Evolutions of the Line Tennessee 1864 Campaign

This article, orginally published in Camp Chase Gazette, discusses insights into Nepolionic tactics gained by the author at the largest Civil War reenactment held this decade, near Spring Hill Tennesee in October 1995.

Contents

• Introduction and Drill
• The Friday Fight
• Battle of Franklin Battle Reenactment
• Battle of Nashville Battle Reenactment morning action on the Federal right.
• Charge of the 13th. USCT & Federal Infantry
• Conclusion
• Other reports on this event from the web
• Return to Civil War @ Charleston

In two years, I have read books long enough to mention Franklin and Nashville, including Wiley Sword's excellent history of the campaign. I know why the soil is black and rich where the Carter House garden lay. I have a better answer to the question about soldiers dying in neat rows.

Friday The Palmetto Battalion, Gen, Bill Smart's Brigade, 1st. Confederate Division, finished coming up at Spring Hill with the drizzle already started. We registered and lugged our gear in half a mile to camp. The hard cores sneered at my return trips to the bus for more gear. We were too kind to sneer at them when the rain came down hard on the canvas of my A-frame and pelted through the defects in their shebang.

It was an afternoon of creeping misery and malaise. It was wet and getting wetter. The color line had been churned into six inches of mud, the company street was a morass and the drill field nearly impassable. The 600 tons of emergency gravel ordered for the roads made them firm, good planning that paid off. Off the roads however, it was sticky, sucking mud. A soldier marches many miles. Pulling his foot out of the ground at the beginning of each step makes them hard.

We sat in our mud, on the little island of corn stalks and straw beneath my A-frame and tried to follow the orders not to complain. We had waited a year and travelled 600 miles to sit in a sea of mud while the rain and the endless passing of feet make it deeper.

Depression and disappointment moved in on the Palmetto Battalion. The afternoon battle was cancelled. A third of the event was gone. We were were bored, restless and sour. We were a disorganized gaggle of men, unfit to do anything but complain our way into bitter disgust.

Major Randy Burbage has led men through enough mud to understand this. He called for Battalion drill and ordered the men to fall in. We straggled our way through the goo of the drill field and assembled in an uneven line.

The line was dressed, the drummer appeared and we counted off. I slipped to the right, towards the colors and felt my elbow touch that of my comrade at arms in skirmish order. At my back was the dependable corporal who trained me when I knew nothing of drill and reminds me when I forget now. The entire battalion locked in as all those drills in the dark parking lot during meetings have taught us to do. I felt the surge of energy that runs from flank to flank when the line is born. I inspected the ear of the man beside me and perfected my dress. We slammed through the manual at arms, went into column and moved.

The mud was still wet. It sucked at one's brogans the way the hungry demons of hell reach out for careless souls, but we had been saved. The energy and will of the line was more powerful than the mud. We stomped into it, yanked out of it and ground it up. We went into column of companies, back into line, column into line over and over again. Burbage was preaching the gospel according to Hardees. It was the sermon the Battalion needed to hear. By drill's end we were ready for more rain, for the Yankees, for anything. It was a prayer meeting in close order that brought the entire congregation to the alter call. We had the line. It strengthened us.

Answer: They fought in neat lines because a man can stand more at the elbow of his pards than he ever could alone.

The Friday Fight

Answer: The men fought in neat rows so that they could know when they were ready to fight.

Battle of Franklin Reenactment

We were reenacting Manigalt's brigade, part of Lee's division in the Army of Tennessee, so we waited in the rear while the battle raged. We turned into column went to the rear, pounded through a flanking march and came up on the Confederate Left. The 10th. SC had been at Franklin in 1864, when the bullets were real. That is where my Great Great Grandfather's unit died, the last place its solid line of gray stood with any length.

We went from column into column of companies and from column of companies into line. We hit the federal works, were repulsed, fell back and hit them again. We reenacted five of the twelve attacks the 10th. threw against the federal line that night at Franklin in 1864. We lost our colors and saved them. We died until their was no more room on the ground to fall. We got further than our ancestors, but didn't stay very long. As in 1864, the 10th. could die on the ground, but it couldn't hold it.

Answer: The men fought in neat rows, because even brave men do not wish to die alone, their sacrifice lost in a scattered throng. How could they be sure their loved ones would learn of the sacrifice? How would an orphan grow up without a final memory of his father brought home by a surviving pard?

After Battle, I missed the meeting of the computerized virtual regiment, sampled the chewy fire of Chief Enoch's chile at the tent of the Camp Chase Gazette and went seeking the camp of the United States Colored Troops in the dark. I am a member of two units, the 10th. SC of my Grandfather and the 54th. Mass., Co. I, a unit made of men like those he owned. My membership in the 54th. is honorary. I am their lawyer.

Unlike the short, sharp fight of my unit on the Confederate left, the USCT had a long and busy afternoon. They marveled at the vast lines of Confederates that had come forward, smashed against their works, assembled into great lines, charged and smashed again. They had burned some powder. They had served both flanks. They had been heros. Two weeks after the million man march in DC, where 500,000 men slept in hotels and walked on the clean firm grass of the mall, they had pounded out five miles in the mud. They got a fighting man's tour of the entire reeling Federal line. They had declared to forgetful history that freedom was not a gift of the kind white Federals, but for black men, a thing bloody earned.

The night was clear and cold. I slept in my A-frame in camp and switched sides in the morning.

Battle of Nashville Reenactment, Morning Action

After crossing the field at Franklin, we passed along the Clerburn road, made a rest stop (dutifully taped by video post, I'm the one remaining in formation whose bodily functions will be lost to posterity) and crossed a great green field lavish in chilly clover. The morning sun lit it up, fresh and clean like nothing we wore or carried. A squadron of Cavalry passed on our right, over and against the green clover. Two mounted guns pulled after them. A refugee buggy rolled past, the thin red spokes of its wheels flashing across the verdant field.

We were all moving, concentrating, a vast federal army. It was Sunday and we were on the way to Church at the Nashville Battlefield.

Answer: Then men fought in neat rows because organization, concentration, control and communication are the source of the power of a 19th. Century army. Once scattered, the men are lost. The USCT cannot fight from flank to flank if they do not stay together. The 49th. NC cannot arrive at the battle intact if the man falling out with a heavy bladder becomes a straggler lost in a vast army. We must move together, stop together and stay together if we are to fight together.

We crested a hill, found the enemy had already said its prayers and there would be no time for ours. We sent out skirmishers, a time the men fight spread out, but still in a organized formation. Johnny wouldn't come down from his works. We pulled our skirmishers back, into the line. Johnny put his skirmishers out. We went back into column, double quicked down the hill, across a culvert and back into line with the creek at our backs.

Johnny moved left, we moved left. Johnny moved left some more. So did we. Behind us, the culvert grew distant and the creek deeper. Then, when we were where he wanted us, Johnny came down from his pretty hill, rebel yell echoing in the valley. We advanced, dressed began firing and fell back. Our line was intact and we were doing pretty well. We knew the whole Federal army was on the way. We had seen the cavalry and the guns draw past us on the road. We had a vast line 150 men long and two ranks deep, more than you seen on either side on the average reenacting weekend in a cow pasture where Shiloh looks just like Antietam and six months latter the battles all seem the same.

We knew the cavalry would come over the hill and save us any time. We would be cheered by the blare of their bugles and the rumble of the mounted guns. A great Federal host would follow them and we would retire, our lines in good order to finish the job that afternoon.

The cavalry did not come. The artillery was nowhere to be found. The only weapon we had was the line and it's organized musket fire.

The men surging down the hill, their line growing ragged and dressing on the run was composed of none other than my pards in my own Palmetto Battalion. My Great Great Grandfather William E. Finklea might have been rolling over in his grave because I was wearing blue, but the namesake of his unit had arrived to exact his revenge. The chances were at least 15 to one against it, but destiny was General at Nashville that morning.

The 49th. NC and friends were doing pretty well as we fell back across the creek and into line. Destiny looked at William E. Finklea in heaven and asked, "what should I do?" The veteran of Chichamauga answered, "take them by both flanks, smash them and roll up their line." You see, youthful rebellion and harsh discipline have a long tradition in my family.

That is what they did. Johnny called for reenforcements and two Battalions came down from the works, locking on to the Palmetto Battalion's flanks faster than we could get around them. It was now three to one. We discovered our destiny was not to be the wagon train saved by the Cavalry in the old westerns at the end of the movie, but to be the hapless settlers sacrificed to get the audience's blood up against the Indians at its beginning.

I got knocked down. Mike Russo, with William Finklea whispering in his ear, bayonetted me with glee.

Answer: The men fought in neat rows because the line is an unlimited geometric formation, it can organize growth on either end, becoming vaster and more powerful, and then swiftly do its job.

We commenced a flanking march, filled our canteens and went into a lovely copse of trees. We sniped a bit, sent our surgeon out to parley. When the johnnies spit him back at us he had seen the inside of their lines and discovered its weak point, further out on the Rebel left.

It had been a good morning, but the lack of prayer and religion on the Sabbath made me sad. The sniping and sharpshooting died down, we nibbled out of our haversacks and rested quiet until the Chaplain of the 49th., who had marched with us, selected that little sunny grove on the Battlefield for his church. As the cool breeze moved through the grass and leaves, he led us in prayer. He gave us the word of God and made the place holy for a time. He resisted the temptation to reenact religion, and gave us an honest, contemporary message from his heart and personal experience. We concluded with prayer and Amazing Grace. To many of us having Church on Sunday is a priority. I am no perfect Christian, but I regret any Sunday without a gathering of souls.

Charge of the 13th. USCT & Federal Infantry

I walked down and across the field, passing an advanced picket of the Rebel army. They were three men in a little hole crouched behind a palmful of abatis. They had a grand view of the five thousand Federal Soldiers forming up to meet them. They had no line to comfort them, to protect their flanks.

My journey to the USCT took me across the entire field and gave this private a General's view of the great moment of the decade's greatest event.

For those who did not see it, I will describe what I can.

The field was half a mile from end to end, a pristine valley of rolling green. The crowded rebel works crowned a hill on their left and ran down and across the far side of the valley. The bands of the rebel army behind played all their tunes to steel Southern courage and the music carried distinct across the land. Their was breeze enough to make silk and bunting magnificent in the wind. Battalion after Battalion of Federal Infantry was stacked up in column of companies.

Answer: The men fought in neat lines, two ranks deep because such a line can preserve its organization and direct its fire. The veterans in the back manage and hold the line just at they did in the legions of Rome.

As I walked across the Federal Front, (pausing for those tourists who will unfortunately now possess photographic proof that some Federal Privates really need a diet and more exercise.) I beheld the greatest assembly of Federal soldiers since the war's end. This was the second largest Civil War reenactment ever held. It was the largest Federal reenactment army ever assembled. Across the valley, the Confederates who saw it said it was thrilling to be so many in gray, so outnumbered by vaster ranks of blue.

I found the USCT, but the members of the 54th. I knew had been forced home early by car trouble. The officers were suspicious. They didn't know me, even the enlisted men recognized me only as a rebel who had wandered out of the dark for a brief visit at their campfire the previous evening. Every serious problem in reenacting I have witnessed began with a last minute walk-on from nowhere. Eventually, because I told them about Camp Chase, they took me on as a file closer. It wasn't historically correct, but to write about it, you have to be there and I had come to describe the charge of the 13th. USCT at the Battle of Nashville. They cooly took me in and watched me closely.

There was a disturbance in Co. B, behind me. I was sure I was about to be ejected by an authenticity maven who would rather be rid of a white file closer than see his unit described in Camp Chase Gazette, but it was the sole surviving member of Co. I. He hails from Macon, GA and never makes the 150 mile drive to a meeting. We didn't know each other real well, hadn't fought together and barely recognized each other, but we embraced like men who have shared a woman. He fell in next to me.

As file closer, I stood in the shadow of the greatest reenactor soldier I had ever seen, the Six Foot, five inch color bearer of the 13th. USCT. His massive hands gripped the staff of their glorious silk flag as it shook its golden lettering in the wind, "from the colored ladies of Murfreesboro." It was a flag once found stomped and soiled in the mud among heaps of dead black soldiers. It was a flag that touched the ground when no living hand survived to hold it, which had grown filthy in the mud of Tennessee beneath the boots of two armies engaged in a race to kill each other. It was a race the 13th. USCT lost because brave dead men cannot fight any longer, because the line no matter how well arrayed, exists to fight and to die.

"Today" he said, "the USCT will not die, remember Ft. Pillow."

The Federal artillery opened, thundered across a half mile line. The cavalry went in, all blue in endless column and engaged, four hundred horses pounding across the green grass. The skirmishers disappeared in the haze, I am too nearsighted to tell you how they got back. Somewhere on that field, the tiny Confederate picket post I had passed had either run, been captured or died.

Then there was a pause and the rattle of drums up and down the line. The swords of the officers were unsheathed in the bright sunlight of a Sunday afternoon on a perfect day in middle Tennessee where Nine thousand men were ready for the culmination of two years planning and tens of thousands of hours of volunteer labor. It was a moment to remember on your dying day. It was the advance of the Federal Infantry.

The columns streamed down the hills, the lash of orders maintaining the dress. The columns unfolded into lines. The field music cut through the din. The electric power of a great army raced back and forth along the line, voltage crashing across the shoulder contact, man to man. Everywhere there were cheers for the USCT, for the union, for America.

And the rebels drew up behind their works in cheering resistance and raised their St. Andrews Cross to the wind and if a man had stepped forward and demanded a check for a thousand dollars to be there, I would have written it. We came down, great waves of blue beneath the flag of our country, a flag I was born too blind to fight for any way but this.

We crashed over the rebel lines and the great linear structure of the army, which had closed its fist in drill and drawn back its muscle in the charge slammed against the rebel line. They tell me that on the surrounding hills the crowd drew its breath.

We fell back. The massive Federal army reorganized in sections, but the great line was sacrificed to the energies of the enemy and never appeared again. We struggled hand to hand, trying not to step on each other's feet. The USCT flag bearer stepped on mine, all six and a half feet of him. For an instant I held up the man who carried the flag of the United States. I limped through the rest of the battle. We charged a few times, reformed, fired when we got the chance and surged forward again. A rumor has circulated that the flag bearer of the USCT was injured, but nobody I saw touched the giant who stood on my foot.

The rebel army held for an honorable time, then disintegrated. I wish we had road and space enough to reenact the rout, but the battle ended.

The USCT marched out in good and proud order, to the cheers of blue and gray, reforming its line again.

Conclusion