December 1864: Forrest Returns to Murfreesboro

By December eighteen sixty-four, the Confederacy was coming apart. General John Bell Hood had led the Army of Tennessee into a catastrophe at Franklin, losing six generals killed in a single afternoon. Now he was marching on Nashville with an army that could barely fight, hoping somehow to draw Sherman back from Georgia. He recognized that Federal troops at Murfreesboro threatened his right flank and his only retreat route. On December fourth he dispatched Nathan Bedford Forrest with two cavalry divisions and an infantry division under General William Bate to neutralize the garrison.

Forrest moved on Murfreesboro on the morning of December fifth, advancing in two columns and quickly forcing the outlying Union positions at LaVergne to surrender. He pressed toward Murfreesboro along two roads, driving the Federals back into Fortress Rosecrans, the massive earthen fort the Union had spent two years building after Stones River. Fortress Rosecrans was too strong to storm. Forrest settled in for a siege on the city outskirts.

On December seventh, Union General Robert Milroy led a sortie out of the fortress that caught Bate's Confederate infantry in the open. Bate's men, demoralized and exhausted after the Franklin disaster, broke and fled. Even Forrest could not rally them. The operation that was supposed to neutralize Murfreesboro ended with Confederate infantry running from the field and the Union garrison intact. Forrest withdrew. A little over a week later, George Thomas attacked Hood at Nashville and destroyed the Army of Tennessee in two days of fighting. The Third Battle of Murfreesboro was the last Confederate military operation against this city. Murfreesboro had changed hands multiple times over four years of war, and this was the last time anyone tried.