Appearance of the Battle-field of Franklin.
The
Nashville correspondent of the Cincinnati
Commercial writes:
‘
"I lately passed over and examined the field where was fought, November 30, one of the fiercest and bloodiest battles, for the numbers engaged, of the whole war. The carnage among the rebels must have been fearful.
All along in front of the breastworks on which they charged, for several rods deep, the graves are clustered as thick as in the most populous
Potter's-field of the Old World.
As the rebels occupied the field after the fight, they had abundant leisure to bury their dead decently, hence there are none of those disgusting and revolting exhibitions that sometimes shock the beholder, but he cannot repress a feeling of unfeigned sadness at the thought that in the short space of four hours all these multitudes were slaughtered in a vain struggle to accomplish the command of a madman.
’
"The breastworks cross the
Franklin pike a right angle, and it was right down this road and on either side of it that the rebels charged in a solid phalanx five lines deep.
Behind the works lay the Twenty-third corps, the Third division to the left, the Second division to the right.
In front of them the destruction was far more terrible than elsewhere.
They occupied a sort of salient in the works, which projected forth and met the brunt of the attack like, great rock in the edge of the sea. The country is level and perfectly open, and the balls took full effect.
Our men were crowded so densely behind the works that those in the front did nothing but fire the pieces, which were loaded by their comrades in the rear.
It needs only that one should look at the abattis of brush which lay in front of them to learn what a deadly torrent of lead filled all the air. To use the homely comparison of one who helped in that day's work, 'It looks just as though it had been run through a
threshing machine,' and so it does.
A grove of small locusts just in the rear of our works wears such an appearance as it might if a visitation of hail had been followed by one of locusts, and after that each several and particular remaining shred of bark and limb picked off. The rebels buried their dead by regiments, in rows parallel to the road.
They made the graves about eighteen inches deep, and separated by a thin wall of earth.
Some regiments number as many as fifty killed outright.
The whole number of dead, according to their own confession, is about one thousand seven hundred and fifty.
The working party, detailed for the purpose, were occupied in their ghastly work five days and nights.
Each grave is marked by a little board, with the name, company and regiment carefully cut it."
