Franklin Battlefield Visit

We got up early on Sunday morning and drove down to Franklin. We arrived at the Carter House about 9:30, where we met David Fraley, the very accomplished staff historian there. David opened things up early for us, and then took us on a battlefield tour.

I had never seen any of these sites, and I was absolutely flabbergasted by the number of bullet holes and the amount of battle damage to the Carter buildings. David quite correctly pointed out that those five hours of fighting at Franklin were probably THE bloodiest five hours in American history. We saw the damage to the farm office building and to the summer kitchen. David’s telling of the stories of Emerson Opdycke’s men attacking through ankle deep pools of blood and fighting their way through the Carter farm buildings was incredibly compelling and incredibly moving at the same time.

We then went inside the house, and David took us upstairs. Few visitors ever see the upstairs, which is not presently open for tours. He also permitted Susan to take a few pictures inside the house (without the flash), even though they usually don’t allow it. We saw where the blood of the wounded literally ran down the steps like a cascade. He showed us the bed where Tod Carter was born and died, and his brother Moscow’s room. And we went down into the cellar, where 28 civilians rode out the storm while rivulets of blood from wounded poured down on them and hell raged right outside the windows.

From there, we visited the site of the former Pizza Hut, which now boasts a handsome new monument erected by the City of Franklin. That’s my wife Susan on the left, our friends Greg and Karel Lea Biggs, and David Fraley in the hat. The spot where Pat Cleburne fell is right across the street from there, and we saw that spot. The house that occupies that spot will be torn down in a couple of years when the lease expires, and the Carter cotton gin will be reproduced on the spot. I think it’s absolutely amazing that Cleburne made it to within ten feet of the Union before falling to the bullet that claimed his life.

We then went out to Winstead Hill and saw the group of Confederate monuments there. There are monuments to each of the Confederate generals killed as well as a couple of state monuments and one to Nathan Bedford Forrest’s artillery. There is also a 3-D topo map out there that shows the terrain features. Sadly, the entire valley below has been developed, including an ugly new shopping center. Apparently, the developers lied to the city fathers and told them that nothing happened on that ground–it was fought over heavily and turned up a lot of relics when the ground was broken. It’s really sad.

From there, we went to Carnton Plantation. The golf course across the road–which saw fighting since the Confederate right passed right over that ground–was recently purchased by the city, and will now be preserved. We visited the McGavock Confederate Cemetery (which is two acres in size, and is the largest privately-owned Confederate cemetery) and had a good long-distance view of the plantation house where four of the six Confederate generals killed in the battle were laid out on the back porch that you can see in the photograph the next day. Most of the dead in the cemetery were never identified.

The battlefield is very compact, and almost none of it is preserved. It’s a classic example of what happens when city fathers don’t care about the preservation of history; a new library was built on one large open parcel of land right across from the Pizza Hut site, which makes good interpretation largely impossible. It’s really tragic that so much of the battlefield is gone. Folks are finally starting to get the message and trying to promote Civil War tourism, and we saw a number of folks prowling around the McGavock Cemetery.

Sadly, it was now noon, and time to hit the road. I was very happy that I finally got to see this incredibly bloody battlefield after all these years, and I look forward to my next visit. I have to admit that I am a little bit surprised that there are no Union monuments there, particularly considering how lopsided of a Union victory this battle was. There’s not a single Union monument there, which may help to explain why so little of the battlefield has been preserved. The best news is that David Fraley has agreed to a volume on Franklin for Ironclad’s Discovering Civil War America Series, which should be a very valuable tool for battlefield stompers.