The Battle of Franklin, Tennessee, on November 30, 1864, is for control of Nashville, but it took place in this small hamlet with just 750 population, on the road to the city. It is a vicious battle that pits 40,000 soldiers of North and South against each other, leaving 7,000 dead or dying after just five hours - the bloodiest five hours of the Civil War.
"They were in the wrong place at the wrong time," historian Eric Jacobson tells us during our journey along Tennessee's Civil War Heritage Trail, launched to coincide with the Civil War Sesquicentennial.
At the end of the fight, ten times the population of the town lay out on the field wailing, crying, screaming for help.
Carnton, a magnificent mansion home (where our Civil War trail continues) becomes the largest field hospital - 600 are taken in, but there are still 6000 wounded outside.
Carnton was built in 1826 by former Nashville mayor Randal McGavock (1768-1843). Throughout the 19th century it was frequently visited by those shaping Tennessee and American history, including President Andrew Jackson, whose own home, The Hermitage, is not that far away. Carnton grew to become one of the premier farms in Williamson County, Tennessee. Randal McGavock’s son John (1815-1893) inherited the farm upon his father’s death. John McGavock married Carrie Elizabeth Winder (1829-1905) in December 1848, who were the occupants of the house on the night of the Battle of Franklin.
"Beginning at 4 p.m. on November 30, 1864, Carnton was witness to one of the bloodiest battles of the entire Civil War. Everything the McGavock family ever knew was forever changed."
A staff officer later wrote that "the wounded, in hundreds, were brought to [the house] during the battle, and all the night after. And when the noble old house could hold no more, the yard was appropriated until the wounded and dead filled that...."
The next morning, the bodies of four of the six Confederate generals killed during the fighting - Patrick R. Cleburne, Hiram B. Granbury, John Adams, and Otho F. Strahl,- were laid out on Carnton back porch.
We visit the rooms which were converted for surgery, and see the bloodstained floors as well as a display of the surgical instruments which would have been used.
Jacobson contradicts the prevailing view that Civil War surgeons were little better than butchers, tossing amputated limbs out the window. Jacobson contradicts some of the prevailing myths of the way soldiers were treated then: He said that the wounded were sedated with chloroform; These were the early MASH-style surgeons, who moved with the troops, and learned from their experience early in the war.
"They did callous things at the beginning of war but they learned their lesson. The blood stains by the fireplace in the room used for surgery indicate that they would have piled up the body parts; it would have been sensitive to the morale of the wounded still outside to throw them out."
The goal was to save lives through triage. He points to the fact that survival rates in the field hospital were high: as much as three out of four.
"They didn’t know about germs or infection, but it is remarkable they saved as many as they did."
Carrie McGavock, herself, tended to the wounded, becoming a folk hero.
In early 1866, John and Carrie McGavock designated two acres of land adjacent to their family cemetery as a final burial place for nearly 1,500 Confederate soldiers killed during the Battle of Franklin. The McGavocks maintained the cemetery until they died. It is still the largest privately owned military cemetery in the nation, now maintained by the Daughters of the Confederacy.
Carrie took care of orphans from 1870; John died 1893 and she lived a decade more. She took care of the cemetery until she died, in February 1905.
"Men came for 30th anniversary of war, bonded together by one word, 'Franklin'," Jacobson says.
The McGavock family owned Carnton until 1911 when Susie Lee McGavock, widow of Winder McGavock, sold it. In 1973 Carnton was listed on the National Register of Historic Places and in 1977 the house and ten acres were donated to the Carnton Association, Inc. by Dr. W. D. Sugg. By that time the house had suffered from years of neglect and disrepair and since then the Association, basically the community, has been vital in restoring and maintaining the plantation through tours, gift shop sales, membership, special events, and generous donations.
We go through the house. Bit by bit the house has been restored to its original colors, using a sample of wallpaper that was left. Most touching is a portrait of the McGavock children.
In Franklin, we see most dramatically the effort of the community to preserve what is here, to honor it. There is massive fundraising going on to raise $5 million to purchase back the land for a battlefield park - to buy out the strip mall, the Pizza Hut and to move houses from the battlefield.
There is also the Harvey McLemore House, located at the corner of Eleventh Avenue North and Glass Street in the subdivision of Hard Bargain in Franklin. Ex-slave Harvey McLemore purchased four lots in Hard Bargain in 1880 and built the house. The Association purchased it to preserve it.
And earlier that afternoon, we visited the Carter House and the Lotz House, each with their stories of how the war came to people's homes.
"It’s about how these people suffered – not just those who were buried in the cemetery, but how their families suffered, so we can be the nation we are, so we could live their promises," says Jennifer Esler, CEO Battle of Franklin Trust.
"We are trying to tell the whole story here – not just the troop movements, the generals, but the people they left behind. We have the first house built by a freedman – an African American – the house was going to be torn down, but the foundation taken over. This story has to be told."
To raise the money to save Carnton - the mansion and the battlefield - it needed a narrative, something to inspire people to come. Robert Hicks came along and wrote "Widow of the South," which just three days after publication soared onto the New York Times bestseller list.
"These were the five bloodiest hours in the Civil War," Hicks tells us. "People believe it was totally purposeless. But now the book is getting people to reassess: maybe the battle wasn't hopeless or useless."
"Hopes were pinned on [Confederate General] Hood, that he could prolong this war so the North would say, 'We don’t want to go.' " Hicks sees the importance of the Battle of Franklin, for what didn’t happen: the South did not win. Had the Confederates prevailed at Franklin, the war would have been prolonged that much longer, and 100,000 more Americans would have died.
"The Battle of Franklin was the South's last hurrah, its last hope to prolong the war to extract a better political solution." Instead, "The Old South died here, on this plain, that night."
Franklin pointed the way to Appomattox, he says.
"That’s the story – the importance to this community. It was pivotal. We all have heard of Gettysburg, Vicksburg, but it was Franklin…"
Inevitable Path to Civil War
But for me, the question is not whether the Battle of Franklin should have been fought, or why, indeed, the South did not concede defeat after losing an entire Army at Vicksburg that July. All through our journey on Tennessee's Civil War Trail, I am nagged by the thought of why the war had to be fought at all.
On the Carter House porch, Jacobson relates, "The country was going down the path to a civil war since its founding. The Founders left the big issues- slavery, states' rights - unresolved."
Indeed, the Declaration of Independence embodies the contradiction of slavery and states rights:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." That would seem to justify ending slavery.
But the next line would seem to justify the South's right to secede: "That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness."
Lincoln, though he had spoken out against slavery before being elected President, did not favor outright emancipation.His idea was to gradually wean the economy off slavery - slavery would have been legal until 1900, and slaveholders would be paid over 35-40 years, about $1000 each, or $4 billion (there were 4 million slaves in the South out of a population of 9 million) for their lost "property". Lincoln initially did not imagine freed black men integrating into white society; he supported a plan to recolonize the freed slaves back to Liberia, Africa.
Fredrick Douglass didn’t support this plan at all and Lincoln evolves over the course of the war (and his Presidency), culminating in the Emancipation Proclamation (which also turns out to have been strategic, militarily).
But while Lincoln did not intend to end slavery in the South, he wanted to stop its spread to the Western territories which were moving toward Statehood. This would have had political repercussions for the South which benefited from counting slaves toward representation in Congress (which echoes in today's debate over the inability to find a path to legalizing the status of undocumented immigrants; certain interests want the bodies counted for representation and federal funds but not for new voters). The South feared that with the loss of political power, decisions would be made that went against their economic interests, as well, such as the way raw materials like cotton were taxed
But Lincoln had dared speak about immorality of slavery since the 1840s. He was one of the most divisive figures. Indeed, in the 1860 election, the Democrats split apart, and Lincoln, running for the new Republican party, was able to win the presidency with just 40% of the vote - 10 of the Southern States did not even have him on the ballot. As soon as Lincoln was elected, even before he was inaugurated, South Carolina seceded.
"This war was driven by a small group of powerful men," Jacobson says. Texas Governor Sam Houston, the hero of Texas' break with Mexico, was thrown out of office because he opposed secession.
And no matter what the United States offered as a compromise to radical secessionists, the answer was “no”.
"You can’t tell us what to do" was their attitude, Jacobson says. The battle was brewing for decades. In 1830, South Carolina wanted to secede, but President Andrew Jackson warned the state that federal troops would be sent.
"This country was never going to resolve the slave issue except by blood."
Invoking his war powers, Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863. It proclaimed the freedom of 3.1 million of the nation's 4 million slaves in the secessionist Confederate states .(Since Tennessee had already mostly returned to Union control, it was exempted from the emancipation).
Had any slave state renounced its secession before January 1, 1863, it could have kept slavery, at least temporarily. The Proclamation only gave Lincoln the legal basis to free the slaves in the areas of the South that were still in rebellion.
The Emancipation Proclamation immediately freed 50,000 slaves, with the rest freed as Union armies advanced into the Confederacy. At this point, the Proclamation had a strategic benefit: it allowed for the enrollment of freed slaves into the United States military. During the war nearly 200,000 blacks, most of them ex-slaves, joined the Union Army. Their contributions gave the North additional manpower that was significant in winning the war. The Confederacy did not allow slaves in their army as soldiers until the final months before its defeat.
What troubles me most, though, is that a solution could have been reached to allow for the gradual eradication of slavery and compensation for the Southern owners, as Lincoln proposed, or if states' rights were really the issue, the states could have come up with their own solution.
This is the issue I raise among Tennesseans we meet who argue that the war was not fought over slavery, but over states rights (with many continuing that fight today).
If eliminating slavery wasn't the overarching purpose Lincoln waged the Civil War, the question remains for me why Lincoln didn't just let the Southern states leave?
It was preservation of the Union - the nation - and not slavery, that forced Lincoln's hand to go to war to stop the South's secession. He saw that the long term survival of the nation was dependent upon staying together. Otherwise, the land would be separated in sections like Balkans.
The answer, Hicks says, is that Europe feared the looming power that America could become. they wanted a balkanized America, which could be dominated, economically. "Lincoln realized that if the South secedes, the United States does not exist."
On the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, Hicks says, "It it important to realize that it doesn't matter if soldiers fought for the North or South. The principles of Four Score were tested. Their blood was not shed in vain. It’s the reason we are the nation we are... It's when we truly became a nation."
"So after people want to dismiss the Civil War as ancient history – if we lose our understanding of what 620,000 died for. And thousands wounded, we lose the sense of importance. It's time to be reminded of what it means to be a nation.
"To see where the Old South died and where something better happened, come to Franklin.
What comes out was something very important, very big. They did not die in vain."
The Battle of Franklin Trust now offers a value ticket for admission to Carnton Plantation, The Carter House and the Lotz House for $30.
Carnton Plantation, 1345 Carnton Lane, Franklin, TN 37064, 615-794-0903, www.carnton.org.
For additional trip planning help:
For Tennessee Civil War trip planning, go to www.tnvacation.com/civil-war/. For the Tennessee Civil War Heritage Trails, go to www.tnvacation.com/civil-war/trails/. You can see maps and have planning tools; there is even a mobile app.
A brochure, "A Path Divided," is downloadable at http://tn.gov/environment/hist/doc/brochure.pdf.
Another source is the Civil War Traveler: Tennessee, www.civilwartraveler.com/WEST/TN/index.html.
Williamson County Convention & Visitor Bureau, 615-791-7554, www.VisitWilliamson.com
Battle of Franklin: www.civilwar.org/battlefields/franklin/franklin-2010/franklin-then-now.html
Franklin has a connection to another theme we explore, The Women of the Civil War.
Next: Women of the Civil War
See also:
Tennessee launches Civil War Heritage Trail in time for Sesquicentennial
Chattanooga is key stop on Tennessee's Civil War Heritage Trail
Civil War comes home to Spring Hill on Tennessee's Heritage Trail
Battle of Franklin: Bloodiest 5 Hours of Civil War marks death of the Old South
--Karen Rubin, National Eclectic Travel Examiner
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© 2011 Travel Features Syndicate, a division of Workstyles, Inc. All rights reserved. Visit www.examiner.com/eclectic-travel-in-national/karen-rubin, www.examiner.com/eclectic-traveler-in-long-island/karen-rubin or www.travelwritersmagazine.com/TravelFeaturesSyndicate. Send comments or questions to FamTravLtr@aol.com. Blogging at goingplacesnearandfar.wordpress.com.
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