General Hood's Narrow Escape

After one of the worst Confederate defeats of the war, an entire army squeezed across the Tennessee River near here and barely got away. In December of eighteen sixty-four, General John Bell Hood's Army of Tennessee had been shattered at Franklin and Nashville and was reeling south in retreat. His men reached Bainbridge Ferry, a few miles from this spot, and laid a pontoon bridge across the cold, swollen river.

The crossing took place in the last days of December. The army's corps filed over, with the cavalry of Nathan Bedford Forrest and the infantry of Edward Walthall fighting as rear guard, the last men over. Had the pursuing Federals struck the pontoons, this might have become one of history's bloodiest slaughters.

Instead, Hood's beaten army slipped across and survived.