FALLEN CARTRIDGES--FALLEN MEN
A new speaker in a long, grayish-brown overcoat stepped forward.
"It was nothing but pure murder what J. B. Hood did to these men buried here," he said. "They had no chance and he knew it."
"Over there," he continued, "We have some of our northern brothers in Union blue standing with us to take part in our remembrance of the men who fell here. After this morning’s ceremony, we’re going to have them all shot, but we really do appreciate their coming down here to be here with us and we extend to them our thanks."
The company of Confederate reenactors loaded their muskets and fired three volleys together in solemn salute. Smoke hung, even in the considerable breeze. Then the company bent low to pick up expended cartridges making a rattling sound that suggested a drum roll.
*
Near the center of the line at the Carter house and cotton gin, where the Columbia Turnpike passes right through the Union Breastworks to the burnt out bridge that had once crossed over into Franklin, the Confederates break through. Hand-to-hand fighting with bayonets ensues. For a spell, unsure Union muskets are silenced for fear of striking their own retreating men in the smoke and din of battle. Rows of Confederates are now pouring themselves and their fire into the Union trenches as fast as they can clamber in, set, shoot, and reload. When ammunition runs short, they gather up cartridges from the fallen. Captured cannon are swung around to face dislodged units of blue but never fire--they have no primers.
Union soldiers, staring into the muzzles of their own batteries, have no choice but to stay and fight or to be thrown into the Harpeth River behind them. But Yankee reinforcements arrive and the whole of the rebel incursion is pushed back out into the field of death. Drum beats signal fresh Confederate infantry swiftly advancing, but too slow to recover the opportunity now lost forever.
The battle continues past dark, then hush overtakes the abandoned artillery, smashed caissons, discarded muskets, and deserted breastworks, as the Union army retreats across makeshift pontoons rigged with planking stripped from nearby homes, leaving all in possession of a defeated Army of Tennessee.
*
The reenactors stood at attention as a moment of silence was observed. Taps was played. Then the speaker took up a guitar and slowly picked the melody of Dixie. He stood to dismiss the gathering.
"May the cries and moans of the widows and orphans of the Battle of Franklin forever rise to the ears of John Bell Hood where he sits on his perch in hell," was all he said before turning to walk away. The reenactors of the Confederate Army of Tennessee did not march back to the Carnton Plantation in formation, but rather slipped away from the assembly in small groups, chatting informally with their Union reenactor counterparts.
*
The morning of December 1st, 1864--a smoky pall hangs over the battlefield at Franklin. General Cleburne’s body is found close up to the breastworks with a bullet through his heart. General Strahl has so many dead piled around him that he still stands upright, leading his men even in death. General Gist’s body is sprawled against the headlogs, his hand yet holding a sword which reaches over the breastworks.
Nearly a third of the Confederate force which takes part in the assault is no more. All are shot full of miniballs, ripped apart by cannon fire, or slashed by sword and bayonet, victims of thirteen successive ill-conceived charges on this ill-fated day. The wounded from both armies fill the Carnton Plantation.
***
In recent months, amid protests and a tourist boycott of the state, South Carolina pulled down the Confederate battle flag which had flown above its capitol ever since I set up my first skirmish between blue and gray as a boy. Even the Georgia state flag, incorporating its own Confederate battle emblem, had been banned from display at Atlanta’s ‘96 Olympics.
The day before the ceremony at the McGavock Confederate Cemetery in Franklin, I visited a gift shop at the Chickamauga National Battlefield in Georgia with a friend from Huntsville, Alabama. My friend showed me a small Confederate prayer book among the souvenirs and after a few minutes of further browsing, I purchased it.
'I was thinking of buying that prayer book myself," my friend said later.
"Why didn’t you?" I asked.
"I don’t know. Some people think anyone interested in anything Confederate like that is extreme."
I opened the booklet, first printed in Charleston, South Carolina in 1861, and read from its second entry, "A Prayer for Our Enemies."
...O God, we beseech Thee, forgive and pardon our enemies, and give us that measure of Thy grace that for their hatred we may love them; for their cursing we may bless them; for their injury we may do them good; and for their persecution we may pray for them. They have laid a net for our steps, and they have digged a pit before us; Lord, we desire not that they themselves should fall into the midst of these, but we beseech Thee keep us out of them, and deliver, establish, bless, and prosper us for Thy mercy’s sake in Christ Jesus our Savior...
And there at that battlefield cemetery in Franklin, Tennessee, I saw North and South together and all one country now.