Whut’s rock an’ stone—dey can’t be e’t,
Lak good ole cotton-tail.
Ole Wash.
Historic Highways of the South.
THIRD PAPER—NASHVILLE
By John Trotwood Moore
No road is so typical of the Middle Basin as that lying between Franklin and Nashville. For ten miles it winds around in the lowland basins or over the intervening ridges, amid fields as fertile as ever yielded their increase to the husbandman’s plow. On each side the low hill ranges lie, blue or brown, as the sun happens to fall on them. Fertile to their very tops are these hills, green in grain or grasses, or darker green in richer foliage. In this the Middle Basin, through which for nearly a hundred miles from Nashville to Pulaski, this historic road runs, the country is different from any in the South. Sea shells lie on the tops of the hills—sea shells rich in lime and phosphorus. Every foot of this road is rich in history and tradition. Down it rode Jackson, time and again, from his home at The Hermitage, not many miles away. Here, also, rode Polk and Grundy and Sam Houston and Crockett. An old man told me a story about James K. Polk which I have never seen in print. He said that in the memorable campaign for the governorship of Tennessee between James K. Polk and Lean Jimmie Jones, in 1840 (in which campaign it is said that Jones, who was the greatest stump orator of his day, and the father of that style of oratory, almost drove the statesman Polk from the hustings), there was a mutual agreement between the candidates that Polk should speak at Franklin and Jones at Columbia, in the wind-up, the day before the election. Columbia was Polk’s home, and not very solid for him at that. The friends of Polk devised a scheme to give him the advantage by making two speeches in a day. So he made his speech early in Franklin and had saddled and ready a thoroughbred horse, which he mounted after his speech, and galloped to Spring Hill. There he took a fresh horse and rode furiously to Columbia, arriving in time to reply to Jones’ speech. But my informant, who was an old line Whig, informed me that though the future President made record-breaking time in his race down the pike, he lost in votes when it became known that he had broken his agreement and played a trick on Lean Jimmie. Jones defeated him for governor.
But the greatest of all the history made on this pike was made by the two armies of Hood and Schofield, as they swept over it in the early days of December, 1864, and then swept back again. The situations were exactly reversed, making a wave of war which ebbed and flowed, carrying on its crest the foam of wounds and death and woe. Continuing the story from Hood’s invasion from our last issue, Schofield’s army reached Nashville after the battle of Franklin, early in the morning of December 1, 1864, and there united with Thomas. Other detachments had been called in, including Gen. A. J. Smith, aggregating nearly 12,000 men, and later Steedman, with 5,200 more. Milroy and Granger, with 8,000 troops, were ordered to Murfreesboro, and placed under the command of General Rousseau. According to General Cox (The March to the Sea—Franklin and Nashville. Jacob D. Cox, page 100), General Thomas had in Nashville on the morning of November 30, 26,200 men. To these add Schofield’s army of 34,000 men, and it will be seen at a glance what Hood’s disheartened and stricken army had to fight, and Thomas, a Virginian, in command, with the bulldog tenacity of Grant and the courage of Hood.
If Franklin had been desperate, what could Hood do now, with the heart of them dead in his brave men, with sorrow in their hearts for comrades who slept in trenches under the sod of Franklin, and beloved commanders who, now being dust, were but a week before pictured forever between the sky and the bastions of steel as they rode over the breastworks to death? Even in the heart of the starved and the hardened lives memory—and what memory must have been theirs in the sleet and cold of those bitter December nights, while waiting for Thomas to come forth from his warmth and food to give battle. If Franklin had been a desperate case, was not this worse—the combined forces of Thomas and Schofield, Smith and Steedman? Anyone but Hood would have stopped and thought, but Hood never thought.
“In truth,” says Cox, in the history already quoted, “Hood’s situation was a very difficult one, and to go forward or to go back was almost equally unpromising. He followed his natural bent, therefore, which always favored the appearance, at least, of aggression, and he marched after Schofield to Nashville.” Hood put Lee’s corps in the center across the Franklin turnpike; Cheatham took the right, and Stewart the left of the line, while Forrest, with his cavalry, occupied the country between Stewart and the river below Nashville.”