Battle of Spring Hill, 1864: the night a Union army slipped away

Few nights of the Civil War have been argued over as long as the night of 29 November 1864. John Bell Hood had his Confederate army camped within half a mile of the turnpike that was the only road north for a Union army, and by dawn that army had marched past him. The historian Jeffry Wert calls Spring Hill a Confederate might-have-been. The next day Hood threw his men at the Union line at Franklin.²

Who won the Battle of Spring Hill and why?

The Union won the part that mattered. The fighting on 29 November was a standoff: Cleburne's Confederates drove back one Union brigade and were stopped at dusk. But Hood's flank march failed, because during the night Schofield's whole army slipped past the Confederate camps to Franklin. The American Battlefield Trust counts Spring Hill a Union victory.³

Background: Hood's gamble in Tennessee

After Sherman took Atlanta in September 1864, Hood's army of about 40,000 was driven into Alabama. When Sherman set off on his March to the Sea on 15 November, Hood turned the other way, into Tennessee. He hoped to beat George Thomas's Union forces, take Nashville and carry the war into Kentucky.⁴ › Sherman's March to the Sea, 1864

Thomas had about 60,000 men, but they were split. Some 30,000 under John Schofield stood forward at Pulaski, far from the rest. When Hood came north by way of Lawrenceburg, the position at Pulaski could no longer be held, and Schofield fell back to Columbia on the Duck River, where the turnpike to Franklin and Nashville crossed it.⁵

Armies and commanders

Hood had been badly wounded in the arm at Gettysburg and had lost his right leg at Chickamauga, and since 18 July 1864 he had led the army in place of the more cautious Joseph Johnston.⁶ › Battle of Chickamauga, 1863

His army was organized in three infantry corps, under Benjamin Cheatham, Alexander P. Stewart and Stephen D. Lee, with Nathan Bedford Forrest's cavalry. Schofield had two corps of infantry, the IV under David Stanley and the XXIII; Jacob D. Cox, who led one of its divisions, later wrote the history of the campaign. The Union cavalry was led by James H. Wilson.⁷

The numbers at Spring Hill itself are hard to pin down. The American Battlefield Trust puts the forces engaged at about 7,000 Union and 12,000 Confederate soldiers. For most of the afternoon, though, the Union side in the town was a single division, Wagner's of the IV Corps. James Fullerton, the adjutant of the IV Corps, later wrote to Hood that it was fewer than 4,000 strong, and Stanley's own report describes how that division alone held the town until evening.⁸

The commanders' decisions

Hood's plan was a flanking march. He let Schofield withdraw across the Duck River, had pontoons laid a few miles upstream on the night of 28 November, and set out at dawn with Cheatham's and Stewart's corps and Edward Johnson's division of Lee's corps. Lee stayed in front of Columbia with his two other divisions and most of the army's artillery, to keep Schofield busy with a show of attack. Hood rode at the head of the column himself, with Granbury's Texas brigade of Cleburne's division, and wrote later that he hoped to imitate Stonewall Jackson's great flank marches.⁹

Schofield faced a harder choice than it seems in hindsight. Early on the 29th he sent Stanley north toward Spring Hill with two divisions, most of the artillery and the trains, and a brigade went up the river to find out whether Confederate infantry had really crossed. But a message from Thomas asked him to hold the Duck River, if he could, until reinforcements under A. J. Smith reached Nashville. Schofield decided on a slower withdrawal: he kept Cox, Wood and Ruger at the river and halted Kimball's division at Rutherford's Creek, while the reconnaissance soon reported Confederate infantry crossing and marching north.¹⁰

At Columbia, Lee's bombardment did its work for a while. Only at about three in the afternoon did Schofield conclude that Hood was not going to attack him there, and start the rest of his army north. He led Ruger's division to Spring Hill himself. Orders for a night march to Franklin had already been written at his headquarters.¹¹

The battle in phases

Forrest's cavalry led the way, pushed Wilson's Union horsemen aside and drove them away from the infantry they were meant to screen. Stanley's leading division, Wagner's, reached Spring Hill at about noon, just as Forrest's troopers came up, double-quicked into the village and drove them off. The wagon trains were parked in the town and the artillery placed on high ground.¹²

Stanley spread Opdycke's and Lane's brigades around the village and sent Luther Bradley's brigade to hold a wooded knoll about three quarters of a mile to the east, covering the approaches from that side. At first he believed he faced only cavalry. Then a Confederate general and his staff were seen studying his line, and Bradley's men were attacked by troops who fought too well to be dismounted cavalry.¹³

By then Hood's infantry was close. In his memoirs Hood writes that at about 3 p.m. he halted within sight of the turnpike, where Union wagons were hurrying north, and told Cheatham and Patrick Cleburne, whose division he called one of his best, to seize the road at or near Spring Hill. Wert gives a different picture: Hood and Cheatham had not conferred, and Cheatham believed his task was to strike Stanley's lines around the town, not to take the turnpike and sweep north.¹⁴

Cleburne's division came up the Rally Hill road and attacked late in the afternoon. A first, limited assault was met with devastating fire. Cleburne then swung his whole division forward, caught Bradley's brigade in the flank and drove it back toward the town, until the massed fire of the Union guns on the high ground stopped his men. Bradley was wounded. Darkness ended the fighting.¹⁵

Cheatham meant to renew the attack with John C. Brown's division leading, but Brown reported that he was outflanked on his right and that attacking would be a disaster. Cheatham then told Hood, in the accounts of both Hood and Captain John Shellenberger, a Union officer who fought there and later wrote a history of the action, that the Union line looked too long for his corps and that Stewart must first form on his right. Stewart was ordered to put his corps across the turnpike north of the town, but in the dark he went into bivouac short of the road.¹⁶

Turning point: the march past the campfires

Hood went to a farmhouse for the night. His army lay in line of battle beside the turnpike: within half a mile of it, according to Cox, though Shellenberger, who later questioned the owner of the land, put part of the line within 150 yards.¹⁷

Schofield reached Spring Hill with Ruger's division after dark and learned that Confederates had been seen on the road at Thompson's Station, three miles north. He pushed on there with Ruger, found only the burning campfires of Forrest's departed horsemen, posted Ruger at the crossroads and came back to Spring Hill around midnight, as the head of Cox's division arrived from the Duck River. Cox was sent on to Franklin at once, and the trains followed.¹⁸

Up that road, in the dark, came Schofield's army: by the American Battlefield Trust's count some 27,000 men, with the artillery and wagon trains. Near Spring Hill the Union column passed the glow of Confederate campfires, and pickets on both sides traded shots in the dark.¹⁹

Hood learned during the night that the enemy was marching past. In his memoir he says he sent again to Cheatham to push out at least a line of skirmishers and that nothing was done. Shellenberger tells it differently: Hood, already in bed, told his chief of staff to order Cheatham to attack, and the officer later admitted that he had never sent the order. Either way, no attack came.²⁰

The worst moment for the Union came at about three in the morning, when the column stopped because the head of the wagon train had been attacked north of Thompson's Station. Thomas Wood, who was with Stanley, thought the trains would have to be abandoned to save the troops. Stanley held on until the road was cleared and the column moved again.²¹

The last Union rear guard, Wagner's division, cleared Spring Hill by 5 a.m. on 30 November in Wert's account; Cox writes that it did not get wholly away until six, and that it was not hard pressed.²²

Counting the losses

The losses of the 29th were small by the standard of the war, and nobody counted them exactly. The American Battlefield Trust estimates about 350 Union and 500 Confederate casualties. Most of the Union loss fell on Bradley's brigade: Bradley reported 198 men lost, nearly all in the three regiments on his exposed flank, while Stanley's report speaks of about 150.²³

Aftermath: Franklin

Hood was furious when he learned that Schofield had escaped, and he pursued at once. Schofield's columns reached Franklin early on 30 November and took position in earthworks on the southern edge of the town, with both ends anchored on the Harpeth River behind them.²⁴

In the afternoon Hood ordered a frontal assault over open ground, over the protests of Cheatham and Cleburne. The attack went in at about 4 p.m. It overran two of Wagner's brigades posted half a mile in front of the main line and broke into the center near the Carter House, where a counterattack by Emerson Opdycke's brigade closed the gap.²⁵

The cost was enormous. Schofield reported, and the American Battlefield Trust repeats, 6,252 Confederates put out of action: 1,750 dead, 3,800 wounded in the hospitals of Franklin and 702 prisoners, against 2,326 Union casualties. Wert puts the Confederate loss at no fewer than 7,000. Six Confederate generals were killed, Cleburne among them. On 15 and 16 December Thomas attacked Hood in front of Nashville and drove his army from the field.²⁶

Legacy and memory

After the war Hood and Cheatham argued over who was to blame. In his memoir Advance and Retreat (1880) Hood laid the failure squarely on Cheatham, who, he wrote, had disobeyed explicit orders; he added that Cheatham had admitted the error to him a few days later. Shellenberger, writing in 1907 after twenty-five years of collecting evidence, spread the blame wider, holding Cheatham, Stewart and Bate more responsible than the division commander Brown, whom others had accused.²⁷

Shellenberger was just as hard on his own side. Schofield later presented his slow withdrawal as a cool calculation based on his knowledge of Hood's character; Shellenberger answered with Stanley's report, which shows that on the evening of the 29th Schofield feared Hood held the turnpike and that the army would have to fight its way out. What is not disputed is the outcome: Schofield reached Franklin with his army intact, and the Army of Tennessee lost its best chance of the campaign.²⁸

Visiting the battlefield today

Most of the battlefield has been lost to commercial and residential development. An interpretive walking trail southeast of the town, at Kedron Road and Reserve Boulevard, explains the battle. Nearby Rippa Villa (Rippavilla), a plantation house around which Confederate troops camped, is open to visitors with guided tours run by the Battle of Franklin Trust.²⁹