My Dear General: In answer to your letter of the 29th ult., in which you say that in recent correspondence with Gen. A. P. Stewart he says that he has no recollection of Gen. Hood's order for the artillery at Franklin to be put in position, and to open on the enemy about midnight, and when it ceased the infantry was to charge the lines over the same ground that they did in the first attack. In this letter you also ask me to give my recollections about this matter, and if I remember the order.
I remember very distinctly that the order was given, and you communicated it to me as the adjutant general of your division upon your return that night—to wit, November 30, 1864—from Gen. A. P. Stewart's headquarters. This order I delivered to the officers in command of two of your brigades; your third brigade, which was Ector's Brigade, at that time was on detached service guarding the trains in the rear of the two corps which charged the enemy's works November 30, 1864, at Franklin, Tenn.
The artillery had arrived from Columbia, Tenn., and was placed in position to execute this order of Gen. Hood's. Lieut. Col. Llewellyn Hoxton was in command of the battalions of artillery. At the time indicated in the order Col. Hoxton's artillery opened on Franklin with a heavy cannonade, to which there was no response, and it was therefore evident that Schofield had successfully withdrawn his forces and retreated to Nashville.
In September, 1886, I met Col. Hoxton at the Episcopalian school, four or five miles from Alexandria, Va., and had a conversation with him, and he said to me that I was entirely correct in my recollection of this particular order, and that he was in command of the artillery, and in the execution of his order opened upon Franklin, and no reply from the enemy satisfied him that Schofield had retreated, and he ceased firing, and scouts were sent to the works, which they found abandoned, and penetrated the village of Franklin to the crossing of the Harpeth river; and immediately thereafter a great many soldiers, under the command of their officers, went through the streets and alleys of Franklin, and it was thus ascertained to be a fact that the enemy had retreated.
I remember distinctly the comments of the officers of your division upon the delivery of Gen. Hood's order to them, that they would obey promptly and cheerfully, but that it looked to them as the highest desperation to undertake to charge the works under cover of this artillery fire, and carry them at the point of the bayonet. The fact that this order was given, and the circumstances surrounding Hood's troops at that time, are indelibly impressed upon my memory, and I have no hesitancy whatever in saying distinctly and unequivocally that the order was given, and that it was communicated by me to the commanders of the brigades of your division.*
Yours sincerely,
D. W. Sanders.
* The only official report I know of, which in any manner refers to this order, and this inferentially, is that of Gen. C. L. Stevenson, in which he says:
"During the night (November 30, 1864) this division was put in position preparatory to an assault which it was announced was to be made by the entire army at daybreak." (See War Records, Battle of Franklin.)
D. W. S.
[36] The battle of Alcazar, called the "Battle of the Three Kings," fought about three hundred years ago between Mulai, the emperor of Morocco, on the one side, and his nephew, king of Fez, on the other, assisted by Don Sebastian, king of Portugal, under whose standard had flocked the nobility of Christian Europe. Mulai Malek had 40,000 Moorish cavalry. Fifteen thousand of the allies were left dead on the field, and the river Machassan ran red with blood.