An Excellent Summary of the Battle of Franklin

Falls into the trap of being overly gushy about Cleburne, IMO.

Though the essay does a fine job of quoting from the many sources who clearly did not look favorably on Wagner’s performance it does little to substantiate the lofty claims of Wagner’s overall ability. One can imagine men who were caught in the middle of the worst of the fire fight at the Carter House expressing anger at the commanding general, that is nothing new in the military but beyond them no one appears to support the position of this article that Wagner was, and here I paraphrase, placed in an untenable situation where he and his men were to be sacrificed in order to give the Union forces time to dig in and fortify.

To my mind based solely on the evidence presented in this paper, outside of other research I have done, the most damning criticism of Wagner’s decision to “hold this position” is Colonel Opdyke’s willingness to refuse orders even on threat of Court Martial. Clearly given Opdyke’s command to charge the Confederates as the Union lines broke down shows that he was no coward but rather looked at Wagner’s tactics as no good.

In the end it seems to stretch incredulity to believe that every other major officer on the battle field would conspire to save Schofield’s career especially if his cowardice and blundering strategy came so close to losing the battle and potentially all of their lives. One would safely assume that a short conversation amongst those officers after the combat would have had them standing unanimously AGAINST Schofield if for no other reason than to preserve themselves and their men from having to serve under such a poor general in any future engagement.

Furthermore, I cannot see what would cause these men to maintain relatively uniform statements regarding Wagner’s behavior years later writing in their own memoirs or papers as a retelling of the tale according to Daniel’s conclusions would bring no shame upon themselves and exonerate Wagner in the process. Even if one argued that some sort of twisted sense of esprit de corps among those classically trained in the military arts versus officers promoted I cannot see a reason that these professional soldiers would defend a man so incompetent and craven as Schofield would have been based on this essay’s conclusion.