Hood did gain a victory at Franklin, technically, but at too great a cost. Forrest had found an alternate way to bypass the Union position and pleaded with Hood to allow him to use it. Hood refused and chose to attack against the Union lines directly. Few involved had any real expectation to survive such an attack and it may account for the six Confederate generals killed, seven wounded, and one captured during the attack. They knew they had been ordered to their death and they acted without regard for their own fate during the attack.
After the battle a Confederate officer wrote, "We Were led out in a slaughter pen to be shot down like animals. It was an attempt to make good by reckless daring the blunder which incapacity had occasioned the preceding day." Another Reb wrote, "To attack intrenched troops, superior in numbers, advancing over an open plain without cover, was a disregard of the rules of war, a waste of precious lives, and a wrecking of an army." One of Cleburne's men wrote after the battle, "Hood has betrayed us. This was not a fight with equal numbers and choice of the ground. The wails and cries of widows and orphans made at Franklin, Tennessee, will heat up the fires of the bottomless pit to burn the soul of General J.B. Hood for murdering their husbands and fathers."
To me the Battle of Franklin was always the result of Hood's increasingly erratic and disturbing behavior after his wounding at Gettysburg and Chickamauga. In his own memoir Hood admits that the idea of teaching his men a lesson was not out of the question. "The discovery that the army was, still, seemingly unwilling to accept battle unless under the protection of breastworks, caused me to experience grave concern. In my inmost heart I questioned whether or not I would ever succeed in eradicating this evil. It seemed to me I had exhausted every means in the power of one man to remove this stumbling block to the Army of Tennessee." The tonic, in Hood's mind, was a full frontal attack. This would give the Army strength and teach them to fight like men. After nearly four years of war was Hood really suggesting that the veterans of Shiloh, Mufreesboro, Chickamauga, Chattanooga, and Atlanta were not reliable soldiers? The only way to prove it, in Hood's mind, was to attack and succeed. Or not to come back at all. The pleading of Forrest, Cheatham and Cleburne could do little to sway the orders on November 30. Hood was ready to dish out a lesson. James McPherson wrote, "Having proved even to Hood's satisfaction that they could assault breastworks, the Army of Tennessee had shattered itself beyond the possibility of ever doing so again."
Hood's message to Richmond was one of victory after the battle. Although he bragged of capturing a 1,000 men and a few stands of colors he failed to mention the 7,000 men lost and 14 generals who had been casualties.
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