Thanks to surviving eyewitness accounts of numerous Franklin residents and civilians we can have a sense of what they thought and experienced about the battle. I took numerous actual eyewitness accounts and created the following word cloud. It’s quite revealing.
From 1993 reprint book description on Amazon:
When John Bell Hood entered into the services of the Confederate Army, he was 29 years old, a handsome man and courageous soldier, loyal to the ideal of Confederate Independence and eager to fight for it. He led his men bravely into the battles of Second Manassas, Gaines’s Mill, Sharpsburg, Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, and Chickamauga. He rose fast, attaining the temporary rank of full general, only to fall faster. Hood emerged from the war with his left arm shattered and uselss, his right leg missing, his face aged far beyond his 33 years, and with his military reputation in disgrace. Blamed by contemporaries for contributing to the defeat of his beloved Confederacy, Hood struggled to refute their accusations. His most vehement critic, General Johnston, charged Hood with insubordination while serving under him and, after succeeding him in command, of recklessly leading Confederate troops to their “slaughter” and “useless butchery.” Sherman, too, in his Memoirs,took a harsh view of Hood. Born of controversy, Advance and Retreat is of course a highly controversial book. It is also full of invaluable information and insights into the retreat from Dalton in early 1864, the fighting around Atlanta, and the disastrous Tennessee Campaign in winter of that year. Far from being a careful, sober, objective account, this book is the passionate, bitter attempt of a soldier to rebut history’s judgment of himself as general and man.
Read the full transcript in Advance & Retreat pertaining to the Franklin action.
Again, using the Worlde tool, one can construct a word cloud image based on numerous letters I collected from soldiers and their loved-ones immediately after the Battle of Franklin. What was on their minds?
What was on the minds of the Union Generals George H. Thomas and John M. Scofield within hours of the start of the Battle of Franklin and during the day of the actual action?
Using the Wordle tool we know. I used the texts of the telegrams sent between the two Union Generals to create this word cloud.
Many newspapers covered the story of the Battle of Franklin in early December 1864. By examining the NYT’s coverage from December 2nd-6th, the following word cloud shows what the paper emphasized.
The Battle of Franklin, November 30, 1864 