A Buckeye Surgeon Behind the Lines at Franklin

Safely in camp in Nashville, Tennessee on December 6, 1864, Surgeon W. Morrow Beach of the 118th Ohio Volunteer Infantry penned this lengthy account of the Tennessee campaign through which he had just passed. The trials and dangers of the overnight march from Columbia through to Franklin still filled him with horror and relief that somehow the army had gotten through. The battle of Franklin presented horrors enough to last a lifetime.

Surgeon Morrow's letter was published in the December 22, 1864 issue of the Madison County Union and is presented in two parts. Part I covers the march from Columbia through Spring Hill, while Part II covers the Battle of Franklin and the retreat to Nashville.

 

Battle of Franklin, Tennessee November 30, 1864

Upon my arrival at Franklin, I found my division just going into position. Of course, we commenced fortifying immediately. We always fortify. We fortify to keep the Rebels out, we fortify to keep Rebels in. Every square yard of dirt thrown up may save the life of a soldiers; and every hole dug that is deep, broad, and long enough for a soldier to lie down in may be the means of avoiding the necessity of his requiring such an estate after the skirmish or battle ceases. Franklin is near the Harpeth River. This river describes a semi-circle at this point, much as Duck Creek does at Columbia. Cox’s Division took position on the left, with its left resting on the river. My division took position to Cox’s right. Cox’s right rested on the Columbia and Franklin Pike, and our left rested there, while our right rested on another pike. Our position was the center. The First Division of the 4^th Corps rested on our right, filling up the space to the river. The Third Division of the 4^th Corps was on the opposite side of the river, while the Second Division occupied an advanced line on the center, partly covering the left of my division and the right of Cox’s division.

 

I am thus particular because the newspapers are garbling the faces most terribly. As an instance, “Y.S.” of the Cincinnati Gazette has sent that substantial old paper column after column of telegraphic dispatches- the half of which is only a rehash of editorial and newspaper absurdities printed in this city. He dispatches from this city, he writes from this city, he sees battles from this city! He has not been with the army since it was at Columbia; and yet it has cost the Gazette hundreds of dollars, after all of which he fires so wide of the mark as to make his whole story a gossiping fabrication. Two days after the battle, he has the 4^th Corps take 28 battle flags and the 23^rd Corps four battle flags. He places General Ruger in the 4^th Corps; and he has the battle fought on the north side of the river. All these absurdities are printed here in the city papers. He has the 4^th Corps do all the fighting. Now the truth is, not one road of the lines to the right of my brigade was charged by the Rebels. Not a Rebel was killed in front of either the Third or First Divisions to my knowledge, or to the knowledge of any man belonging to either of the two divisions. The Second Division did some fighting, but when hotly pressed it broke over our lines and came very near creating a panic. The fighting was done by the right of Cox’s division (Third) of the 23^rd Corps and by Ruger’s division (Second) of the 23^rd Corps, and some fighting and a good deal of running by the Second Division (Wagner’s) of the 4^th Corps. Of course, Schofield will gloss the matter over in his report so as to not make enemies, but these are plain and unvarnished facts.

 

But after this long digression; the troops had all arrived and places had been assigned to each division and to each brigade by 3:30 p.m. The rear of the 4^th Corps and the Rebel advance had been skirmishing all the day from Spring Hill. By 4 p.m., the Rebels had taken position and were pressing out skirmish line quite hotly. I was at supper and looking around across the open field, I saw our skirmish line hastily retreating. I had just remarked to Major Sowers, my messmate and commander of my regiment, that a piece of our artillery about a quarter of a mile out on the skirmish liner would be captured. Seeing our skirmishers retreating, he replied, “I am fearful your prediction will prove true, doctor; the ball is fairly opened, and it’s the old game of the Dallas line. Hood does not intend to give us time to retreat.” We left our unfinished supper and buckling on his sword, he grabbed his overcoat and started on a run to the regiment about 200 yards away. He gained the entrenchments only just in time to receive the first shock of the Rebel charge; and before I could get my horses saddled and sent to a place of safety, the bullets were falling around me thick and fast.

General John Bell Hood

 

The Rebel charge was gallant and desperate. On our part of the lines, they were three lines deep; their lines being about 50 yards apart from one another. Our first volley melted them down by the score; but they charged ahead at a double quick, their field and staff officers taking the lead. Within 60 seconds from the time of our first volley, the Rebel lines, the fences, the trees, the open fields, and the light of the sun were shut out. The air was filled with a storm of lead, with hurtling shell and shot, while the very earth seemed to tremble with the roar of artillery! A  cloud of powder smoke hung over the field of conflict as impenetrable to sight as the clouds of night or the pall of death! You breathed powder smoke, and powder smoke made your hands and face that of a village smithy. You could discern but two things: the face of your nearest neighbor, and the long lines of flame from the muzzles of the muskets. Our line on the inside of our works, and the Rebel line on the other side with the mouths of the deadly weapons almost touching! O, heaven, but it was a sight to be remembered! Before the smoke shut them from our view, our field and staff officers were riding up and down the lines and brandishing their glittering swords, or swinging their hats, cheering their men, and exhorting them to stand firm. In all my military experience I had never seen this done but twice before. General John A. Logan did the same at Raymond and Champion Hills, Mississippi during the Vicksburg campaign.

 

Lt. Col. Mervin Clark, 183rd Ohio

 This deadly conflict lasted for four hours without any intermission, when the discomfited Rebels fell back about one mile and bivouacked behind the hills. Not knowing who might be skulking in our front, our line kept up a desultory fire until about midnight, when the troops were noiselessly and cautiously withdrawn to the north bank of the river. When the army were all over the river, our skirmishers were hastily withdrawn, and the pontoon and railroad bridges were burned to delay the passage of the Rebel artillery. Just before the bridges were fired, Captain Mulholland of General Ruger’s staff, went over to our lines to be sure that the skirmishers had all been relieved. He reported that the Rebels were just beginning to come up to take care of their wounded. He represents the moaning and piteous petitions of the wounded to exceed anything he had ever experienced. The wounded, you must remember, were still lying where they had fallen during the engagement, with musket balls piercing them again and again, as the balls had been flying for eight long hours. A wounded man is just as likely to be killed as a man who had not been wounded at all.

 

 As soon as the heat of the engagement was over, depots for the wounded were established; but it was only a fractional proportion of the wounded who were brought off the field. I was called to examine the case the Lieutenant Colonel Mervin Clark of the 183^rd Ohio and found him dead. His noble life was ended on his passage from the lines to the depot hospital. His untimely death saddened me beyond expression. His regiment had stacked arms just in front of our brigade late in the afternoon, and his youthful appearance, his graceful deportment, his neatness of attire, and his fine military bearing had been a subject of conversation among us at the time. The last I saw of him before the battle smoke settled upon the field, was when he was walking up and down his line, swinging his bright new sword and begging his men to stand firm. Now before me he lay, only four hours later, as pale as a smock and with an eternal night clouding over his eyes. Another case was the colonel of the 173^rd Ohio [Colonel John Ricker Hurd]. He had a flesh wound in the leg and a broken clavicle, making the fifth time he had been disabled since the war commenced.  

 

Battle of Franklin
(Map courtesy of Hal Jespersen, www.cwmaps.com)

After all were safely over the river, the bridges were fired and the army withdrew toward this city. From the forts and high hills on this side of the river, our heaviest artillery gave the Rebel camps a parting salute of 72 rounds of shell and solid shot. Thus closed the Battle of Franklin, the hardest fought, the most hotly contested, the most determined of the whole war. Nor has any victory been more complete or unequivocal. The Rebel force was 45,000 muskets and 60 pieces of artillery. Our entire army was less than 18,000 muskets and only about one fifth of our lines were engaged. Our defensive force did not exceed 5,000 muskets, and yet some of the fruits of this victory were 32 battle flags, 1,200 prisoners, 3,000 dead rebels, and 4,000 placed hors du combat- a number in killed and wounded alone exceeding by more than one third our entire fighting strength. Our loss was about 700 in killed, wounded and missing. We lost no artillery, no prisoners excepting the wounded, and no generals. But the Spartan 5,000 boys threw into the faces of the Rebel columns over 500,000 rounds of musket cartridges. Towards the close of the engagement, the muskets got so dirty that the boys could not get their charges more than half way down. They would tie a string to the trigger and then lay the musket on top of the works and pull it off. I have seen more than a dozen men who had run their ramrods clear through their hands in attempting to push down the charge. One regret yet lingers with the battlefield. A regret that most of our brave wounded and all our lamented dead were left behind us when they fell.

The ferocious fighting at the Carter House at the center of the Union line.

    The incidents of individual daring and valor are almost without number. In this, the Rebels exceeded the wildest imaginings of any writer of war stories. Lieutenant Colonel Gillespie of the 50^th Ohio told me yesterday that an old bald-headed Rebel sprung upon the breastworks and buried the blade of an axe to the handle into the brains of one of his boys. A bullet from the colonel’s revolver put an end to the old veteran’s labors. The colonel himself carries in his clothing the marks of two bayonet thrusts. General [John] Adams and his horse fell both at the same time with the horse’s feet just scaling the parapet of our works. 

 

    After crossing the Harpeth River, our army gradually fell back to this city. We put on an appearance of making a stand at Brentwood, six miles from the city; but with little delay we came on again and stopped three miles from the city for dinner and to wait till our position was assigned us in the line of city defense. Hood has been gradually tightening his line around us ever since, and we are all at work increasing and strengthening our defenses. There is no excitement here. The spirit of traffic pervades in the city as usual, and the trade marts are thronged just as they were a month ago. “Strange women” throng the thoroughfares and trail their gaudy skirts over the dirty pavements; and the places of public amusement are thronged with a promiscuous audience just as they are at Cincinnati, St. Louis, or any other city you may mention.