Carter House: The Battle Came Home

On November thirtieth, eighteen sixty-four, twenty thousand Confederate soldiers charged Union lines at Franklin, Tennessee, in one of the war's most devastating frontal assaults. The Carter House, built in eighteen thirty, served as Union headquarters that afternoon. The Carter family, including elderly patriarch Fountain Branch Carter, hid in the basement as the battle raged literally around their home.

By morning, the walls were riddled with hundreds of bullet holes still visible today. Among the Confederate casualties was Captain Tod Carter, one of Fountain Branch's own sons, who was wounded on the family's own land and died in the house two days later. The Battle of Franklin lasted five hours and produced thousands of casualties on both sides.

The Carter House is now a state historic site.