Battle of Nashville
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The Battle of Nashville took place near the city of Nashville , Tennessee on December 15-16, 1864, during the American Civil War . It ended in a crushing Union Forces victory over the Confederate Tennessee Army and was the last major combat operation in the state of Tennessee during the Civil War .
prehistory
At the end of 1864, the Confederation found itself in a difficult position. Robert Edward Lee and his Northern Virginia Army were besieged in Petersburg by Ulysses Simpson Grant's Army of the Potomac (see Siege of Petersburg ), and in Georgia William T. Sherman had captured the important city of Atlanta in early September (see Atlanta Campaign ) .
Sherman's adversary, Confederate General John Bell Hood, was vastly outnumbered by Sherman with the Tennessee Army. He hoped, however, to force the northern states to withdraw with one blow against Sherman's supply line, the Western and Atlantic Railroad . Hood therefore marched north, against the W&A. Sherman initially pursued him, but eventually gave up in favor of a better plan. He decided to leave Atlanta for the southeast with two of his armies , march towards Savannah , Georgia on the Atlantic Ocean, destroying or looting all supplies useful to the Confederate on the way. He sent the rest of his force under General George Henry Thomas to Tennessee. Together with the garrisons already stationed there , Sherman hoped this would be enough to keep Hood at bay. Hood's plan, meanwhile, was to defeat Union forces in Tennessee first. Then he wanted to march east, come to the aid of General Lee in Petersburg and together with him defeat General Grant. Should Sherman actually manage to march back from the south before the victorious Confederate forces forced the northern states to make peace, he would be faced with a vastly superior army .
Union General Thomas had meanwhile divided his troops into two large sub-formations - 26,000 men under his command and 34,000 men under General Schofield - and marched towards Nashville. Hood wanted to strike the two parts separately, as his own army had 40,000 men and was therefore outnumbered both corps individually. For this reason he tried to reach the bridge over the Duck River near Columbia, Tennessee, before Schofield . However, Schofield, a former classmate of Hood's time at West Point , noticed Hood's plan, evaded him, crossed the Duck River and left the bridge behind him destroyed. But this did not give him any significant advantage; Schofield was nearly overtaken by the Confederates, but managed to escape leaving behind some of his equipment.
On November 30, 1864, Schofield reached Franklin south of Nashville, but found that the bridges over the Harpeth were impassable. Shortly afterwards he was overtaken by Hood, but was able to repel the Confederate attacks at the Battle of Franklin . Hood repeatedly attacked the entrenched Northerners, losing more than 6,000 men, including 12 generals. At 11:00 p.m., the Union Army pioneers had finally repaired the bridges, and the Union troops withdrew to Nashville, where Thomas was already waiting with his force.
Hood's army arrived in Nashville two days later. Hood decided to besiege the city because the Union forces had built strong fortifications in the south since the conquest of the city in 1862 and the Cumberland River made an attack impossible to the north . In addition, Hood was numerically inferior to the now united Union forces and significantly worse equipped. Despite the unusually beautiful weather for the time of year and numerical superiority, Thomas did not attack the Confederate troops, but instead had his troops trained and equipped. Thereupon General Grant asked Thomas to attack. Grant, Commander in Chief of the US Army, feared that Hood would otherwise fortify his position too well or even bypass Nashville and march further north. Thomas replied that he was planning an attack on December 8, 1864.
On December 8, 1864, however, the weather changed suddenly and made any troop movement impossible. Grant then lost patience with Thomas and appointed General John Alexander Logan as his successor. Grant became so uneasy that he traveled to Nashville himself to see if things were going well. But before either of them got there, the news of the beginning of the battle reached them.
Course of the battle
Hood's army was able to occupy four of the eight roads leading south into Nashville; from east to west these were Hillsboro Pike, Granny White Pike, Franklin Pike, and Nolensville Pike. On December 15, 1864 at 8:00 am, the first attack by Union troops on the right wing of the Confederate under General Benjamin Franklin Cheatham took place . Although the division, under the command of Major General James Blair Steedman, could not negotiate the Confederate fortifications, it diverted the attention of the Southern Army from the actual attack. This was done by three corps under Generals Wood, Schofield and Smith, supported by cavalry, against the left wing of the Confederate at Hillsboro Pike, which was held by troops under General Alexander Peter Stewart . The fighting continued until dusk. Thomas regrouped his troops that night. Hood retreated a few miles behind his starting positions, took up a horseshoe-shaped line-up and reinforced the left wing at the expense of the right. His new line now only covered two of his retreat streets, the Granny White and the Franklin Pike.
The next day around 6:00 am, Steedman occupied the enemy positions from the previous day and fought a few small skirmishes with Hood's left wing. Shortly thereafter, mock attacks were made again against the right wing of the Confederate. Hood then moved troops from the left to the right wing. Following this, Steedman withdrew his troops and Schofield attacked the left wing of the Confederate. The Union General Wilson with his cavalry bypassed the Confederate positions and fell in the rear of the enemy troops. At the same time, Union forces under Wood and Smith attacked the center of the Confederate Army. The Confederates resisted fiercely until late afternoon, but then their line collapsed. Thousands of Confederate soldiers surrendered or fled. Only Stephen Dill Lee's corps , which held the right flank of the Confederate army, remained reasonably intact and was able to cover the Confederate escape across Franklin Pike.
After the battle
The remnants of Hood's Tennessee Army dodged southwest, pursued by Thomas's troops. On December 25, 1864, they reached Tupelo , Mississippi . The following day, Thomas stopped the persecution. A roll call in Tupelo revealed the extent of the Confederate defeat. Of the 40,000 men at the beginning of the campaign, only 25,000 were left. Around 3,000 men were incapacitated in the ranks of the Union. General Hood submitted his resignation on January 13, 1865. His successor was first General Richard Taylor , but shortly afterwards sent the army to South Carolina . There she faced her old adversaries, the Union troops of General William T. Sherman , under her former Commander-in-Chief Joseph Eggleston Johnston .
literature
- Stanley Horn: The Army of Tennessee , University of Oklahoma Press, 1993, ISBN 0-8061-2565-9 .
- Shelby Foote : The Civil War: A Narrative: Volume 3: Red River to Appomattox , Vintage Books, 1986, ISBN 0-394-74622-8 .
- William C. Davis: The American Civil War - Soldiers, Generals, Battles . Weltbild Verlag, Augsburg 2004 ISBN 3-8289-0384-3 .
