What happened at Spring Hill in 1864?
On 29 November 1864 Confederate General John Bell Hood marched around Union General John Schofield's army and reached Spring Hill, Tennessee, astride its line of retreat. A single Union division held the town, the Confederate attack stalled at dusk, and during the night some 27,000 Union soldiers marched north past the Confederate camps to Franklin.1
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 home for a Union army. 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, and the Army of Tennessee never recovered.2
Hood's gamble in Tennessee
After Sherman took Atlanta, 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, hoping to beat George Thomas's Union forces, take Nashville and carry the war into Kentucky. Thomas had some 60,000 men, but they were split; about 30,000 under John Schofield stood forward at Pulaski, far from the rest.3
Schofield fell back to Columbia on the Duck River, 40 miles south of Nashville. Hood decided to go around him. On the night of 28 November his engineers laid a pontoon bridge over the river east of Columbia, and Stephen D. Lee's corps stayed behind with most of the artillery to bombard the Union lines and hold Schofield in place. Hood himself led nearly 20,000 infantry north toward Spring Hill, about ten miles behind the Union army, where he could cut the Columbia Turnpike. His mood was confident: the enemy, he said, must give him a fight or he would be in Nashville the next night.4
The race for the turnpike
Forrest's cavalry led the way across the Duck River on the morning of 29 November, pushed the Union horsemen aside and turned toward Spring Hill around 10 a.m.. Schofield, ordered by Thomas to fall back toward Franklin, had already sent David Stanley with George Wagner's division and some 800 wagons up the turnpike. Stanley's men reached the town just in time to keep Forrest's troopers out of it, and at about 11:30 the cavalry ran into them. Only around 3 p.m. did Schofield, at Columbia, realize that Lee's bombardment was a ruse and start the rest of his army north.5
The Confederate infantry began to come up around midday. Patrick Cleburne's division arrived along the Rally Hill Pike and attacked; it was met by devastating fire, then sent forward as a whole and pushed the Union line back before it was stopped again. Rickard notes that only Cleburne's division seems to have attacked, although both Hood and his corps commander Benjamin Cheatham were on the field. Wert explains part of the muddle: the two men had not conferred, and Cheatham believed his task was to strike Stanley's lines around the town, not to seize the turnpike and sweep north. Darkness ended the fighting.6
The march past the campfires
Hood, who had lost a leg and the use of an arm in earlier battles, went to a farmhouse for the night. His army camped in line of battle half a mile from the turnpike. Up that road, in the dark, came the bulk of Schofield's army. Near Spring Hill the Union column passed the glow of Confederate campfires; skirmishers and pickets stumbled into each other and fired blind, and the wind, Wert writes, muffled the sound of marching feet.7
The American Battlefield Trust counts some 27,000 men with their baggage moving past the Confederate positions that night. By 5 a.m. on 30 November Schofield's rear guard had cleared Spring Hill. A Union general compared the escape to treading on the thin crust over a smoldering volcano. The losses of the day were small by the standard of the war: about 350 Union and 500 Confederate, by the Trust's estimate.8
From Spring Hill to Franklin
Hood was furious when he learned that Schofield had escaped; after the war he and Cheatham argued over who was to blame. He pursued at once. Schofield's men were already behind earthworks at Franklin, and in the afternoon of 30 November Hood ordered a frontal assault over open ground, over the protests of Cheatham and Cleburne. At least 7,000 Confederates fell, among them six generals, Cleburne one of them. The Trust sums up what the night march achieved: Schofield reached Franklin safely with his army intact.9
Notes
A number in the text points to a note; each note names the works that paragraph draws on, listed in full under Sources.
- American Battlefield Trust, “Spring Hill”; John Rickard, “Action at Spring Hill, 29 November 1864”; Jeffry D. Wert, “Spring Hill”. ↩
- John Rickard, “Action at Spring Hill, 29 November 1864”; Jeffry D. Wert, “Spring Hill”. ↩
- Jeffry D. Wert, “Spring Hill”; American Battlefield Trust, “Spring Hill”; John Rickard, “Action at Spring Hill, 29 November 1864”. ↩
- Jeffry D. Wert, “Spring Hill”; American Battlefield Trust, “Spring Hill”. ↩
- American Battlefield Trust, “Spring Hill”; Jeffry D. Wert, “Spring Hill”; John Rickard, “Action at Spring Hill, 29 November 1864”. ↩
- American Battlefield Trust, “Spring Hill”; John Rickard, “Action at Spring Hill, 29 November 1864”; Jeffry D. Wert, “Spring Hill”. ↩
- Jeffry D. Wert, “Spring Hill”; John Rickard, “Action at Spring Hill, 29 November 1864”. ↩
- American Battlefield Trust, “Spring Hill”; Jeffry D. Wert, “Spring Hill”. ↩
- John Rickard, “Action at Spring Hill, 29 November 1864”; Jeffry D. Wert, “Spring Hill”; American Battlefield Trust, “Spring Hill”. ↩
Sources
- American Battlefield Trust, “Spring Hill”
- John Rickard, HistoryOfWar.org, “Action at Spring Hill, 29 November 1864”
- Jeffry D. Wert, HistoryNet, “Spring Hill: A Confederate Might Have Been”
