Fort Granger, Franklin

On a bluff above the Harpeth River at the edge of downtown Franklin, Tennessee, a long earthen ridge still follows the curve of the hill. This is Fort Granger, one of the best-preserved Union fortifications in the mid-South, and the place from which Federal artillery helped shape the outcome of one of the Civil War's most catastrophic battles.

Construction began in eighteen sixty-three after Union forces occupied Middle Tennessee, and the fort was completed by late eighteen sixty-four. It was named for Major General Gordon Granger, the Union commander tasked with fortifying the area. The fort's purpose was straightforward: dominate the Harpeth River valley, control the roads into Franklin, and protect the supply line running south from Nashville.

For most of the war the position served those purposes without being directly tested. Then came November thirtieth, eighteen sixty-four. Confederate General John Bell Hood, desperate after failing to cut off Union General John Schofield's army near Columbia, ordered a massive frontal assault across two miles of open ground against well-entrenched Federal positions in Franklin. The assault involved nearly twenty thousand Confederate soldiers attacking three lines of Union breastworks. It lasted barely five hours. When it ended, roughly nine thousand five hundred men had been killed, wounded, captured, or gone missing, about six thousand of them Confederate. Fourteen Southern generals became casualties in a single afternoon, more than in any other engagement of the war.

Fort Granger's guns contributed to the defense during the fighting, helping repel Confederate attacks on the Union eastern flank. Schofield's army slipped away to Nashville that night, and Hood followed them to his final defeat two weeks later. The earthworks at Fort Granger survive today as a city park, free to visit, the original berms and ditches still legible on the hill above the river.