Desired scans : Rank and File supplements Harpoon 3 & 4 supplements Force on Force supplements Hind Commander At Close Quarters War and Conquest
Jason Mitchell
15th December in military history:
533 – Vandalic War: Byzantine general Belisarius defeats the Vandals, commanded by King Gelimer, at the Battle of Tricamarum. 1161 – Jin–Song wars: Military officers conspire against Emperor Hailing of the Jin dynasty after a military defeat at the Battle of Caishi, and assassinate the emperor at his camp. 1467 – Stephen III of Moldavia defeats Matthias Corvinus of Hungary, with the latter being injured thrice, at the Battle of Baia. 1778 – American Revolutionary War: British and French fleets clash in the Battle of St. Lucia. 1864 – American Civil War: Battle of Nashville: Union forces under George Thomas almost completely destroy the Army of Tennessee under John Hood. 1890 – Hunkpapa Lakota leader Sitting Bull is killed on Standing Rock Indian Reservation, leading to the Wounded Knee Massacre. 1914 – World War I: The Serbian Army recaptures Belgrade from the invading Austro-Hungarian Army. 1917 – World War I: An armistice between Russia and the Central Powers is signed. 1942 – World War II: The Battle of Mount Austen, the Galloping Horse, and the Sea Horse begins during the Guadalcanal Campaign. 1943 – World War II: The Battle of Arawe begins during the New Britain Campaign. 1960 – King Mahendra of Nepal suspends the country's constitution, dissolves parliament, dismisses the cabinet, and imposes direct rule. 1981 – A suicide car bombing targeting the Iraqi embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, levels the embassy and kills 61 people, including Iraq's ambassador to Lebanon. The attack is considered the first modern suicide bombing. 2005 – Introduction of the Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor into USAF active service. 2006 – First flight of the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II.
Anthony Cruz
It is 152 years since the Battle of Nashville, a two-day battle that represented the end of large-scale fighting in the Western Theater of the American Civil War. It was fought between the Confederate Army of Tennessee under Lieutenant General John Bell Hood and Federal forces under Major General George H. Thomas. In one of the largest victories achieved by the Union during the war, Thomas routed Hood's army, largely destroying it as an effective fighting force.
The battle was the finale in a disastrous year for Hood’s forces. The rebels lost a long summer campaign for Atlanta, Georgia, in September 1864 when Hood abandoned the city to the army of William T. Sherman. Hood then took his diminished force north into Tennessee. He hoped to draw Sherman out of the Deep South, but Sherman had enough troops to split his force and send part of it to chase Hood into Tennessee. Sherman airily indicated that this was exactly what he wanted and that if Hood "continues to march North, all the way to Ohio, I will supply him with rations."
At Spring Hill, Tennessee, the Confederates allowed a Union division to escape from Columbia and pass by them unmolested to Franklin, a small town south of Nashville. Enraged over this missed opportunity, Hood ordered futile frontal assaults at Franklin against entrenched Federals, many of whom were armed with repeating rifles. The fierce, five-hour Battle of Franklin on November 30 decimated his force and cost him a division commander and four brigadier generals. Undeterred, he continued on and besieged Thomas’ larger force at Nashville.
There, Hood constructed works along a five-mile-long line south of the city. Between the 8,000 men lost at Franklin and those detached under Nathan Bedford Forrest, who had been sent to capture Murfreesboro, Hood’s army was down to about 20,000 men. He hoped to draw Thomas into attacking him. After repulsing those attacks, Hood reasoned, he would counterattack and take the city.
Julian Cruz
Thomas had 70,000 men, over 55,000 of which he planned to use as maneuver troops. A severe ice storm halted operations until December 15. As the two sides glared at each other from their ice-bound entrenchments, Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant, unaware of the severity of the weather conditions, repeatedly sent telegrams from the East urging Thomas to move out of his works and attack the enemy. Thomas had been nicknamed "Old Slow-trot" before the war, when he restrained West Point cadets from galloping their horses. Grant referred to him by that old nickname because he felt Thomas was too slow in his movements in the field. When no action occurred in response to his telegrams, Grant sent an officer to observe the situation; that officer also carried an order relieving Thomas of command.
While Grant’s emissary was still on a Tennessee-bound train, the weather broke. Union troops moved out of their defenses, southeast along the Murfreesboro Road to assail and pin the Confederate right, and west along and between the Charlotte and Harding pikes. The lead troops on the Murfreesboro Road were inexperienced soldiers of the United States Colored Troops. They took shelter from Confederate rifle fire in a railroad cut, only to be enfiladed and cut to pieces by a previously unseen artillery battery. One Confederate soldier wrote disgustedly, "Where were those men’s officers? I did not see a single white body on that field." Other Federal troops of Maj. Gen. James Steedman’s command succeeded in keeping the Confederate right pinned, to prevent reinforcements against the main attack.
The westward movement went almost exactly according to Thomas’ plan. After driving off a small force west of town, the Federals swung southeast as if on a hinge. They outflanked a group of Confederate redoubts and drove the Rebels south. When morning dawned on the second day, the over-extended Confederate line had been compressed into roughly the shape of an upside-down U.
James Butler
The western bend in the line was anchored on the heights of Shy’s Hill, the eastern bend atop the slopes of Peach Orchard (Overton’s) Hill. Federal assaults against the Hill, which had to be made over the tops of trees that the Confederates had felled on the slopes, met tremendous fire from the 2,000 infantrymen and supporting artillery of Lt. Gen. Steven D. Lee’s Corps. Some 6,000 Federals, including two divisions of USCT, made valiant attempts against the position but were repulsed. So many Union soldiers died on the slopes that it was said a person could walk from the top of the hill to the bottom without touching the ground.
Shy’s Hill was a different story. Around 4:00 p.m., two Union corps plus cavalry, over 40,000 men in all, attacked 5,000 under Maj. Gen. William Bate. Confederate artillery had been positioned in such a way that once the advancing Federals reached a certain point on the slope, the guns could not fire at them. The blue line swept over the crest, capturing most of the defenders.
The hill became known as Shy’s Hill after the battle. Confederate Colonel William Shy, of Franklin, was among the defenders. His body was later found on the hill, bayoneted to a tree, a bullet hole in his forehead. Controversy still continues over which side was actually responsible.
With the Shy’s Hill anchor gone, the rest of Hood’s line collapsed and fled toward Franklin. Darkness and exhaustion prevented effective pursuit, and the rag-tag remnants of the Army of Tennessee continued on to Tupelo, Mississippi, where Hood resigned his command. For his overwhelming victory, Thomas became one of only 13 officers to receive the Thanks of Congress in the war and was promoted from brigadier general in the regular U.S. Army to major general, U.S. Army.
Union losses in the fighting at Nashville numbered 387 killed, 2,558 wounded, and 112 captured/missing, while Hood lost around 1,500 killed and wounded as well as around 4,500 captured/missing.
Wyatt Hughes
The Battle of Nashville marked the effective end of the Army of Tennessee. Historian David Eicher remarked, "If Hood mortally wounded his army at Franklin, he would kill it two weeks later at Nashville." Although Hood blamed the entire debacle on his subordinates and the soldiers themselves, his career was over. He retreated with his army to Tupelo, Mississippi, resigned on January 13, 1865, and was not given another field command.
But the drama of the battle continued into the next century. On Christmas Eve 1977 a headless body was discovered next to a newly opened grave in Williamson County, Tennessee. The head was found nearby. The body was clothed in what appeared to be a tuxedo. The matter was referred to the state medical examiner who determined that this was a homicide, that the victim was a white male, 5' 11" tall, weighing 173 lbs., and approximately 26 years of age. The medical examiner further determined that the cause of death was a large caliber bullet wound to the head, and that the man had been dead for 6 to 12 months. Everything but the time of death was correct; the body was that of Colonel Shy, who had died defending the hill bearing his name 113 years before. The newly opened grave was his, and he had apparently been exhumed by grave robbers in search of Civil War collectibles. The remarkable state of preservation was due to the fact that Colonel Shy had been buried in a sealed cast iron coffin (also found nearby) and had been embalmed with a fluid heavily laced with arsenic.
Colonel Shy was reinterred with appropriate military honors. The cast iron coffin is on display at the Carter House in Franklin.
Jace Carter
Nashville is a classic example of a late-ACW meatgrinder, where the battles had begun to prefigure the trench assaults of later years. It is a situation where strategic maneuver is all-important, and would be best played at the divisional level (6mm/10mm) to properly simulate this. (The Polemos rules or Longstreet are well suited for it.) The Western Theatre doesn't get as much attention as the Eastern, and this is one of its main battles. Also it's yet another good example of how personalities were such an issue among the leadership of the ACW.
