The Campaigns of the 124th Regiment, Ohio Volunteer Infantry, with Roster and Roll of Honor

by G. W. Lewis

We arrived at Franklin about noon, and found the 23d Corps in position and throwing up works from the Harpeth river above the village to the river below. With this place we were very familiar. We first came here in February, 1863. This was our camp of instruction. We assisted in building the fort, with its large magazine on the north side of the river and to the left of the village facing south. We that had worked out many a weary detail asking, "What is all this worth?" "What is this for, miles—miles from the enemy and the front," had the opportunity, this thirtieth day of October, 1864, of seeing our labor richly rewarded. We use to do picket duty north of the river and town, and knew every foot of that country; and our Lieutenant Colonel Pickands and Adjutant Hammer enjoyed the reputation of knowing some of the rebel girls, with which the village swarmed. I remembered one Sally Atkinson, who lived near our picket line, in fact the line ran through her father's dooryard, who was a fine player on the piano, and something of a singer. She, like all the southern women, was a bitter rebel, and used to entertain the boys with "The bonny blue flag," and other rebel songs. She often boasted of having two brothers in the rebel service. But more of this anon.

Our wagon train was on the north side of the river, pulling out for Nashville to the full extent of its mule power. Those not familiar may be interested in a brief description of the field where the battle of Franklin was fought. The Harpeth river makes quite a sharp bend to the north, and the formerly very rich village, built very compactly, occupies the most of the room in the bend. Here, before the war, was the home of many rich cotton planters, for as you all will remember, this is the heart of the cotton growing belt of Tennessee. The turnpike running from the southern part of the state, through Pulaski, Columbia, and on to Nashville, ran through about the center of Franklin. The Harpeth river is a small stream, made largely of springs, but running through a limestone region, lay in deep pools much of its way, that only rendered it fordable above and below the town. To the left of the pike going south from town there was a large cotton field, stretching to the left, nearly to the river, and extending to the south, I should say, from half to three-quarters of a mile to a line of hills, that rise quite abruptly and constitute a picturesque landscape. Across this cotton field, from east to west, ran our works, as I have said, from river above to river below. At and near the pike, and to the left of the same, was planted all of the field artillery that we possessed. It was the fortune of our regiment to be detailed to cross the river, go down below the pike bridge, intrench the south bank and guard the ford; and while we witnessed the battle we were not called into it, and did not have occasion to fire a shot at the point where we were stationed. Our line, as you will understand from this brief description, was of necessity short, and in some places was supported by a reserve line. General Hood came up with his forces and formed his charging columns under the cover of the hills at the south. He visited each division and brigade, to which he stated that all the confederate soldiers had to do was to take the rude works in front of Franklin, Thomas' army would be captured, and Nashville with all of its vast military stores of clothing, provisions and ammunition would fall into their hands. That Hood was a good man to fight, about a division, I think is conceded; but I take it, if Thomas had been consulted, and could have had the directing of Hood, he would not have had him done any different from what he did. Hood had in all arms, about forty-five thousand men when he came before Franklin. He had about six thousand cavalry, under General Forrest, that instead of using on our flanks and rear, he sent off to Murfreesborough to take the fort that was garrisoned by a few regiments of recent enlistment. The fort was easily defended against Forrest and would have been had his force been double what it was. Forrest was a raider, but in no sense a fighter. Schofield had not more than twenty thousand men, all told, some of which were on duty with the train. But twenty thousand old veterans, as my old soldier friends will bear me witness here to-day, are hard to go out and get, especially, if you come straight up to the front door, and this Corporal Hood, in a very gentlemanly manner, did.

Hood formed his charging column in three lines, extending across the old cotton field from east to west; his right reaching the river, his left resting on the pike. About three o'clock he made his first assault. His lines came on in fine style. The heavy guns in the fort commenced shelling unmercifully as soon as the assaulting column emerged from behind the hills, and when it reached a point near enough the field artillery opened with shrapnel and canister, making fearful havoc in the ranks of gray. But nothing daunted those charging lines, led by that best of fighting generals, Pat Cleburne, came on until they reached a point within two hundred yards of our works, when our infantry opened such a murderous fire over that level field that no valor could stand before its destructive torrent. The assaulting column broke, and the personal presence of Hood and his daring lieutenant could not rally them until they were behind the sheltering protection of the hills where they were first formed. The assault was repeated time after time, until nine o'clock that night. In one of these assaults the rebels charged to our works and drove our first line out of them for a short distance; but Colonel Opdyke's brigade, lying close in the rear, at once charged, restoring the line and capturing over a thousand prisoners. The rebels were taken entirely unawares by the charge made by Opdyke's brigade. When they captured that portion of the line they seemed to think our forces had left, for Opdyke found them sitting down on the top of the works; some of them, having laid their guns aside and lighted their pipes, were enjoying the solace of the soldier.

Our field artillery did most magnificent work, but suffered heavily. One battery of the Ohio regiment of artillery lost all the men it had at one gun, save a sergeant, and he loaded and gave the charging column one dose of canister after his left arm had been blown off.

This battle of Franklin was one of the most sanguinary, and to the rebel army one of the most disastrous, of the war. Hood lost four general officers, among them was the celebrated Pat Cleburne, that our division had been opposed to so many times on the Atlanta campaign. He fell in one of the many charges that afternoon, his horse's fore legs resting on our works. As soon as it was certain that the enemy did not intend to renew the conflict that night, our troops began to retire to the south side of the river. The bridge across the stream was covered with blankets to a depth of six or eight inches, and the artillery was moved across without noise; and by two o'clock a. m. of the thirty-first of October the last regiment was on the south side of the river and on the march for Nashville. Our wounded were left in the village, those that could not be moved, and surgeons to take care of them.

About two o'clock that morning Colonel Pickands came to our company and said "he had orders to leave one company in the position our regiment had occupied during the battle, and concluded that company B must be the one." The order was, "that we stay at the ford until orders were received to abandon it;" said, "he would send back an orderly to notify us when we could leave;" said, "we might all be captured," and he bade me an affectionate farewell when he rode away. If any one doubts that this was an anxious hour for us, he does not duly appreciate the situation. It would have been nothing for mounted men, but we were footmen and expected the enemy would send out a squadron of cavalry at daybreak to ascertain what had become of those that had punished them so the day before. We listened to the last footfall until it died away up the stone pike toward Nashville, then all was still. I then went along the line and told each one of the boys that when we were relieved, or if attacked before the order came, we would about-face and move back in our present order, deployed as skirmishers. About three-fourths of a mile to the south on a gentle elevation was a poplar grove, and I insisted to the boys that if we could maintain our line, in case of an attack, either before or after the order of relief came, we could make a splendid fight even against cavalry in those woods. I knew I could rely upon the boys. I knew any 124th man could be relied upon during the war—and since. Then we had nothing to do but wait. Not a sound was heard across the river in Franklin, in the direction of the enemy. Sodom and Gomorrah were not stiller after they received the sulphurous shower, than was that intensely rebel village and their friends near the hills beyond. The day-god began to streak the east with his golden rays, and still no order came. No cheerful cockcrowing was heard as a harbinger of the dawning day. The last rooster in the confederacy had been eliminated long years before. Day began to break, and we strained our eyes up and down the river and in the direction of Franklin, to see the approaching foe, but all was still as death. Had we been forgotten? Had something happened to the orderly? What good could we do by staying? But the order was imperative, "stay until ordered away," and orders must be obeyed, even if the brave men on this severe duty were relegated to captivity. It was now broad daylight, and no orderly in sight. But no rebel cavalry in sight either. The situation was strangely interesting in the extreme. All at once we heard the ringing clatter of a horse's hoofs, and looking up the pike—coming down the hill at breakneck pace—came the orderly at last. Talk about sweet strains of music—not Theodore Thomas' orchestra, rendering one of Beethoven's symphonies, could ever sound as sweetly as the ringing of those hoof-beats on that limestone pike that October morning. Riding up to me he said: "Captain, remove your men," and turning his steed toward Nashville was soon out of sight over the hill. We immediately began to remove. The order was obeyed, not only with willingness, but with wonderous alacrity. We double-quicked in line until we came to the poplar grove, when we, seeing no signs of pursuit, came into column on the pike, and with a long step toward the front, and a sharp lookout toward the rear, we rapidly measured off the miles in the direction of Nashville. About eight o'clock that morning we came up with the rear guard, and soon the balance of the regiment, making coffee and breakfasting by the road side. We were greeted by the colonel and the regiment with exclamations of joy. I told the colonel I was afraid he had forgotten us, but he insisted we had not been out of his mind a minute since he left us, which I have no doubt was true. But when the facts came to be known, we were not in the least danger. Had we known at that time that old Corporal Hood had so kindly sent all of his cavalry away to Murfreesborough, where they could do him no good, and us no possible harm, we would have stayed, made coffee, and eaten breakfast before starting. In fact, I have no doubt some of the boys would have been over in the village looking for "Robinson County," where they used to find it while on picket months before. But, all in all, a portion of the old 124th were the last union soldiers to leave Franklin, after the bloody battle of the thirtieth of October, 1864.

But war has its sad features, even for an enemy as dishonorable and as thoroughly hated as were the rebels. The beautiful village of Franklin was riddled with shot and shell. The great cotton field to the south was thickly covered with the graves of the confederate soldiers. The two brothers of the sweet singer of rebel songs were both killed within a few rods of their dear old home. But on the other hand, Miss Sally Atkinson, after the war, became the kind and loving wife of an officer on General Thomas' staff, emblematical of the restored Union.

The thirty-first we marched to Nashville, and the first of December took our position on the line extending around the city, from the Tennessee above to the river below. The line was a long one and necessarily thin. Everything was in a bustle of excitement in the city. Hood was expected to arrive and invest the city every hour. The gunboats were busy puffing up and down the river looking after the flanks of our lines and the various fords above and below. Every soldier in the hospitals that could possibly perform duty was sent to the front. All the laborers that were enlisted as such, and everyone that could use a pick and shovel, was pressed into the service and set at work on the intrenchments. Every private horse in the city was taken for the cavalry or artillery. The right of ownership of private property, as applied to horseflesh, was in no sense respected. Dan Castello's circus was performing at Nashville at the time, and every horse was confiscated. Mrs. Lake's celebrated trick horse, Czar, was the only one left, and that was undoubtedly owing to the feeling of chivalry every true soldier has for a lady. We had been in Nashville two days, I think, when Hood came up very leisurely and formed his lines well out from ours. He did not act like business, and evidently had not recovered from the terrible drubbing he had received at Franklin. It was now midwinter in the climate of Tennessee, the mud was deep, and it rained and sleeted almost every day. Hood did not even ask for a skirmish, and his was the saddest army of investment that ever encompassed a city. General Thomas was busy issuing clothing to his army, and especially shoes, as our foot gear had been sadly demoralized by the long march over stony roads and railway tracks back from Atlanta. Our portion of the line ran in front of the Acklin Place, a charming villa residence, built at an expense of a million and a half of dollars. The owner was a Mr. Acklin, a wealthy Englishman, who, at his own expense, fully armed and equipped a regiment of confederate infantry, named for him "The Acklin Rifles." This Mr. Acklin was not at home, so General Thomas took his spacious mansion for corps and division headquarters. I am satisfied that never before was army headquarters so ornamented with such paintings and marbles. We, on the outside, were equally well off, for the spacious grounds were surrounded by nicely built stone walls that were worked into chimneys noiselessly as was the building of Solomon's Temple, and though not quite as ornamental, were quite as useful, as that fabled temple of the olden time. The ornamental trees did not make first-rate firewood on account of being green, but we had not time for them to dry, and had to get along with them as best we could. Here we had plenty of rations; and vegetables of all kinds were issued to us in great abundance. The greatest evil we were compelled to suffer, while here, was the sale of intoxicating liquor to the soldiers in the city. The large majority of our regiment were reasonably temperate men; but, I am sorry to be compelled to say that there was a large amount of drunkenness in the army that made the men difficult to control, and caused very many to lose their lives. Drunken officers in command was a terrible evil.

I suppose no city in the United States ever had so bad a population as the city of Nashville during the winter of 1864-5. The thieves, gamblers and disreputable of both sexes, swarmed in from all over the country, and at one time the demimonde became such a plague that General Thomas loaded a steamboat with them and sent them to Louisville, but the authorities there refused to let them land, and what became of them I never knew; it may be they were destroyed for the good of the service. It was no uncommon thing to find two or more dead soldiers, murdered in an unsavory locality known as Smoky Row, every morning, and the original inhabitants of the city were none too good to murder a union soldier if they found him in a condition not to be able to take care of himself. If there ever was a city that should have been disposed of as Atlanta and Columbia were, that city was Nashville. But things were getting ripe for action. Every day troops in squads, detachments and regiments, were coming in by river and by rail. The 17th Army Corps, commanded by that gray-headed old hero (noted for his choice (?) English), General A. J. Smith, came up and took position at the right of our corps. General Stedman, that did such good work with the reserve corps at Chickamauga, commanded a division of colored troops on the extreme left, while more artillery than was ever before made ready for battle, was being put into position. There were grave apprehensions that Hood would cross the river and move into Kentucky, as Bragg had done in 1862. The government at Washington became alarmed, and sent General John A. Logan to relieve General Thomas. It did seem that the General was terribly slow, but he was preparing to give the rebel army such a crushing blow that when he did strike no second blow would be necessary. General Logan came as far as Louisville, and learning how General Thomas was situated and what he was doing, refused to supersede him though he had the orders in his pocket to that effect. Was there a regular officer in the union service that would have been that magnanimous?

The morning of the fifteenth of December opened with everything about our lines and camps veiled in an impenetrable fog. One could not see a man ten feet away. Under the cover of this fog General Thomas opened a demonstration on the enemy's right that caused Hood to weaken his left to support his right. About ten o'clock a. m., as soon as the fog had lifted a little, Thomas sent the dashing Kilpatrick in on Hood's extreme left, followed by a charge from General A. J. Smith's entire corps. General Smith's men simply ran over the rebels. When the rebel left had been badly shattered by the charge made by Smith, and when the firing showed the rebel line was crumbling, the 4th Corps in the center was ordered in, and away we all went across an open field toward the rebel works. The rebels in our front occupied a strong position behind a stone wall that they had materially strengthened, but seemed to be dazed by the impetuosity of the charge on the left and center, and hardly fired a shot. I think in this charge our brigade captured more of the enemy than we had men in line. When we passed the stone wall there was not an armed rebel in front of us that we could discover. The firing was over along the entire length of the line, and some of us thought that we had taken all the rebels there were out there. I am of the opinion of all the artillery firing we ever experienced, that of the battle of Nashville was the most intense. When the cavalry commenced the charge on the right, every gun in Fort Negley commenced firing, as well as all the other forts and all the field and reserve artillery about Nashville. Of all the pandemonian scenes we ever witnessed, this was the climax. The firing was so intense and ceaseless that not an individual gun could be distinguished, but there was one dreadful roar of shot and shell, and all along the rebel lines and beyond, the bursting missiles filled the air with clouds of smoke. I do not believe its equal was ever before witnessed on the American continent, if in the world.