Sixteenth
South Carolina
C.S.A.
The Carter House
Sixteenth
South Carolina
C.S.A.



The Carter House, Franklin, Tennessee
"The Brass Mounted Army"
Music by Dayle K.

The Carter House is a story in and of itself. Time or space does not bind it. One example will suffice: Tod Carter went to war for the State of Tennessee and the Confederate States of America. He fought, marched, trained, and starved like all of the brothers in gray. Fate held something both tragic and special for this son of the South. We will never know what he felt when he marched over Winstead Hill in late November of 1864. We can never understand what it must have been like to charge down the hill into your own backyard. Tod Carter can never tell us because he was mortally wounded for a cause he felt just, near his father's gin in the yard he had played in as a child. He was carried to the Carter House to breathe his last with the family he so dearly loved. Tod Carter was luckier than most of his seventeen hundred brothers in gray who went on their last earthly journey on that Indian summer evening so long ago. Tod Carter was allowed to go home to die.

Enough can never be said about Tom Cartwright and the Carter House. As curator he has taken the years of sad budgets and legislative lack of concern and made a miracle for all to behold. Men are rarely alone in the successful pursuit of a vision, but I believe that this man would have acted had he been alone. A mere three generations ago the fate of nations swirled about this place. For two generations, it was a struggle merely to have and hold. However, today it is a monument to what can be done when everything else has changed around you. Go to this place, savor it, and find Tom Cartwright and thank him.

The buildings are preserved and a new museum graces the grounds and all of this has happened in my lifetime. Events that bring focus to history and translate the hopes and dreams of yesterday for tomorrow all happen here daily. On the anniversary of the battle is when Tom is at his best, rushing from here to there not to direct but to participate. As our ancestors knew, Tom understands that the best leadership, is leadership, which can and will role up its sleeves and work. I am profoundly moved by everything that this man is. His portrayal as an actor of one of Cheatham’s Tennessee Confederates is wrenching and his work as a historian without equal.

The Carter House


For more about Franklin, the 1864 battle, and the 16th S.C.V. follow General Gist, to go home follow the flag.


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