Crown of Thorns:
The Locust Thicket at The Carter House
It is always difficult to place units at a particular place in a particular battle. At Franklin, the mention of the locust thicket generally puts men in close proximity to the Gist Brigade. (Gist's Brigade according to most sources passed just to the right of the locust grove and over the strong locust abatis located there.) One should remember that obstructions made of the thorny locust or Osage orange were all along the front of the Union line. The locust thicket is one thing and the locust abatis another. Mention of Osage orange evokes a vision that is more to the Confederate right, nearer to the fierce fighting around the gin house. The men fighting along the Lewisburg Pike remember Osage orange entanglements rather than locust entanglements. These small clues are not universal but are common enough to give one some idea of where an observer may be. The Gist Brigade fought its way through or actually around the right of the locust thicket and over the locust abatis in front of the union line. They struck the Union line at a place where there was a slight bend in that line, just below the backyard of the Carter House near the Carter garden.
Time is different in this battle, unlike most battles were the action is intense in one place for a short time and then moves on, at Franklin from five in the afternoon till nearly ten at night, the fury does not seem to move or waiver. As Sam Watkins observed, "death holds high carnival" and it goes on and on like a giant whirlwind dragging more and more men into the eye of the storm. This eye is clearly from the Carter House to the locust thicket on the Confederate left or Union right; and from the Carter House to the gin house on the Confederate right or Union left.
The best place to begin when looking for personal accounts of Franklin is David R. Logsdon's classic collection, Eyewitnesses at the Battle of Franklin. Many of these accounts and so many others may be found in this wonderful little book. This book contains primary source material that is not widely available in other publications and is particularly graphic, capturing the horror of the long day's journey into night that was Franklin. Another excellent source for Union material is The Battle at Franklin by Cox, and probably the best place for northern material is that preserved by the MOLLUS. Larry Stevens collection from Ohio is typical of the great material preserved and is available through Broadfoot Printing in North Carolina. This is Franklin, at ground zero, as we might say in this century.
The Beginning of the End
Not unlike Palm Sunday, the grand procession down Winstead Hill led to bloody work at the bottom. Wagner's men, who had formed the rear guard from Spring Hill, were thrown out in front of the main line and it was here that the work of battle begins. They fall back in a mad scramble to make the interior line and it is here that the primary force of the Confederate blow with fall.
Cox is very clear in his work that Wagner's men, when attempting to gain the Union line, disrupted it. "It is thus put beyond dispute that whatever these two brigades of Wagner's did or suffered in the main line was between the cotton gin on the left and locust grove on the right, comprising not quite the whole of the original front of two brigades, in the center of which was the Carter house where Opdycke's brigade (also one of Wagner's division) was, after its rush forward from it place in reserve, and where my (Cox) personal headquarters had been since daybreak in the morning and remained till we withdrew at midnight."
Gist Brigade: Confederate Account
"Messrs. Reuben Smith, W. Smith, and A.R. Smith (Our County Auditor) all members of Company F (Captain Holtzclaw commanding) agreed before the fight to stick together and to help each other in case of need. A.R. and Reuben were brothers and William was the brother of A.R. Smith's wife. "
"The three were rushing along in the charge when the same shell tore its way through the lines, piling all three in a heap together. Our County Auditor lost his leg; Rueben Smith was shot through the body and had his right leg torn off; William lost both legs, which were taken off near the feet. As he fell A.R. exclaimed, "They have killed me." William answered, "Both my legs are shot off." Mr. Doc. Hudson, also a cousin of Mrs. A.R. Smith, lost his right leg by the same shell, taken off below the knee. Mr. Reuben Smith was placed on a litter, dying in a few moments, and was left on the battlefield. The other three were carried to a little out-house used as a field hospital and were placed side by side on the bunks used for the wounded. William died the next day and a few days later Hudson died also in a hospital at Franklin, which was captured. Of nine wounded men in one room, eight had lost a leg each and the other an arm. All died except Mr. A.R. Smith and a fellow of the 24th. The doctor gave him up and Mr. Smith thinks he died later."
Capt. James A. Sexton / Strickland's Brigade: Union Account
"The Fiftieth Ohio, on our immediate left, was swept away in the first mad rush, the enemy occupying part of their works in the ditch on the inside and also outside, which afforded them a comparatively safe shelter. Others formed behind the large buildings near the pike, in our rear. They immediately opened an enfilading fire on us, and some of them coming up in our rear called upon us to surrender. Here, for a time, we were badly intermingled; many of the men using the bayonet, and others the clubbed musket. Every officer was busy with his revolver. Major James and Captain Pryor were both shot down while firing their pistols; I discharged my own weapon nine times and the most distant man I shot at was not more than twenty feet away. "
"I recollect seeing one man, with the blood streaming down his face from a wound in the head, with a pick ax in his hands, rushing into a crowd of the enemy and swinging his pick. A rebel colonel mounted our breast works, and profanely demanded our immediate surrender. Private Albridge, of Company D, thrust his musket against the abdomen of the rash colonel, and with the exclamation, 'I guess not' instantly discharged his weapon. The ... shot actually let daylight through the victim. The doomed warrior doubled up, his head gradually sinking forward and downward until he finally plunged head foremost in the pit below, at the very feet of his slayer."
William J. Rochell / Gist Brigade: Confederate Account
"Most of our commanding officers had been killed or wounded, and we did not know who was in command, When we took their breastworks our color bearer stuck his flag staff in the top of the works and Company C, Ninety-seventh Ohio Regiment, tried to take the flag from him. After firing two or three rounds, they lay down in the ditches, and we would get the guns of the wounded men, put the bayonets on them and pitch them point foremost on them. Then we pushed the logs from the top of the works, which were from ten to twelve inches thick, on to them, They remained in the ditch until we started to charge the second time, and when we jumped into the ditches we took them prisoner."
Ellison Capers / Gist Brigade: Confederate Account
On pressed the charging lines of the brigade, driving the advance force of the enemy pell-mell into a locust abatis, where many were captured and sent to the rear; others were wounded by the fire of their own men. The abatis was a formidable and fearful obstruction. The entire brigade was arrested by it. Fortunately the fire of the enemy slackened to let the advance troops come in and we took advantage of it to work our way through.
Thomas Thoburn / Strickland's Brigade: Union Account
"I remember watching the sun, thinking that when the sun set and it got dark the battle would cease, but when the sun set the battle still raged. I then noticed that the moon was just about as high as the sun when the battle commenced. I watched the moon disappear and still the battle raged. I then saw a star about as high up in the heavens as the moon was when the sun set, and soon that disappeared and still the battle raged. I did not feel as much fear during the battle as I have often felt in much less dangerous places. I can remember praying most earnestly for help."
Ellison Capers / Gist Brigade: Confederate Account
About 10 or 10:30 o'clock, Lieut. James A. Tillman, of the Twenty-fourth, led his own company (I) and men from other companies of the regiment in a charge against the enemy over the works, and captured the colors of the Ninety-seventh Ohio Volunteer Infantry and forty prisoners. The regiment held its position, as did the brigade, against repeated attempts to drive it from the work, until about midnight, when the enemy retired and left our army in possession of the bloody field of Franklin.
W.L. Truman (MB)/ Confederate Account
The locust grove to our left center consisted of trees about four to twelve inches in diameter. Nearly every one was cut down by bullets from the enemy, and fell with tops from their works. They were a mass of splinters from about two to twelve feet high.
I saw a quite a (Confederate) youth inside the enemy's works at this point who had been shot in the forehead, which was quite black where the ball went in, showing he was right at the muzzle of the gun.
Byron Bowers (FB)/ Confederate Account
"The dead, cold and stiff bodies were laying in every conceivable posture, all with ghastly faces and glassy eyes. Some lay with faces up and some with faces down. Some in a sitting attitude, braced with the dead bodies of their comrades. Some lay with two or three bodies on them. Sometimes you could see a company commander lying with sword in on hand and hat in the other. Sometimes you could see a man who had a heavy martial frown; than again you could see others who wore a pleasing smile ."
Hardin Fiquers / Civilian Account
"I remember seeing one poor fellow, sitting up and leaning back against something, whose whole under jaw had been cut off by a grape shot, and his tongue and under lip were hanging down on his breast. I knelt down and asked him if I could do anything for him. He had a little piece of pencil and an envelope, he wrote: 'No, John B. Hood will be in New York before three weeks.' To give some idea of the number of bullets that were flying through the air that night: there was a locust thicket just in front of the Yankee breastworks, west of the Columbia Pike and up against it. The trees had been set out about ten feet apart some time before the war and averaged from four to six inches across at the stump. These trees were stripped of their bark and every limb by bullets, and many of them were struck by so many bullets that they fell of their own weight."
Frances McEwen / Civilian Account
"From this sad scene, we passed on to a locust thicket, and men in every conceivable position, could be seen, some with their fingers on the triggers, and death struck them so suddenly the didn't move. Past the thicket we saw trenches dug to receive as many as ten bodies. On the left of the pike, around the old gin house, men and horses were lying so thick that we could not walk.
Hardin Fiquers / Civilian Account
"On Saturday it began to rain, and on the outside of the breastworks in the ditch where so many soldiers were killed the water was literally running blood."
The Confederates would hold Franklin until the 17th of December, when the Union tide rolled back in, following the resounding defeat of General Hood at Nashville.
W.A Keesy / Conrad's Brigade: Union Account
I hastened to take a look at the battleground. The first thing attracting my attention was a locust grove near the old cotton gin. On approaching this grove I thought somebody had taken cotton and strewn it over that locust grove; but on closer observation I was amazed to find the timber so cut and fuzzed up by the bullets... as to give it the appearance of being strewn over with cotton . . .
then it was over only a memory in the minds of aging men and then it was no more than a silent word on a piece of paper and soon it will not even be that. Most people have not only forgotten the past, they don't even know that there was one
