The Battle of Franklin: When the Devil Had Full Possession of the Earth

With firsthand accounts, letters and diary entries from the Carter House Archives, local historian James R. Knight paints a vivid picture of the gruesome Battle of Franklin.

In late November 1864, the last Southern army east of the Mississippi that was still free to maneuver started out from northern Alabama on the Confederacy's last offensive. John Bell Hood and his Army of Tennessee had dreams of capturing Nashville and marching on to the Ohio River, but a small Union force under Hood's old West Point roommate stood between him and the state capital. In a desperate attempt to smash John Schofield's line at Franklin, Hood threw most of his men against the Union works, centered on the house of a family named Carter, and lost 30 percent of his attacking force in one afternoon, crippling his army and setting it up for a knockout blow at Nashville two weeks later.

James R. Knight is a graduate of Harding University, 1967. He spent five years as a pilot in the United States Air Force and thirty-one years as a pilot for Federal Express, the last twenty years as a DC-10 captain. In the early '90s, he began researching a historical incident in his hometown and wrote an article that was published in the Arkansas Historical Quarterly. In 2003, Eakin Press published his biography of Bonnie and Clyde titled Bonnie and Clyde: A 21st Century Update. In 2007, he published the story and correspondence of a Confederate cavalryman titled Letters to Anna. He retired from Federal Express in 2004 and lives in Franklin, Tennessee, where he works part time as a guide at the Carter House, a local Civil War historic site. He and his wife Judy have three children and six grandchildren.