The Battle of Spring Hill, Tennessee / read after the stated meeting held February 2d, 1907

by John K. Shellenberger

A regiment of the 23d corps which had come to Spring Hill as a train guard, and was placed in support of the battery at the village, has persistently claimed that the salvation of our army was due to the heroic stand it made after all of Wagner's division had run away. In a historical sketch of the regiment occurs this statement:

"At Spring Hill the regiment had another opportunity to show its pluck. A division that had been sent forward in charge of the trains was drawn up to resist any attack the rebels might make while the regiment, being with the headquarters train, was ordered to support a battery so placed as to sweep an open field in front of the troops. The enemy, emerging from the woods, marched steadily up to the National lines, when the entire division broke and ran." That is pretty strong language in view of the battle record of Wagner's division, for of the four brigades out of all the brigades serving in all the Western armies, given prominent mention by Colonel Fox in his book on regimental losses as famous fighting brigades, two, Opdycke's and Bradley's, belonged to Wagner's division, to say nothing of the very awkward fact that the brigades of Opdycke and Lane were on the other side of Spring Hill, out of sight of Cleburne's attack, but it is seriously so stated—"the entire division broke and ran, leaving the regiment and the battery to resist the attack. Fixing bayonets the men awaited the onset. As soon as the enemy came within range they poured a well-directed fire into their ranks which, being seconded by the battery, caused them to waver. Portions of the retreating division having rallied, the rebels were compelled to betake themselves to the woods."

And in a paper on this campaign by a captain of the regiment, he relates how the officers of the regiment tried to stop the flying troops, and taunted their officers with the bad example they were setting their men; how the regiment opened a rapid, withering fire from a little parapet of cartridges which the officers, breaking open boxes of ammunition, had built in front of the men, and how their fire proved so destructive at that close range that it stopped Cheatham's men who then fell back and commenced building breastworks. In calling them Cheatham's men, did the captain wish to insinuate that Cheatham's whole corps was charging on the regiment? He uses the words "withering," "destructive," and "that close range," in a way to raise the inference that the contact was very close. The actual distance was shrapnel-shell range, for the battery stopped Cleburne with those missiles before he had crossed the little stream more than 1,000 yards away, so that instead of a cool regiment of exceptional staying qualities delivering a destructive fire at very close range, as pictured by the captain, the truth discloses a highly excited, not to say a badly scared regiment, wasting ammunition at too long range to do any damage. That this was the truth is proved by the very significant fact, not deemed worthy of mention in either of the accounts quoted, that the regiment did not lose a single man killed or wounded; not one, and it was not protected by breastworks. With impressive mystery the captain describes the regiment as what was left of it after the way it had been cut up in the Atlantic campaign, with the same artful vagueness used in the matter of the range, seeking to create the inference that the battle losses of the regiment had been very extraordinary. Again, to be specific, the regiment lost in its three years' term of service two officers and thirty-seven men killed or died of wounds, less than one-third the average loss of the six regiments composing Bradley's brigade, and it stands 109th among the infantry regiments of its State in the number of its battle losses, or, excepting six regiments that spent most of their time in garrison duty, at the bottom of the list of all three years' regiments sent from the State. It would appear that the 103d Ohio had become pretty well imbued with the spirit characteristic of the headquarters with which it was associated, to claim credit in an inverse ratio to services rendered.

When Cleburne changed direction his left swung in so close to the pike that the two guns and the 36th Illinois were driven away and Cleburne could then have extended his left across the pike without meeting with any further opposition.

Lowrey and Govan made the change in line of battle while Granbury faced to the right and followed their movement in column of fours. Afterwards Granbury about faced, and moving back some distance in column, then fronted into line and advanced to a farm fence paralleling the pike at a distance variously stated at from 80 to 100 yards. His line there halted and laid down behind the fence. Cleburne and Granbury were both killed next day, and it is not known why Granbury did not go on and take possession of the pike. The brigades of Lowrey and Govan had become so badly mixed up in the pursuit of Bradley, and in the recoil from the fire of the battery, that their line had to be reformed. When this was accomplished the intrepid Cleburne was about to resume his attack towards Spring Hill when he was stopped by an order from Cheatham, who had brought up Brown's division on Cleburne's right, and had also sent a staff officer to recall Bate with an order for him to close up and connect with Cleburne's left. This proves that developments, probably the fire of so many guns opening on Cleburne, had convinced Cheatham that the force holding Spring Hill was strong enough to demand the attention of his entire corps. His intention was for Brown to lead in an attack, Cleburne to follow Brown, and Bate, when he got up, to follow Cleburne. But on getting into position Brown reported to Cheatham that he was out-flanked several hundred yards on his right, and that it would lead to inevitable disaster for him to attack. The 97th Ohio, of Lane's brigade, was to the left of the battery, in front of Spring Hill, with the left of the 97th extending towards Mount Carmel road. The 100th Illinois was on the other side of the road, several hundred yards in advance of the 97th Ohio, and the two regiments were connected by a part of the 40th Indiana deployed as skirmishers. That was the force that paralyzed the action of Brown's veteran division. Cheatham then directed Brown to refuse his right brigade to protect his flank, and to attack with the rest of his division, but Brown, still hesitating, Cheatham then concluded that the force holding Spring Hill was too strong for his corps alone to attack, for he reported to Hood that the line in his front was too long for him, and that Stewart's corps must first come up and form on his right. But before Stewart could get up, night had come.

It is notable that Brown's only excuse for not attacking was that he was out-flanked on his right, for the claim has been made that Hood arrived in front of Spring Hill too late in the day to accomplish anything, and Schofield himself has stated that his action was based on a cool calculation, made from his intimate knowledge of Hood's character, who had been deficient in mathematics as a cadet, and could make no accurate computation of the time required to overcome difficulties; that Hood, marching by a muddy country road, would arrive in front of Spring Hill tired, sleepy, and so much later than he had calculated, that he would defer all action until next morning. Between "shortly after daylight," when he started from Duck river, and 3 o'clock, when he had crossed Rutherford's creek. Hood had ridden about ten miles—too short a distance to tire him out, and too early in the day to become sleepy. He then sent forward Cheatham's corps with plenty of time before night came for Cheatham to have made a secure lodgement on the pike, or to have run over Wagner's division, the way it was strung out, if Cleburne's attack had been promptly followed up with anything like the vigor with which he had jumped on Bradley's brigade. Hood's arrival in front of Spring Hill that afternoon was clearly a contingency unlooked for by Schofield, for it caught our army in a situation to leave no reasonable hope of escape without dire disaster, and Schofield himself, as will appear, was thoroughly frightened by the situation. That his after-version of the saving merit of his cool calculation was fully accepted by the Administration is proved by the promotion he was given, when, in fact, his bad miscalculation was responsible for getting the army into a trap from which it escaped through the failure of the enemy to shut the door. Of the miracle of that escape much remains to be told. When Wagner was coming to Spring Hill the 26th Ohio was detached from the column to guard a country road entering the pike more than a mile southwest of Spring Hill. Captain Kelly, of the 26th, informed me that the regiment was driven off that evening by a line of battle so long as to extend far beyond either flank of the 26th. That was Bate's division, and after driving off the 26th there was nothing whatever to prevent Bate from sweeping down the pike towards Columbia. If he had diligently obeyed that order he would have progressed so far before Cheatham's recall order reached him that he would have met Ruger coming to Spring Hill, and then the cat would have been out of the bag. Bate declined to obey Cheatham's first order because it conflicted with the order direct from Hood, under which he was acting, and Cheatham's order had to be repeated. When the second order reached Bate he was still loitering where he had encountered the 26th Ohio. He had wasted more than an hour of precious time in doing nothing, for he had not only disobeyed Hood's order to sweep down the pike, but he had not even made a lodgement on the pike. It was then about 6:30 o'clock, after dark, and Ruger's advance was just coming along. First leaving orders for the other divisions to follow after dark, about 4:30 o'clock, Schofield had started with Ruger to reinforce Stanley. Ruger skirmished with Bate at the place and time indicated, but as Bate was off to the east side, instead of astride the pike, where, by Hood's order he should have been, Ruger had no difficulty in pushing past Bate. Granbury's brigade was still lying behind the fence, close to the pike, and after passing Bate, Ruger had to run the gantlet of Granbury's line. Granbury had been notified that Bate was coming from the left, and hearing Ruger marching along the pike in the darkness, he mistook him for Bate, so that Schofield himself, with Ruger, rode along right under the muzzles of the muskets of Granbury's line, in blissful ignorance of the danger they were passing. Captain English, Granbury's assistant adjutant-general, advanced towards the pike to investigate, but was captured by the flankers covering the march of Ruger's column, belonging to the 23d Michigan. Elias Bartlett of the 36th Illinois, was on picket on the pike at the bridge across the creek a half mile south of Spring Hill, and he informed me that when Schofield came to his post he began eagerly to inquire what had happened, saying that he had feared everything at Spring Hill had been captured; that while they were talking, a Confederate picket, near enough to hear the sound of their voices, fired on them, and Schofield then rode on. A little later Bate came up through the fields, Granbury fell back from the fence and Cleburne and Bate then connected and adjusted a new line with Bate's left brigade refused so as to face the pike and all the rest of their line running across the country away from the pike.

Bate had utterly failed to grasp the significance of Ruger's passage, claiming that his flank was in danger, and his representations to that effect were so urgent that Johnson's division was brought up between 9 and 10 o'clock and posted on Bate's left, Johnson's line and the line of Bate's refused brigade paralleling the pike at a distance of not more than 150 yards. Many contradictory statements have been made relative to the distance of that part of the Confederate line from the pike. The owner of the land pointed out to me a small plantation graveyard as being just inside their line that night. He said that the position of their line was marked, after they had gone in the morning, by the rail barricades they had built, and by the remains of their bivouac fires, and he very positively asserted that no part of their line, facing the pike, was distant more than 150 yards from the pike. All the intervening space was cleared land. When the divisions of Cox, Wood and Kimball came up from Duck river later in the night, they marched along unmolested within that easy range of the Confederate line, and could plainly see the men around the bivouac fires. A staff officer was stationed on the pike beyond Johnson's left, where the fires first came into view, to caution the troops as they came up to march by the fires as silently as possible. Captain Bestow, of General Wood's staff, has related that when the officer told Wood, riding at the head of his division, that the long line of fires he could see paralleling the pike so closely on the right was the bivouac fires of the enemy, the veteran Wood was so astounded that he exclaimed: "In God's name, no!" When they came abreast of the fires one of Wood's orderlies, believing it to be impossible they could be the enemy, started to ride over to one of the fires to light his pipe, but had gone only a short distance when he was fired on, and came galloping back. A colonel of Johnson's division has stated that he held his regiment in line, momentarily expecting an order to open fire, until his men, one after another, overcome with fatigue, had all dropped to the ground to go to sleep. Some of Johnson's men, on their own responsibility, went out on the pike between the passage of the different divisions, to capture stragglers for the sake of getting the contents of their haversacks. They were the men who made it unsafe, as reported by General Stanley, for a staff officer or an orderly to ride along the pike when a column of troops was not passing.

General Hood had gone to bed in Thompson's house when he was informed that troops were marching along the pike. Without getting out of bed he directed Colonel Mason, his chief of staff, to send an order to Cheatham to advance on the pike and attack, but Mason admitted the next day, as stated by Governor Harris, of Tennessee, who was serving as a volunteer aide on Hood's staff, that he never sent the order. This strange neglect of the part of his own chief of staff affords a fitting climax to all the rest of the imbecility that contributed to Hood's failure after he had personally led the main body of his army to a position where by all ordinary chances success should have been certain.

There is a bit of Stanley's report that gives a clear glimpse of the situation as Schofield and Stanley believed it to be after they had met that night: "General Schofield arrived from Columbia at 7 o'clock in the evening with Ruger's division. He found the enemy on the pike and had quite a skirmish in driving them off. My pickets had reported seeing rebel columns passing, east of our position, as if to get possession of the hills at Thompson's Station, and the anxious question arose whether we could force our way through to Franklin. It was determined to attempt this, and General Schofield pushed on with Ruger's division to ascertain the condition of affairs."

Another vivid glimpse is afforded in the statement of O.J. Hack, a conductor on the railroad, who was also interested in a store at Columbia. He came down the road that day on the last train southbound, having in charge some goods for the store, and at the Spring Hill station met the last train northbound, and from the trainmen learned that the army was retreating. The two trains stood at the station that afternoon. Some time after dark, being anxious to save his goods, Hack went over to Spring Hill in quest of a guard to run the trains back to Franklin. On inquiring for headquarters he was directed to a large brick house where he found Schofield and Stanley together. Schofield, recently arrived from Duck river, had just been getting Stanley's account of the situation, and Hack said that Schofield was in a condition of great agitation, "walking the floor and wringing his hands." When Hack had told what he wanted, Schofield sharply replied that the enemy had possession of the road north of Spring Hill, and the trains could not move. The report of Stanley and the statement of Hack concur in showing that it was then Schofield's belief that Hood had possession of the Franklin pike; that the army was caught in a trap; that the only way out was the desperate expedient of forcing a passage by a night attack, and, failing in that, he must fight a battle next day under so many disadvantages that ruinous defeat, with the probable loss of the army, was staring him in the face. It would be interesting to know what Schofield then thought about his intimate knowledge of Hood's character, and his cool calculation based thereon, for which he afterwards so unblushingly claimed so much credit.