Benson J. Lossing, Pictorial Field Book of the Civil War. Volume 3.

[423] His accomplished wife was a most active patriot during the war. Dr. Cliffe's was almost the only Union family in Franklin. He was compelled to flee

View on the battle-ground at Franklin.

for his life, at one time, but his patriotic wife remained and served the country and its cause nobly, in various ways. She kept up a continual communication with the Union commanders at Nashville, often going thither in person with important information. On such occasions she rode an old blind mare, and traveled along unfrequented ways. She was several times arrested on suspicion of being an “enemy to the Confederacy,” but proof was always wanting. She was once in Forrest's custody; and at one time she was confined a week at Bragg's Headquarters in Murfreesboroa, where she was paroled to report when called for, to be sent to Atlanta. Rosecrans sent Bragg in that direction so suddenly that he seems to have forgotten Mrs. Cliffe. Under every circumstance of peril, disdain and weariness, that noble woman stood firm in her allegiance to the Government and to Christian duty; and by her manifold public services, and labors and sacrifices for the comfort of the sick, and wounded, and dying Union soldiers, she won an unfading chaplet of honor and gratitude from her countrymen, which ought not to be unnoticed by the chronicler. That Christian matron, Mrs. V. C. Cliffe, belongs to the glorious army of patriotic women who gave their services to their imperiled country, and should never be forgotten.

When General Schofield reached Nashville,

Dec. 1, 1864.

General A. J. Smith had arrived, with his two divisions, from Missouri, and by noon that day, the forces in the vicinity were put in battle array in an irregular semicircular line upon the hills around the city, on the southern side of the Cumberland River. General A. J. Smith's troops (detachment of the Army of the Tennessee) were on the right, resting on the river; the Fourth Corps--commanded by General T. J. Wood, in the absence of the wounded Stanley —— in the center; and the Twenty-third Corps, under General J. M. Schofield, on the left, also resting on the Cumberland. General Steedman had been called up from Chattanooga, with detachments of Sherman's army, and a brigade of negro troops under Colonel Thompson, in all five thousand men; and these were posted on the left of Schofield, to supply the place of the cavalry under Wilson, which was stationed at Edgefield, on the north side of the Cumberland. To these were added the troops composing the