Just a few days after fighting their way through Lawrence County in the fall of 1864, the Confederate Army of Tennessee suffered a horrific loss of manpower and leadership at Franklin, Tennessee.
November 30 is the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Franklin. Sam Watkins, a Confederate infantryman from Maury County, had this to say about it in his book ‘Co Aytch:’
“Kind reader, right here my pen, and courage, and ability fail me. I shrink from butchery. Would to God I could tear the page from these memoirs and from my own memory. It is the blackest page in the history of the war of the Lost Cause. It was the bloodiest battle of modern times in any war. It was the finishing stroke to the independence of the Southern Confederacy. I was there. I saw it. My flesh trembles, and creeps, and crawls when I think of it to-day. My heart almost ceases to beat at the horrid recollection. Would to God that I had never witnessed such a scene!
“I cannot describe it. It beggars description. I will not attempt to describe it. I could not. The death-angel was there to gather its last harvest. It was the grand coronation of death. Would that I could turn the page. But I feel, though I did so, that page would still be there, teeming with its scenes of horror and blood. I can only tell of what I saw.”
It should be noted that Watkins was a participant in every major campaign of the Army of Tennessee during the Civil War, and yet even as a battle-hardened veteran, Watkins remembered the Battle of Franklin as especially horrific.
To read Watkins’s memories of Franklin–and the rest of the War–follow this link:
Lawrence County History Trivia 