the smoke of battle before night descended on his army and the last hope for the Confederacy. The morning would reveal the unimaginable brutality and carnage of the fight. The Confederate cemetery at Carnton is but a portion of the battle's Confederate dead. Many were taken from the field and buried in family plots. A large number remain on the field to this day as many had their original wood markers taken from the ground by locals using them as firewood in the Winters of 1865-66.

Category:

People & Blogs

Tags:

• Widow of the South
• Carrie McGavock
• Battle of Franklin
• Civil War
• Carnton
• Carnton Plantation
• Confederate
• Robert Hicks
• Franklin
• Tennessee
• Pink Floyd

[beretta1342000]

Carrie McGavock is very pretty in her potrait. She had five children and only two survived to adultedhood. I'll tell you somebody I find intresting is Adecilia Acklen who built Belmont. She had a very sad history. She also was one of the richest women in the US.

[TheSunkenGrave]

Did you know that Carrie McGavock's daughter had a birthday party where all the guests signed their names and Adelicia Acklen's daughter was one of the attendees? One of the guides at Carnton told me that. Belmont was designed by Adolphus Heiman who is buried directly across from the Acklen Mausoleum at Mount Olivet Cemetery. Heiman is buried beneath the Confederate Memorial in Confederate Circle. Also, the statue called "The Peri" is in the mausoleum. It was originally in Belmont.

[jwoodswce]

There were important lessons learned about reconciliation from the Civil War and its aftermath. Some of which, such as civil rights, took over a hundred years to be realized.

Yet, there are conflicts without reconciliation in the world today which are rooted in causes hundreds of years old.

It would be good for our State Department to study, apply, and teach those lessons.

[TheSunkenGrave]

I have always lived close to battlefields most of which are not preserved. Always an interesting study to find out what happened and why especially being so far removed in time.

[BenAliGtor]

Cut my vein and I will bleed Federal blue but..

..one cannot even think of, let alone walk the battlefields of, that last part of 1864 in Tennessee without admiring the valor of the common soldiers of the Army of Tennessee. To the point of tears, really. So many brave and good soldiers wasted because of Hood's recklessness. I'd be the last to question Hood's personal courage in battle, but he was a ravaged man (in body, mind, and spirit) who should have never been given command of that army.

[SonjaJeanius]

What this says to me is that in the the middle of all the killing and bloodshed, one woman and her house staff took a stand for caring.

[TheSunkenGrave]

@mwgroves1961 The secessionist commissioners stated most emphatically and clearly in trying to convince other slave holding states to join the Confederacy that they seceded from the Union because of Lincoln's threat to slavery. That point was driven home time after time, speech after speech in the months leading up to the Civil War. These very same men changed their tune after the war. I think both sides were wrong personally.

[SoBelleofTN]

I don't think that a comedy type video would be in good taste at all, especially of this place where so many died a horrible death. There are many of us here in Tennessee, who had ancestors who fought in that terrible battle so long ago. Carnton House, was full of men who where dying or badly wounded. They were the lucky ones, so many still lay beneath the sod who's bodies were never found. May they rest in eternal peace!

[robbyfan7]

I told a Civil War class last year and I wrote about the Battle of Franklin (not the first battle, but the second one) and they have a video telling the story about it and I knew about the hatered between the North and South, but after I watched that video, I never realized how much hatered there was. It really put it into perspective. Actually I think the word hatered is an understatement. I am planning on a trip to Franklin in March and I am really looking forward to it.

[TheSunkenGrave]

There are battlefields all over the place in this vicinity. There is something about Franklin though that makes it stand out as particularly cold and brutal. The tour guides there do not sugarcoat it either.