Jesse W. Wynne
Captain Company B, Third Texas Cavalry
General Van Dorn had four brigades under his command at this time—Forrest’s brigade of four regiments and a battalion, Martin’s brigade of two regiments, Armstrong’s brigade of two regiments, one battalion, and one squadron, and Whitfield’s brigade of four Texas regiments. All these participated, more or less, in the battle, but as Jackson’s division was in the center the brunt of the battle fell on them, as the losses will show. Whitfield lost 170 men, Armstrong, 115, Forrest, 69, and Martin, 3.
General Gordon Granger took command at Franklin immediately after the battle of Thompson Station. He and General Van Dorn were said to be classmates at West Point, and good friends personally, but it seemed that they made strenuous efforts to overreach or to out-general each other.
About March 8 another expedition was sent out by the enemy apparently for the purpose of driving us out of the neighborhood. Skirmishing began on the Columbia and Lewisburg pikes, some three or four miles south of Franklin, and was continued on the Columbia road for about three days, until we fell back across Rutherford Creek and took a strong position behind a range of hills south of the creek, destroying the bridges. In the meantime heavy rains were falling, the creek rising so that General Granger’s forces were delayed about two days in their efforts to cross, and all that could be done was to skirmish across the creek. Duck River, just behind us, rose so high and ran so swift, that pontoon bridges could not be maintained across it. A battle could not be risked with only a small ferryboat in such a stream. Still the skirmishing went on, until the trains and artillery were ferried across, when, leaving skirmishers on the hill to deceive the enemy, we moved up the river through cedar brakes to White’s bridge, twenty miles, crossed to the south side of the river, and when the enemy crossed Rutherford Creek they found no rebels in their front. We moved down through Columbia, and five or six miles down the Mount Pleasant turnpike and went into camp.
“Pony” Pillow’s wife had been kind enough to knit me a pair of fine yarn gauntlets, and having heard that we had crossed Duck River, she sent them to me, by her husband, who came up soon after we struck camp. While he was there I was ordered to take a squad of men whose horses needed shoes, go into the country and press one or two blacksmith shops, and run them for the purpose of having a lot of shoeing done. I got my men and went home with Pillow, took charge of shops in the neighborhood, and was kept on duty there about eight days, staying with my old grand-cousin’s family every night. I enjoyed this opportunity of talking with the old gentleman very much, as he had known my maternal grandparents when they were all children in Guilford County, North Carolina, before the Revolutionary War. He, himself, had been a soldier for eight years of his life, and had been shot through the body with a musket ball. In these war times he loved to talk about his exploits as a soldier. While I was there he mounted his horse and rode several miles through the neighborhood, to the tanyard and the shoe shop, to procure leather and have a pair of boots made for his grandson, who was in the army.
The work of shoeing the horses having been completed, and Duck River having subsided, we crossed back to the north side again, taking up our old position near Spring Hill, and resumed our picketing and skirmishing with General Granger’s forces. It is unnecessary, even if it were possible, to allude to all these skirmishes. The picket post on Carter’s Creek pike, eight miles from Franklin, was regarded as important for some reason, and an entire regiment from our brigade was kept there. One regiment for one week and then another regiment for the next, and were sent there with strict orders to have horses saddled and everything in readiness for action at daybreak in the morning. The Third Texas had been on the post for a week, and was relieved by the Legion under Lieutenant-Colonel Broocks. The Legion had been there two or three days, and had grown a little careless, as nothing unusual had ever happened to any of the other regiments while on duty there. Just at daybreak one morning in the latter part of April Granger’s cavalry came charging in upon them and completely surprised them in their camps, before they were even up, and captured men, horses, mules, wagons, cooking utensils—everything. Colonel Broocks and some of his men made their escape, some on foot and some on horseback, but more than a hundred were captured, their wagons cut down and burned, their cooking utensils broken up, and their camp completely devastated. One of the escaped men came at full speed to our camps, some three miles away, and as quick as possible we were in our saddles and galloping towards the scene of the disaster—but we were too late. We galloped for miles over the hills in an effort to overtake the enemy and recapture our friends, but failed.
We all felt a keen sympathy for Colonel Broocks and his men, for no officer in the army would have felt more mortification at such an occurrence than the brave, gallant John H. Broocks. It was said that he was so haunted by the sounds and scenes of the capture of his regiment that he was almost like one demented, and that for days and days afterwards he would sit away off alone on some log, with his head down, muttering, “Halt! you d——d rebel, halt!”
At one time during April General Van Dorn, with a goodly number of his command, made a demonstration upon Franklin, drove in all their outposts, and, selecting the Twenty-eighth Mississippi Cavalry and leading it himself, he charged into the heart of the town.