All night, as an exhausted Hood slept in a nearby house and the bright lights of Confederate campfires burned within yards of the highway, Schofield marched his army past the inattentive Southerners and on to safety the next morning at Franklin. Fuming over the debacle when he awoke, Hood berated his generals, staff, and the men in the ranks for the failure. Suitably chastened, everyone vowed to redeem the mistake. In turn, such attitudes led directly to the headlong rush to crush Schofield and resulting disaster that would be Franklin.
Nobody has every satisfactorily explained the strange doings at Spring Hill. Yet, the bottom line — Schofield was saved, Hood was angered, and his army mortified — resulted in a poor circumstance under which to deliver a massive frontal assault against a waiting, well-positioned foe.
That was precisely what Hood found at Franklin. Schofield had time to prepare a position anchored on the now-famous Carter house and cotton gin just south of the village.
The impact of at least a dozen gallant but ill-fated assaults initially allowed the Confederates to overrun the Federal position. Ultimately, though, the assaults only produced senseless slaughter as concentrated firepower mowed down at least 5, heroic Confederates at the expense of roughly half that number of Federals , including twelve general officers and fifty-five regimental commanders.
Hood had decapitated his own army by his furious attempt to salvage lost honor. Perhaps the finest fighting general in either army, Irish expatriate Patrick Cleburne, lay dead before the Union breastworks. More disheartening, Schofield simply crossed the Harpeth River that night and continued his retirement to Nashville.
In a sense, the campaign was over. Yet, Hood, for one, refused to admit it. He could not, and what was he to do? Sherman was now far to the south and bent on making Georgia howl. Franklin itself offered no reason to linger. Perhaps reinforcements might come from across the Mississippi or the Federals at Nashville might decide to await spring to renew the contest.
Although historians claim he had little choice, Hood did in fact have an alternative; he chose to send Forrest — not the main army — to take the fortified Federal logistical center at Murfreesboro and interrupt the Nashville to Chattanooga railroad line.
It might have been better to move the diminished Army of Tennessee as a whole to take the place and they thus could have wintered somewhat comfortably, a repeat of the previous year when General Braxton Bragg had battled Major General William Rosecrans at Stones River and nearly won.
Instead, Forrest failed to crack the fortified supply base called Fortress Rosecrans and whatever damage he wrought on the railroad hardly affected either Thomas at Nashville or Union military operations to the south.
Ultimately, Hood chose to simply follow Schofield to Nashville on December 1. His shattered army settled sullenly into their exposed and frozen hilltop redoubts, staring across at the storm gathering in the highly fortified Tennessee capital and awaiting their fate. Hood stretched his thinned ranks on a six-mile, east-west line that covered most of the major roads running south from the city but scarcely filled the distance at three men to the yard on fighting front.
The general personally set up headquarters at the comfortable John Overton home on the Franklin road and watched developments. So too did the Lincoln administration in Washington. No longer fretful of what havoc Hood might cause in the autumn elections, the Union high command did worry that despite the wreckage of Franklin, the Confederates still posed a threat to undo the successes of the war in the West.
General-in-Chief Ulysses S. Grant admitted later that he never had been so anxious during the war as at that moment. Not unlike Washington, D. Still, he was damnably slow, with a proclivity for methodical preparation before hammer-like delivery. However, Lincoln, Major General Henry Halleck and most of all Grant were too impatient to await such systematic preparation.
In addition to the men Schofield brought in, another corps under A. Vicksburg May 22, —July 4, Vicksburg, Mississippi, lies on the east bank of the Mississippi River, about halfway between Memphis, Tennessee, to the north and New Orleans, Louisiana, to the south. Capturing it would give control of the entire Mississippi to the Union.
But the city, located on a bluff overlooking the river, was heavily defended, with trenches, gun batteries, and a Confederate Army led by General John C. Grant led an army south on the west side of the Mississippi past Vicksburg, then crossed over and led his troops back north to lay siege to the city.
By mid-June, the Confederates were running low on supplies. General Pemberton surrendered on the fourth of July. The victories—a day apart—at Gettysburg and Vicksburg marked the turning point of the Civil War. They also ensured that European powers did not recognize the Confederacy as a sovereign nation , withholding much-needed support. The Civil War killed hundreds of thousands and scarred the countryside.
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Any interactives on this page can only be played while you are visiting our website. You cannot download interactives. The Civil War was a brutal war that lasted from to It left the south economically devastated, and resulted in the criminalization of slavery in the United States.
Confederate General Lee surrendered to Union General Grant in the spring of officially ending the war. The Confederacy dissolved and the country was reunited. Use these resources to help students understand the U. Lee and Union General George McClellan ended in the widthdrawal of Lee's forces from the field so it is counted as a Union victory but the refusal of McClellan to pursue and destroy Lee's army when he had the chance to do so are seen as a massive failure that allowed the war to continue.
The immediate aftermath of the battle was enough of a victory to give President Lincoln the confidence to release the Emancipation Proclamation which declared an end to slavery in Confederate territory.
Made possible by the Union victory at Antietam and issued on January 1 , the Emancipation Proclamation was an executive order of President Lincoln that emancipated e. It did not apply to slaves in border states that had remained loyal to the Union including Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, and Delaware. Though the proclamation was not applicable until Confederate territory was retaken by Union forces, the order shifted the goal of war from simply reunifying the Union to eliminating slavery.
Siege of Vicksburg by Kurz and Allison. The Battleof Vicksburg, fought from May July 4th was a major siege in the western theatre of operations that together with the Battle of Gettysburg which was fought at the same time in the East was considered a major turning point in the Civil War.
The capture of Vicksburg ultimately led to the Confederacy being split into two, cutting off the western Confederate states of Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas from the rest of the Confederacy.
Battle of Chancellorsville by Kurz and Allison. Lee's "perfect battle" because his decisions ultimately led to a Confederate victory. The aftermath of the battle was mixed however for the Confederates as southern General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson was accidentally killed by friendly fire.
The Battle of Gettysburg by Thure de Thulstrup. Fought from July , The Battle of Gettysburg was one of the most famous battles of the Civil War and together with the Battle of Vicksburg which was fought at the same time in the west considered a turning point in the war itself. It marks the last attempt of the Confederates under General Robert E. Lee to invade the north and move the conflict out from the area of Virginia. The Gettysburg Address, a speech given by President Lincoln on November 19 when visiting the dedication of a Cemetery in Pennsylvania in the aftermath of the Battle of Gettysburg.
It is considered to be one of the most famous and important speeches ever given in American history.
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