|
South Carolina C.S.A.
|
|
Account of the Battle of Franklin Company H Sixteenth South Carolina January, 1925
|
|
South Carolina C.S.A. |
|
Company H Sixteenth South Carolina ISBN# 1-56013-001-6. |
|
(Serving with a different unit at Sharpsburg, Probably Company I, Second South Carolina) This excellent account of Franklin by Captain Furman of Company H ends at the beginning of the war and I marvel at how close he was able to come in his estimation of numbers. Captain Furman was a man who was well educated and obviously spent a great deal of time in conversation and study about the war. Whatever faults it may contain, and they are few, it remains the only known account of Franklin by an officer of the Sixteenth who was present. His Hood quotes are the only source of that information I have found and the while more detail of the battle may be desired, he covered the ground and fought the fight. The command information about the Sixteenth and his view of it and the supply situation provides new information that is stellar. The Furman Letters |
|
When we started out on the morning of the 30th of November, we saw evidences of a very disorderly retreat as we moved toward Franklin. As well as I now remember this was about 12 or 15 miles from the latter point mentioned. When we approached Franklin we were thrown into line of battle and marched to the hills overlooking the town. Nearly all of our artillery had been left a Columbia. Some time toward the middle or latter part of the day we arrived in sight of Franklin. Franklin was a little Tennessee town thoroughly fortified with an abundance of artillery and the folly of a frontal attack must have been evident to any mind with knowledge of military affairs. Nevertheless, General Hood, who was known for his bull-dog courage and for desperate fighting in Virginia, and who had subsequently been attached to the Western Army, seems to have been perfectly confident that we would beat the enemy in our front without any trouble. My own recollection would indicate that he must have had this opinion. My own regiment had no field officers at the time but three captains. One of them commanded the regiment and the other two acted as Lieutenant Colonel and Major. My place in the battle was as commander of the 2nd battalion, the left wing of the regiment. General Hood stopped beside me, surveyed the troops drawn up and ready to charge, and said in my hearing; "Men, go in and lick them out of their boots. It will be the easiest fight you ever made. They are badly demoralized." So we went in. As I have said, we had practically no artillery, there was only one battery in the whole force, the others being left at Columbia, with the Third corps. The enemy were thoroughly prepared to receive us and were far in excess of our numbers. I suppose we had about 15,000. The brunt of the battle was borne by two divisions, General Cleburne's and General Cheatham's then commanded by Major General John C. Brown, of Tennessee, who was afterward Governor of that State. We had in our division brigades, commanded by General Gist of South Carolina, General Strahl, General Carter, and General George B. Gordon, of Tennessee. We rushed down from the hills into the valley where the town lay, drove back the advanced guard and swept on under a withering fire till we reached the trenches, their principal work. Our men filled up the external trench, some of them attempting to go over the breast works. The heat of the battle did not last but a short time - perhaps two hours. The field was covered with dead men - it was the only field I ever saw when you could walk on the dead without touching the ground. Of the four Brigadier Generals and the Major General - five generals in all - three were killed on the field - Strahl, Carter and Gist. General Gordon rushed through an opening where a road went into the town and was therefore not barricaded. He led some of his men through that gap and was captured. At the close of the battle four of our Generals were missing - three had been killed outright, the Commander of the division, General Brown, was wounded, and the fourth was captured within the enemy's trenches. At the close of the battle, therefore, we had not a single general officer left in the division and the command of the division was given to a Colonel. Our brigade lost very heavily but I have not the statistics of their losses, my own recollection now is that my regiment carried 280 men into the fight and lost 130, many of them kill - perhaps most of them killed. The brunt of the battle was borne by those two divisions. They suffered the greatest losses. It seems an eminently unwise thing to have attacked their lines in front. It would have been so easy to make a move either to the right or left and to attack them on the exposed flanks, but that was not General Hood's way. He rushed the men in and trusted to luck. Although our men were Veterans they could not drive the Yankees from the field. We held out position through the night and sometime in the night General Schofield withdrew the troops and in the morning the trenches were empty. The confederate loss in the engagement was 13 generals, which is the largest number of general officers to be killed and wounded in one battle during the civil war. Some of our very best leaders lost their lives. I do not think there are any adequate statistics of the numbers injured or the number of the dead. The fact is the army was completely disorganized by the enormous slaughter of the men. My own estimate is that we lost five or six thousand men out of the 15,000 that we carried into the fight. In a way it might be considered a victory for us but it did not advance us in any way at all. The federals were gathering in Nashville at our front in countless thousands. We remained at Nashville for a few days attempting to encircle the city but could not get around half of it because we had not men enough. The enemy continued to pour into Nashville until General George H. Thomas had 60,000 men. Just how many Hood had I do not know, probably 12,000 against the 60,000. After Thomas had brought in men enough to attack us with an overwhelming force the battle of Nashville took place, but I won't attempt to talk about that. It is enough to say that General Hood went into that battle overconfident and without calculating the number of men we would lose. The Federal loss was comparatively small for they were protected with heavy breast works and we were practically without cannon and very much outnumbered. Consequently the damage to Hood's army was probably one-third of the whole command. The whole campaign was desperate and hopeless from the start, but counting on his own good luck, as I have said, he destroyed the best of his army. The rest of the campaign was of short duration. It practically wound up two weeks later at the city of Nashville where they attacked us in overwhelming numbers and drove us back. I will mention as a result of the battle that our brigade had one field officer left, the full number of field officers in a brigade of five regiments would have been 15. Of course some of them were not present. Our regiment had no field officers and only three captains when the battle started. As a net result (so far as we were concerned) every general in our division was lost - five in number - and all the field officers in the brigade but one were lost. You can see how utterly cut to pieces we were therefore. (Note: The three Captains are believed to be Boling(G), Furman (H), and Holtzclaw(F). The one field officer may have been B.B. Smith.) Personally I never forgave Hood that folly and I laid the full responsibility upon him. The only thing that could be said in his favor except his bulldog courage, which is known all over the world, was that he had been so battered to pieces in previous battles that he was a physical wreck. For instance, I saw him on his way to Chickamauga in a baggage car going with his men to the front with one arm in splints and in that fight he lost his leg, cut off above the knee. That wreck of a man carried us to the front in that way. Shortly after the battle of Nashville and after the small remnant that had fought there so bravely against the crowding hosts of the enemy, he resigned and we saw the end of him as leader but the army of Tennessee was virtually destroyed. After Sherman had passed through the state burning and destroying everything in his way, to the best of my recollection the army of Tennessee consisted of 17,000 men, these being scraped together from hospitals and everywhere else to join Johnston. I had a very long experience on the fighting line but that was about the worst experience I ever had. The only other battle in which I was engaged which compared with it was the battle of Antietam - Sharpsburg we called it - when Lee marched into Maryland. In that great fight we had probably 30,000 men in battle and the enemy had 80,000 - 100,000. We fought all day long and in spite of their numbers we checked them, but the losses were exceedingly heavy and the army was so much crippled by the fight that General Lee withdrew it to the south side of the Potomac. He remained two nights and a day on the field. On the second night he moved back across the river into Virginia. Those were the two leading battles I was in so far as heavy fighting was concerned. I only speak of this as an example of the extraordinarily desperate character of the contest. Our army was left shattered but the cause of this was not to be laid upon Lee. The real cause of the losses of the battle was that the enemy held Harper's Ferry with a large force and they were so strongly posted that we had to besiege as it were. We captured some ten or fifteen thousand men with 70 or 80 pieces of cannon. Lee had advanced his army by division, etc. not in mass, and a very considerable force of his not very large army was occupied in investing Harper's Ferry. In the meantime McClellan had advanced on these troops ahead in great force. I remember we had marched into Harper's Ferry and rations were being distributed -we had nothing to eat for two or three day - they turned us out in an apple orchard to eat green apples. We carried two little mountain howitzers by hand to the top of the mountain and had a desperate fight then before we got possession of the heights. After that we marched down into Harper's Ferry and were going to have something to eat, but suddenly we were called to the colors and told that we must immediately march to the front. The battle of Boonsboro had taken place, some of the troops had suffered heavily and they needed our help. We were therefore marched off rapidly. We marched until 9 o'clock that night, after which we laid down and rested until midnight. Then we were called up and marched on. Early in the morning we crossed the Potomac by wading and then marched on toward the fighting at Sharpsburg. The pace was so exhausting that the men fell out of the ranks by the wayside. So far as that battle was concerned the havoc there was illustrated by the fact that on one part of the field all the gunners of one Confederate battery had been killed and the staff of one of the generals took charge of the cannon and kept up the fight. That we did gain the advantage, that we did hold the field is an assured fact, but if you read the northern histories you will find that we were whipped. All I can say about that is that we slept on the ground and stayed there the next day, and on the next night we moved back to the river. Two or three of us went off in the night to get our knapsacks and when we got back we were astonished to find the men had moved to the rear and it was a considerable time before we could locate our command. When we crossed the river General A.P. Hill was ordered by Lee to stop the advance of the enemy, which he did very effectively. We killed about 3,000 of them at the river. That it was a victory for the North is all stuff. We were terribly reduced in numbers, and they were not. McClellan was personally in command in that fight. He was a wonderful organizer but was extremely cautious in action. General Lee, of course, realized the impossibility of further carrying on the offensive and the failure of the campaign in Maryland was due to the Harper's Ferry delay about which I have spoken, enabling the enemy to strike in detail. Another thing that was always said about it was that McClellan became aware of the fact that Lee's army was very much scattered through a general order that had been sent out to the leading generals. A copy of it, I think intended for General D.H. Hill was dropped and they got hold of it. McClellan moved forward with a large army and succeeded in fighting us to a standstill, after which it was necessary for us to withdraw. Lee's army was always too weak. My great admiration for Lee - and I regard him, as the greatest general of modern times- is that he did so much with such small forces so badly equipped. They talk a great deal about the suffering of Washington's men at Valley Forge. I do not think the men at Valley Forge could have endured greater suffering. Two week after the battle of Franklin the fighting began at Nashville. There the proportion was probably 4 to 1. As we moved away our men were organized rapidly in spite of the hasty retreat and loss of most of our artillery. Some of them were barefoot, snow was on the ground, their feet were bleeding, and it was as cold as could be. Just before we went into Tennessee requisition was made for supplies and as Captain of my company I called for shoes for them and got two pair. The ground was covered with snow. We crossed the Tennessee River in a snowstorm. (Note: This would have been on the retreat from Nashville.) General Gist was a very gallant fellow. Our regiment had no field officers present. My messmate, Major O'Neal, had been killed somewhere about Kennesaw Mountain and his place had not been filled. Our Colonel (McCullough) had resigned and gone to the legislature, and the other man (Ioor) disappeared entirely. I was reading law in Charleston, had graduated about a year before, and was 20 years old. It was rumored that the Confederates were going to attack Fort Sumter. I did not believe it, but it turned out to be true. When the cannonading began I went down to the Battery (In Charleston) and a crowd of us boy and girls overlooked the whole thing and saw the bombardment right at our feet. If I had gone home to Greenville I could have raided a company, but I thought I must get right into it, and so I joined a company and the men were of high order as was evidenced by the fact that some 30 or 40 of them became officers. I remained in company from May 11, 1861, when I reached Richmond, till the end of 1862. In the spring of that year we were at Yorktown, Va., our flanks being exposed to gunboats. We were marched to Richmond. McClellan followed us. Johnston was wounded and Lee was put in command of the army, Jeff Davis did not like Johnston, and I think that was one of the weaknesses of Davis' character - he had favorites. Lee had not distinguished himself at all in the army up till that date. He had been in West Virginia and had been at one time sent down to Charleston to take command there. He was a great engineering officer and when Johnston was wounded Davis appointed him to take the command. Davis did not seem to want to give Johnston a position when Johnston got well. Finally, however, he assigned him to duty in Mississippi to take command of the army out there about the time of the fall of Vicksburg. Grant came down with a big host. He went down below, crossed the river and marched up on the east side of the river. Johnston's instructions to Pemberton were to join him evacuating Vicksburg, but Pemberton disobeyed orders and was turned out. After this Johnston had the bulk of his army taken from him and sent to Bragg in Georgia. Bragg was a favorite of Davis'. He was not a capable leader. The battle of Chickamauga, which we fought soon after going into North Georgia, was a great victory but it should have been an overwhelming victory. We did not succeed in destroying the army of Rosecrans. In consequence of that defeat General Grant, who had been getting a great deal of public renown, was sent to Chickamauga. He went there and relieved Rosecrans of the command. He added two army corps to the force already there, and very foolishly, as I have always though, General Longstreet, who helped in that attack was sent off to Knoxville. He did not accomplish anything and our force was reduced to such an extent that we had nothing left to fight Grant with. We could not hold our lines. After the battle of Chickamauga the Yankees were reinforced by two army corps and we had our best army corps shipped off somewhere else. Bragg was not a leader and we were driven from Missionary Ridge with great loss. They captured a large number of our guns but we succeeded in getting back to the tunnel. Davis was obliged to remove Bragg and unwilling - I suppose - he put Johnston in command again. Within 10 days after he had taken command Johnston had reorganized the army. When the spring opened, Grant was ordered to Richmond to begin the campaign against Lee, and W.T. Sherman was put in command of the army, but in my judgment Sherman was far superior to Grant. I did not like Grant and possibly am not fair to him. Grant moved down with a numerous force and our lines had to be dropped back below Nashville in consequence of that defeat. When he got to the Tennessee River he crossed it at Pittsburg landing. Albert Sidney Johnston advanced upon him and defeated him and drove him back, and in the very moment of victory, Albert Sidney Johnston was struck in the leg by a bullet. He did not realize that he was so seriously wounded and practically bled to death. Then Beauregard was put in command of the army. His first act was to stop the pursuit of Grant's broken troops and then General Buell, marching up with a new army, reinforced Grant the next day and the Confederates thought the thing was over. Grant got all the honor for this. Abraham Lincoln said to Grant, "Now, Grant, I will give you all the money and all the men you want." I have often said that if Lee had even for a 24 hour period had as many as two-thirds of the men Grant had he would had whipped him. But Grant had an illimitable number of men to draw on. I think when he came into Virginia he had about 150,000 and Lee about 50,000. In the six weeks that that followed Grant lost more men than Lee had in his army. In the last fight in that campaign, the second battle of Cold Harbor, he lost 5,000 men in forty minutes. The ground was so covered with the dead that when Grant ordered his troops forward they would not go, and General Grant because he could not break Lee's lines, crossed the river and established himself near Petersburg. Of course Lee went down there to meet him and they sat there facing each other for several months. After the lines were blown up by a mine, Grant rushed his negro regiments in there and they were shot down like rabbits. Grant had 160,000 men and Lee had 50,000. At Appomattox Lee surrendered 9,000 men. Our men kept on fighting until the very last. I was under Johnston then. We were facing Sherman, who had 100,000 men against Johnston's 40,000. After Appomattox, we surrendered. |
|
|
|
|
|
