A Sketch of the Battle of Franklin, Tenn., With Reminiscences of Camp Douglas is the narratives of a Confederate soldier who fought in the Tennessee Infantry.
A Sketch of the Battle of Franklin, Tennessee; With Reminiscences of Camp Douglas by John M. Copley John M. Copley, a Tennessee resident, volunteered for the Confederate army at the beginning of the Civil War, when he was only fifteen years old. He fought in Company B of the 49th Tennessee Infantry, which was assigned to Fort Donelson, Tennessee. He was taken prisoner twice; first after the fall of Nashville in 1862, and second after the Battle of Franklin in 1864, when he was incarcerated as a prisoner of war at Camp Douglas, Illinois until the end of the war. Copley's memoir, A Sketch of the Battle of Franklin, Tenn.: With Reminiscences of Camp Douglas (1893), is a history of his activities during the Civil War. At the beginning of the war, Fort Donelson fell to Federal troops in 1862, but Copley was not at this battle because he had been hospitalized in Nashville for pneumonia. Federal troops soon gained control of Nashville, as well, and Copley became a prisoner in the hospital. A Union soldier, whom Copley had known in his childhood, learned Copley was sick and helped remove him from federal control so he could recover from his illness at his home in Tennessee. Copley remained with his family until members of his regiment, who had been taken prisoners in 1862, were exchanged for Federal prisoners. He and his regiment then rejoined the Confederate army and fought in the Battle of Franklin, Tennessee in 1864. They were captured at that battle and became Union prisoners again. However, this time they were taken to prison in Camp Douglas, Illinois, where they spent the remainder of the war. Copley describes prison life and tells of watching Federal troops celebrate the end of the war. He recounts the end of his Confederate service in a detached manner, without revealing his feelings at the time or in hindsight. He and his fellow prisoners were released from captivity and they swore an oath of allegiance to the United States.
It is my opinion that few persons who possess a liberal education, but what, if they make the effort, could write some sort of a book; but to write a book and make it interesting, at the same time have it contain truth and common sense, is no easy task; but to write one and let it contain nothing except plain facts, without any of the coloring which we would give to fiction, and which adds so much charm to the book and interest for the reader, is a greater and much more laborious task. In writing this little book, I have endeavored to keep it clear of all fiction and romance, and to place only facts before the reader. I have not drawn upon my imagination for any incident contained in the following pages. Perhaps some of the incidents may appear unreasonable to those who have grown up within the last decade, and know but little, practically, of the war between the States, and nothing whatever of the life of a prisoner of war; nevertheless, they are all stubborn facts.
No aspect of Civil War history is more fascinating than the two major campaigns that took place in the western theater in late 1864. The opposing generals, William T. Sherman and John Bell Hood, took armies that had been fighting for months and headed them away from each other: Hood marched north into Tennessee, and Sherman marched south into Georgia. As Sherman himself noted, ?It surely was a strange event; two hostile armies marching in opposite directions, each in the full belief that it was achieving a final and conclusive result in a great war.? Hood went on to catastrophic defeat at Franklin and Nashville, while Sherman successfully moved through Georgia to the coast. Many books deal with either Sherman?s march or Hood?s Tennessee campaign, but although they unfolded simultaneously and concluded the main fighting in the western theater, no recent volume analyzes the two together. In her groundbreaking study, Anne J. Bailey assesses how military events in Georgia and Tennessee intertwined and affected the political, social, and economic conditions in those areas and throughout the nation.
If you were a Confederate prisoner during the Civil War, you might have ended up in this infamous military prison in Chicago. More Confederate soldiers died in Chicago's Camp Douglas than on any Civil War battlefield. Originally constructed in 1861 to train forty thousand Union soldiers from the northern third of Illinois, it was converted to a prison camp in 1862. Nearly thirty thousand Confederate prisoners were housed there until it was shut down in 1865. Today, the history of the camp ranges from unknown to deeply misunderstood. David Keller offers a modern perspective of Camp Douglas and a key piece of scholarship in reckoning with the legacy of other military prisons.
Few American Civil War operations matched the controversy, intensity, and bloodshed of Confederate general John Bell Hood’s ill-fated 1864 campaign against Union forces in Tennessee. In the first-ever anthology on the subject, The Tennessee Campaign of 1864, edited by Steven E. Woodworth and Charles D. Grear, fourteen prominent historians and emerging scholars examine the three-month operation, covering the battles of Allatoona, Spring Hill, and Franklin, as well as the decimation of Hood’s army at Nashville. Contributors explore the campaign’s battlefield action, including how Major General Andrew J. Smith’s three aggressive divisions of the Army of Tennessee became the most successful Federal unit at Nashville, how vastly outnumbered Union troops held the Allatoona Pass, why Hood failed at Spring Hill and how the event has been perceived, and why so many of the Army of Tennessee’s officer corps died at the Battle of Franklin, where the Confederacy suffered a disastrous blow. An exciting inclusion is the diary of Confederate major general Patrick R. Cleburne, which covers the first phase of the campaign. Essays on the strained relationship between Ulysses S. Grant and George H. Thomas and on Thomas’s approach to warfare reveal much about the personalities involved, and chapters about civilians in the campaign’s path and those miles away show how the war affected people not involved in the fighting. An innovative case study of the fighting at Franklin investigates the emotional and psychological impact of killing on the battlefield, and other implications of the campaign include how the courageous actions of the U.S. Colored Troops at Nashville made a lasting impact on the African American community and how preservation efforts met with differing results at Franklin and Nashville. Canvassing both military and social history, this well-researched volume offers new, illuminating perspectives while furthering long-running debates on more familiar topics. These in-depth essays provide an expert appraisal of one of the most brutal and notorious campaigns in Civil War history.
The Nashville Campaign, culminating with the last major battle of the Civil War, is one of the most compelling and controversial campaigns of the conflict. The campaign pitted the young and energetic James Harrison Wilson and his Union cavalry against the cunning and experienced Nathan Bedford Forrest with his Confederate cavalry. This book is an analysis of contributions made by the two opposing cavalry forces and provides new insights and details into the actions of the cavalry during the battle. This campaign highlighted important changes in cavalry tactics and never in the Civil War was there closer support by the cavalry for infantry actions than for the Union forces in the Battle of Nashville. The retreat by Cheatham's corps and the Battle of the Barricade receive a more in-depth discussion than in previous works on this battle. The importance of this campaign cannot be overstated as a different outcome of this battle could have altered history. The Nashville Campaign reflected the stark realities of the war across the country in December 1864 and would mark an important part of the death knell for the Confederacy.