Lawrenceburg—Mt. Pleasant—Columbia—and then the Duck River to cross. The night of the twenty-eighth the engineers laid the pontoon bridge. At dawn of the twenty-ninth the Army began to cross—slow work as always and masses of men waiting their turn around fires on the river bank. “Fire feels good! Autumn dies cold like everything else. Wish I had a cup of coffee.”—“Last time I had a cup of coffee—”—“O go to h—! We’ve heard that story before! Somebody tell a good story. J.H. you tell a story! Tell about the mule and the darkey and the bag of sugar—”
Down to the water and over the pontoon bridge in the wintry dawn went the companies and the regiments. The fires on the bank blazed high, the soldiers talked. “A year ago was Missionary Ridge.”—“Missionary Ridge!”—“Missionary Ridge!“—“Missionary Ridge was the place good missionaries never go to!”—“We ran hard in hell, but we fought hard in hell, too. Fought hard—fought hard—” “Up on Lookout, and Cleburne holding the hollow ground—D’ye remember how the moon was sick that night?”—“A year ago! It was awful long when you were little from Christmas to Christmas—but the length of a year nowadays is something awful!”—“That’s so! It’s always long when so much happens. I’ve seen men grow old from Missionary Ridge to Atlanta. I’ve seen men grow old from Atlanta to—what’s the biggish place across the river? Franklin?—Franklin, Tennessee.”
The light grew stronger—a winter light, cold and steel-like upon the flowing river and the moving stream of men. Fall in! Fall in! cried the sergeants, and the men about the fires left the red warmth, and stood in ranks waiting to move down to the water. “— —! These crossings of rivers! — —! Seeing that men have always warred and I reckon are always going to war, I don’t see why Nature and God—if Nature’s got a god—didn’t make the earth a smooth round battlefield where enemies could clinch just as easy and keep clinched till one or the other went over the edge of all things, and went down, down, past whatever stars were on that side! What’s the use of scooping rivers and heaping mountains in the way? Just a nice, smooth, black, eternal plain—with maybe one wide river to carry the blood away—”
The soldiers, breaking step, crossed and crossed by the pontoon bridge. “The Duck River!—Quack! quack!—Franklin’s on the Harpeth.” “Benjamin Franklin or Franklin Pierce?”—“Benjamin was a peaceful kind of fellow for a revolutionary—didn’t believe in war! Neither did Jefferson. Not on general principles. Thought it barbarous. Fought on necessity, but believed in making necessity occur more rarely. Perfectly feasible thing! Necessity’s much more malleable than we think. When we don’t want it war won’t be necessary.”—“Want it! Do you reckon any one wants it?”—“Lord, yes! until they’ve got it.—Of course there’s some that likes it even after they’ve got it—but they’re getting scarce.”—“I don’t know. Sometimes it’s necessary, and sometimes it’s good fun.”—“Yes. A hard necessity and a savage pastime. ‘Patriotism’? There’s a bigger phrase—‘Mother Earth and Fellow Men.’”—Column forward!
On through the leafless country marched the somewhat tattered, somewhat shoeless Army of Tennessee. Tramp of feet and roll of wheels, tramp of feet and roll of wheels.... “Listen! Firing ahead! That’s Forrest!” The marching Army took up the praise of Forrest. “Forrest! Forrest’s like Stonewall Jackson—always in front making personal observations.”—“Forrest! If I was a company in trouble I’d rather see Forrest coming on King Phillip than King Arthur or the Angel Gabriel!”—“Forrest! Did you ever see Forrest rally his men? Draws a pistol and shoots a retreating colour-bearer—takes the colours and says ‘Come on!’”—“Forrest’s had twenty-five horses killed under him.”—“Did you ever hear him address his men? He’s an orator born. It gets to be music. It gets grammatical—it gets to be great sonorous poetry.”—“Yes, it does. I’ve heard him. And then an hour after I’ve heard him tell an officer ‘Yes, that mought do’ and ‘It’s got to be fit.’—And I’ve heard him say he never saw a pen but he thought of a snake.”—“Forrest? You fellows talking about Forrest? Did you hear what Forrest said about tactics? Said he’d ‘give more for fifteen minutes of bulge than for a week of tactics.’”—“Don’t care! He’s right good at tactics himself. Murfreesboro and Streight’s Raid and other places and times without number! ‘Whenever you see anything blue,’ he says, ‘shoot at it, and do all you can to keep up the scare!’ Somebody told me he said about Okalona, ‘Saw Grierson make a bad move, and then I rode right over him.’ Tactics! Says it’s his habit ‘to git thar first with the most men.’ That’s tactics!—and strategics—and bulge—and the art of War!”—“Old Jack himself didn’t know more about flanking than Forrest does.”—“Did you hear what the old lady said to him at Cowan’s Station?”—“No. What did she say?”—“Well, he and his men were kind of sauntering at a gallop through the place with a few million Yankees at their heels. The old lady didn’t like men in grey to do that-a-way, so out she runs into the middle of the street, and spreads her skirts, and stops dead short, unless he was going to run over her, a big grey horse and a six-feet-two cavalryman with eyes like a hawk, and a black beard and grey head.—‘Why don’t you turn and fight?’—she hollers, never noticing the stars on his collar. ‘Turn and fight, you great, cowardly lump! turn and fight! If General Forrest could see you, he’d take out his sword and cut your head off!’”
The firing ahead continued—the Tennessee men said that it was near Spring Hill—and Spring Hill was twelve miles from Franklin. “Going to be a battle?”—“Yes, think so. Understand Thomas is at Franklin behind breastworks.”—“All right! ‘Rock of Chickamauga’ is one of the best—even if he is a Virginian!”—“Thomas isn’t there himself—he’s at Nashville. It’s Schofield.”—“All right! We’ll meet Schofield.”—“Column halted again!—Firing getting louder—Franklin getting nearer—the wind rising—Smoke over the hill-tops—”—“Who’s this going by?—Give him a cheer!—Patrick Romayne Cleburne!”—Column forward!—“Did you notice that old graveyard back there at Mt. Pleasant—a beautiful, quiet place? Well, General Cleburne rode up and looked over the wall, and he said, says he, ‘If I die in this country, I should like to be buried here.’”—Column forward!
Spring Hill—Spring Hill at three o’clock, and Schofield’s troops scattered through this region, concentrating hurriedly, with intent to give battle if needs be, but with a preference for moving north along the pike to Thomas at Franklin. What they wished was granted them. Here and there through the afternoon musketry rolled, but there was no determined attack. Hood says Cheatham was at fault, and Cheatham says General Hood dreamed the details and the orders he describes. However that may be, no check was given to Schofield that day, and in the dark night-time, he and his trains and troops went by the sleeping Confederate host and escaped, all but unmolested, to Franklin—and henceforth the Tennessee campaign was lost, lost!
Dawn and marching on Franklin—red dawn and the great beech trees of the region spreading their leafless arms across the way—sunrise and a cold, bright day—Column forward!—Column forward!—Hood “the fighter” at the head, tall and blue-eyed and tawny-bearded—S.D. Lee and Stewart and Cheatham—the division commanders, Patrick Cleburne and “Alleghany” Johnson and Carter Stevenson and Clayton and French and Loring and Walthall and Bate and Brown, and the artillerymen and the rumbling guns, and, tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp! the infantry of the Army of Tennessee. Eighteen hundred of these men were to die at Franklin. Four thousand were to be wounded. Two thousand were going to prison. A division commander was to die. Four brigade commanders were to die, others to be wounded or taken. Fifty-three commanders of regiments were to be among the killed, wounded, and captured. The execution was to take place in three or four hours of a November afternoon and a moonless night. Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp! under the leafless beeches on the Franklin Pike. Close up, men—close up! Column forward! “What is that place in the distance with the hills behind it?—That’s Franklin on the Harpeth.”
The battle opened at four o’clock, and the sun set before five. There was an open, quite unobstructed plain running full to an abatis and long earthworks, and behind these were the divisions of Cox and Ruger and Kimball. Wood’s division was over the Harpeth and a portion of Wagner’s occupied a hill a short distance from the front. There were twenty-six guns mounted on the works and twelve in reserve. “At four o’clock,” says a Federal officer, “the whole Confederate line could be seen, stretching in battle array, from the dark fringe of chestnuts along the river bank, far across the Columbia Pike, the colours gaily fluttering, and the muskets gleaming brightly, and advancing steadily, in perfect order, dressed on the centre, straight for the works.”
At first Success, with an enigmatical smile, rode with the grey. The ——th Virginia yelled as they rode with her. Cheatham’s men, Stewart’s men, Cleburne’s famed veteran division yelled. Yaaaihhhh! Yaaaaihhh! Yaaaaaiiihhh! rang the Rebel yell, and echoed from beyond the Harpeth and from the Winstead hills. They yelled and drove Wagner’s brigades and followed at a double, on straight to the gun-crowned works. As the sun dipped came a momentary halt. Cleburne was at the front of his troops, about him his officers, behind him his regiments waiting. It was growing cold and the earth in shadow. A man, a good and gallant soldier, was sitting on a hump of earth trying to tie a collection of more or less blood-stained rags around his bare, half-frozen feet. He worked patiently, but just once he uttered a groan. Cleburne heard the sound and turned his head. Sitting his good horse he regarded the soldier for a moment with a half-wistful look, then he dismounted, and without saying anything to any one, drew off his boots. With them in his hand he stepped across, in his stockinged feet, the bit of frosty earth to the soldier. He held out the boots. “Put them on!” he ordered. The man, astonished, would have scrambled up and saluted, but Cleburne pushed him back. “Put them on!” he said. “It’s an order. Put them on.” Stammering protests, the soldier obeyed. “There! they seem to fit you,” said General Cleburne. “You need them more than I do.” He moved back to his horse, put his stockinged foot in the stirrup and mounted.