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230 Tennessee Confederate soldiers are recognized as buried at McGavock cemetery. They are contained in sections 51-66.
Quarles’ Brigade had 37 killed: 42nd, 46th, 49th, 53rd and 55th TN.
Gordon’s Brigade had 51 killed; 11th, 12th, 13th, 29th, 47th, 51st, 52nd and the 154th TN.
Strahl’s Brigade had 29 killed; 4th, 5th, 19th, 24th, 31st, 33rd, 38th and 41st.
Carter’s Brigade had 42 killed; 1st, 4th, (prov), 6th, 8th, 9th, 16th, 27th, 28th and 50th TN.
Smith’s Brigade had 3 killed; 2nd, 10th, 15th, 20th, 30th, and 37th TN.
The Tennesse section and marker is at the far left end of the cemetery, just to the left of the entrance to the McGavock family cemetery, and across from the Texas section.
This marker is inscribed with the simple phrase, “gone but not forgotten”. When the almost 1,500 Confederate soldiers were originally interred in McGavock cemetery after the Battle of Franklin (December 1864), almost all of them were identified by temporary markers. Since then we only know the identity of 780 soldiers. Some 558 men are now officially unknown.
This blog is dedicated to all the Confederate soldiers who fell at Franklin in 1864. We are not interested in resurrecting the ‘Lost Cause’ and we don’t approach the Civil War as Neo-Confederates. Rather, by honoring and respecting the lives of the Confederate dead at McGavock, we are saying that our nation continues to heal from the breach that severed North and South almost 150 years ago.
We particularly want to do all we can to remember those soldiers who are identified and buried at McGavock. “Gone but not forgotten.”
James A. Hampton was a member of the 8th TN Infantry (USA), which fought at Franklin.
The 8th Tennessee Infantry fought in the 3rd division, 1st Brigade, led by Brig Gen James A Reilly, at Franklin (Nov 30, 1864).
The 1st Brigade was made up of the 12th and 16th KY, the 100th, 104th and 175th Ohio, and the 8th TN.
The other two brigades fighting with Reilly’s were Casement’s and Stiles.
See a larger map of the 8th’s position at Franklin
Reilly’s brigade was quite active at Franklin capturing eight color flags of the enemy.
“At the main line, Alvah and his Union comrades watched in horror as the men of Wagner’s 2nd & 3rd Brigades were overrun by the advancing Rebel onslaught. It wasn’t too long before Wagner’s men began pouring down the Columbia Pike and up and over the breastworks into the protection of the main Federal line. Strickland and Reilly’s Brigades of the 23rd Army Corps were soon overwhelmed with their comrades and Rebels coming through at almost the exact same time. The tidal wave of fleeing Federals and screaming Rebels caused the front Union regiments in the line to break apart in the confusion. Retreating commanders of Wagner’s brigades yell for their troops to “rally in the rear.” The men of Strickland and Reilly’s Brigades hear this and believe the order is for them too, and fall back also. The Confederates have now penetrated deep into the Union center and have begun to surround the Carter House. Disaster seems loom for the Federal troops.”
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Report of Maj. Gen. John M. Schofield, U.S. Army,
commanding Army of the Ohio. (on the battle of Franklin)
Brigadier-General Reilly, commanding (temporarily) the Third Division, Twenty-third Corps, maintained his lines with perfect firmness, and captured twenty battle-flags along his parapet.
The Third Division saw 48 killed, 185 wounded, 97 missing at Franklin. Those were the highest casualty numbers for any division in the 23rd Army Corp at Franklin.
According to Jacobsen, For Cause and Country (Ch.8):
“As Opdycke’s men stopped the confederate push west of Columbia Pike, the 12th Kentucky, 16th Kentucky, 175th Ohio, and 8th Tennessee regiments of Reilly’s reserve tried to do the same to the east. After the 1st Kentucky Battery and the front line had been overrun, the men of these four regiments moved forward, the Kentuckians in the lead. Several of Opdycke’s Illinois regiments also helped Reilly’s reserves. Some of the Kentucky companies had Colt Revolving Rifles, and the Confederates were exhausted from their long sprint to the Federal lines. To make matters worse, the Confederates had become disorganized and could not present a coherent line to face this new threat. These reserves managed to drive the Confederates out of the Federal main works east of the Columbia Pike. The Confederate breakthrough was growing smaller.”
Wiley Sword (from pages 223-224):
“About forty yards from Reilly’s works, and nearly in front of the salient at the cotton gin, an ounce of lead, little more than a half inch in diameter and traveling about 1,000 feet per second, found its mark. It was the work of but an instant; a great chasm in Southern history frozen in microseconds. In one shocking moment Pat Cleburne collapsed to the ground, carrying with him perhaps the best hopes of a dying Confederacy’s western army. A lone minie ball had struck just below and to the left of his heart, shredding veins and arteries like tissue paper as it ripped through his body. In a few moments he breathed his last. Pat Cleburne lay dead, his battle saber still grasped firmly in his hand, and his lifeblood soaking the white linen shirt and gray uniform vest with a slowly expanding blotch of crimson. After all the glory and the anguish, it had come to this. Perhaps the South’s most brilliant major general, the “Stonewall Jackson of the West,” his ideas scorned by his president and his competence punished by his commanding general, had been required to lead a suicidal frontal attack like some captain of infantry. Was it God’s decreed fate, or simply man’s stupidity?
Calvin Roller of the 84th Pennsylvania Infantry to his girlfriend
Camp 84th Regiment Penn Vol’s
Petersburg, Virginia
June 29th, 1864
”Smoking is a practice that most every soldier participates in and I am sorry to say that I ben among the many that use tobacco in that way. Although I don’t use it to a great extent I find it affords me a great deal of pleasure. I never in my life drank any intoxicating liquors, only when used in medicine. Sometimes I see officers going into battle very drunk cursing them bad. you folks can’t be aware of the wickedness in the army. Sometimes I am afraid of God sending some plague down on our army for its wickedness. General Grant object to cuts off all communication with the Gulf States before he attempts to take Richmond. We have cut off all the roads but are and no doubt will accomplish the distruction of it before long. Gen Grant is a very obstinate man and will preserve till the end.”
The 84th Pennsylvania Infantry saw action in some of the war’s most pivotal battles including Chancellorsville, Wilderness, Spotsylvania Courthouse and Petersburg.
Source: eBay, June 2007
The 84th history
It shared in the siege of Petersburg until June 27, when it recrossed the James and took part in the action at Deep Bottom.
Probably James C. Roller (two are listed in the 84th though)
“In the latter part of June 1863, this company (Co.I) attacked about two hundred of the enemy on Col. John Overton’s farm, killed two, captured twenty whites and about one hundred wagons and teams. On the same night of the same day, at Franklin, a detachment of the company, under Capt. Perkins, captured a picket post, including the captain commanding, a Sergeant and a Corporal.”
Perkins above is Thomas F. Perkins, Jr., member of Company I, 11th TN Cavalry. He was from Williamson County, TN.
Williamson County Historical Society Journal, #28 (1997)pp. 86. The text was written by J.B. Lindsey in Military Annals of Tennessee: Confederate.
[Company I, 11th TN Cavalry)
Image credit: The Williamson County Historical Society.
More Confederate soldiers from Mississippi lie at McGavock than any other State represented. These boys assume sections 22-50. The number of Mississippi boys reflect the brutal cost paid by Featherston’s and Scott’s brigades as they absorbed Union artillery shelling on the far left Union flank.
The 31st MS regiment has the highest known number of men buried at McGavock, twenty-one. The 31st MS was part of Featherston’s Brigade, BG Winfield S. Featherston, fighting also with the 3rd, 22nd, 31st, 33rd, 40th Miss., 1st Miss., Battalion.
Click here to see a large map of the Battle of Franklin, with an enlarged map of the Eastern flank.
Regarding the action the Mississippi boys saw . . .
Stiles’ and Casement’s men found a thick hedge of osage about fifteen yards south of their position, an almost perfect natural abatis. They went to work cutting some of it down and using the refuse to extend its reach farther west until most of their front was covered by the prickly limbs. Along the line the boys topped the earthen walls with head logs for added protection. . . . Only a fool would attack such a position of strength.
- Patrick Brennan, The Battle of Franklin, North & South magazine, January 2005, Vol. 8., No.1: page 32.
Near the Harpeth River, Major General William Loring’s troops could begin to see the looming Federal line protecting Reilly’s division. Buford’s dismounted troopers and Brigadier General Winfield Featherston’s Mississippians advanced between the river and the Lewisburg Pike, their line bisected by the Central Alabama Railroad. To their left, the Alabamians of Brigadier General Thomas Scott’s brigade had fallen behind as they guided on the pike, the enemy artillery in Fort Granger contesting their advance. Suddenly, at a range of two hundred yards, the Federal artillery upporting Reilly’s line exploded, followed quickly by riflery from Israel Stiles‘ and James Casement’s brigades, six regiments of battle-tested Indianans. In a blinding flash, the Confederate battle line shivered as Federal iron tore trough the rebel front. Of the carnage, one Confederate survivor remembered, “Our troops were killed by whole platoons; our front line of battle seemed to have been cut down by the first discharge, for in many places they were lying in their faces in almost as good order as if they had lain down on purpose.”
Featherston’s boys recoiled from the impact then pressed forwar, but fifty feet from the Yankee line they ran into the impenetrable hedge of osage. Grown to a stinging thickness by the locals to control cattle, the hedge line now provided a perfect barrier against the rebel assault, too high to surmount and too dense to winnow. The Mississippians came to a halt, searching frantically for a way through the natural abatis. As they did, they became little more than sitting ducks for the Indianans across the way. Only near the opening at the pike were the Yankees slightly tested. A pitifully small set of survivors planted two Mississippi flags on the earthworks, but they were almost immediately killed or captured. One survivor described it as “a tremendous deluge of shot and shell . . . seconded by a murderous sheet of fire and lead from the infantry behind the works, and also another battery of six guns directly in our front.” It was, he said, a “scene of carnage and destruction fearful to behold.”
Featherston’s right-most regiments crawled along the ground trying to find another way through the obstructions, but when they curled into the railroad cut marking Stiles’ left, the 120th Indiana palstered their van with musketry. Farther north, Battery M, 4th U.S. Artillery, began to spray the cut with canister, while Cockerill’s gunners in Fort Granger added their own plunging fire. Even a battery east across the Harpeth weighed in. Caught in the maelstrom were Buford’s troopers, belly down on the banks of the Harpeth trying to escape the murderous sweep.
- Patrick Brennan, The Battle of Franklin, North & South magazine, January 2005, Vol. 8., No.1: pages 39-40.
The Soldier’s Pen: Firsthand Impressions of the Civil War
by Robert E. Bonner (Author)
2006
You can search inside this book at Amazon
From the publisher:
They are all infantrymen; none were commissioned officers. One is a German-speaking artist whose sole record is nineteen stunning watercolors that cover a yearÕs enlistment. Another is a free black from Syracuse, New York. Six are from slave states, one of whom was a Unionist. Drawing from the more than 60,000 documents housed in the privately held Gilder Lehrman Collection, Robert E. Bonner has movingly reconstructed the experiences of sixteen Civil War soldiers, using their own accounts to knit together a ground-level view of the entire conflict.
My Dear Wife,
Thinking a few lines would be acceptable to you although I suppose you know our whereabouts before this time but I suppose you would like to receive a word from me.
I should have written yesterday but I was on guard and John Gooch wrote to his wife and I told him to tell his wife to tell you that I was all right.
The orders for Leesburg was countermanded the night wrote from Chantilly after midnight. It appears that we had been transferred to Gen. Hooker’s command and he did not know that our time was so near expired but on the contrary thought we were 3 years men with the remainder of Ambrecomby’s division but our officers mad the fact known to him and he ordered us here.
I do not know as I am anymore out of harms way here than I was there but I am nearer home and can lay down with out expecting to hear the long roll beat at night.
I think it was very lucky for us that we did not have to go to Leesburg for it would have been a fatiqueing march through the enemy’s land and perhaps other causalities might have been coupled with the march.
I do not know as I can write anything definite about our coming home. It is thought that we shall not start from here before Tuesday and if we start then I cannot tell hown long we shall be on the way but I hope to be at home the 4 of July so we can go strawberrying for I should like some strawberries and cream first rate.
I do not know as I have any thing of interest to write so hoping that kind providence will continue his watchful and protecting care over us I close.
From your true and loving husband, C W Gooch
PS. My health is good and I stood the march first rate. If we should go by Wednesday or before I shall not be likely to write again.
God bless my dear wife. C.
Camp at Chantilly, Virginia
Lt. David W. Poak of the 30th Illinois Volunteer Infantry was at Forts Henry and Donaldson, Corinth, Vicksburg, Atlanta Campaign ,March to the Sea, and the Carolina Campaign . He was awarded a 17th Corps Medal of Honor for the Battle of Atlanta when he was conspicuous in Rallying his men, advancing to the front, encouraging his men,firing muskets rapidly at the enemy, and by his service and gallant example materially assisting in bringing his regiment again into action.
Lt. D.W.Poak
30th Illinois Infantry
Jackson,Tenn.
June 26th /62
Dear Sister,
It has been sometime since I last wrote to you and during that time I have recd’ two letters from you . The last one was dated the 8th . I have no particular excuse to offer for my delay in writing as we have been in camp ever since I last wrote so you will have to attribute it to my lazyness .In your last letter you spoke about having recd’ a letter from Pa. I was extremely glad to hear from him for it had been so long since we had had any news from him for so long that I had almost given up hearing from him again .We are still at Jackson but since I have commenced writing we have recd orders to be ready to march at 7 oclk this morning and considering that it is now almost six I have not much time to write .I dont know anything about where we are going but I think we are going up the railroad toward Columbus.The weather is very warm and dry but I cant say it is as warm as I expected it would be at this season of the year.Fruit of all kinds is very plenty .Wild Plums grow in abundance and are ripe . They are most delicious .They are as large as our tame plums were at home and are very good either cooked or green .Blackberries are also getting ripe and are plenty. The citizens are still strong secesh but are getting considerable tamer than they used to be.They have chuch here every sabbath day but as a general thing the attendance of citizens is not very large considering the number about the place.For some reason or other you appear to be very suspicious about me telling you when I get sick . It was not me that went to the Hospital but the other Lieut. Elijah B. David. Our Capt’s name is Francis G. Burnet. You need have no fears about me for if I get sick I will tell you so in words that you cannot misunderstand. I had not heard of Col. Martin’s death till I recd your letter. I was very sorry to hear it for he was as good a soldier as ever shouldered a gun. And a great deal too brave a man to have to lay down his life on account of southern traitors but I must stop as it will soon be time to start, excuse this short letter as I have written it in great haste .
Write soon,
Your brother,
David W.Poak
Kingston NC
December 5 1864
My Dear Lizzie,
[In part.....]
I receive a letter last week from Joab dated 25th November; he was well and in comfortable winter quarters. He still desires a transfer to our Co. and I have today fixt up some transfer papers and sent them up to him. He will forward them up through the proper channel, but I have but little hope they will be approved. I don’t know indeed whether Joab will want to come here when he finds that Will intends leaving the Regt. Will says he going to tender his resignation l… as he is returned to duty and I think it highly probable that I will have to ask to be retired or resigned one of the two. I am pronounced unable for active service in the field by our Surgeons and I suppose I will have no difficulty in getting out, but I will try it a while longer, and I do not improve I will seek and easier birth.
We will try to get Joab here however and in case Will and I both leave we will try to get him out too, if he desires it. Will is having a good time. Nothing to do and no responsibility. He is engaged today in making a pot of soap and a barrel of …..beer. I can’t tell hoe he will su… but I guess Very Well. Dr Lyle came down Saturday last and stayed with us until this morning when he returned to Raleigh. The Boys were glad to see hem and I think much pleasured with his visit. He told us of the affair at Franklin before I received your letter. I was a bold affair that those fellows ought to have been killed, guess they will re… and try it again. I fear trouble has just Commenced in that locality. I look for more trouble in …, has yet been…Sherman’s grand march thorough Georgia will develop more disloyalty in the mountain district than exists before.
But I hope to the present gloom will soon be dispelled by Sherman’s defeat. We have nothing reliable from Sherman. Can’t tell what they are doing in Georgia but my opinion is Sherman will plant himself in Savannah before Christmas and in that even what will be the result is a question of time. I will not venture any prediction as to what will be the end of our troubles.
My kindest regards to all,
God Bless you,
goodbye
John
Written by JB Cunningham (from Macon NC) a commissioned officer with the 6th & 7th (65th regiment) North Carolina Calvary.
Joab Moore (from Macon NC) a Srgt with the North Carolina 16th infantry
Source: eBay, June 2007
