The Battle of Nashville, fought in December 1864, was one of the most important points in the US Civil War, destroying an entire Confederate Army and ending the war in what was then the western United States. Yet today the battle has been largely forgotten, and most of the battlefield itself has been covered with suburbia. Only a few small portions of the battlefield remain.
Here is a photo-tour of the battle.
In 1862, the Union Army captured the Confederate stronghold at Fort Donelson, near Nashville TN. This left the city essentially undefended, and a flotilla of Union Navy ships sailed up the Cumberland River, landed in Nashville, and accepted the city's surrender.
Nashville was the first Confederate capitol to be captured by the Union. The State Capitol Building was turned into the Union Army headquarters and a supply depot.
To defend the captured city, the Union troops built a ring of forts around the city. The largest of these was Fort Negley, just to the south.
In 1864, the Confederate General Hood, in command of the Army of Tennessee, moved up from Georgia, where he had been unsuccessfully opposing the Union General Sherman. He hoped that by cutting off Sherman's supply lines he would force the Union to withdraw from Atlanta, and also hoped he could lure the army of Union General Thomas, which was garrisoned in Nashville, out into an open battle where it could be attacked and destroyed. As the Army of Tennessee approached Nashville, the Union tried to send a fleet of gunboats up the Cumberland River--they were blocked for a time by a Confederate cannon battery here at Kelley's Point.
The Confederates formed a defensive line south of the city and waited. On the left end of his lines were a series of five Redoubts (small fortified cannon positions). Hood hoped that Thomas would attack his lines, be beaten back, and he could then launch an assault on the battered Union forces to take Nashville.
For several days the weather was bad, preventing any action. On December 15, it cleared, and the battle was begun when cannons from Fort Negley opened up onto the Confederate lines.
When the Union forces attacked, they captured the Confederate redoubts and forced Hood to retreat.
Hood formed a new defensive line a few miles away. This time, his left flank was anchored by a force of cannon and infantry on Shy's Hill.
On the afternoon of December 16, a group of Union infantry from the Minnesota Regiment charged up Shys Hill. They broke through the Confederate lines, turned around behind Hood's lines, and rolled up the entire army. The Army of Tennessee collapsed, much of it was killed or captured, and the remnants retreated all the way to Mississippi, where General Hood resigned his command. It was the most crushing defeat suffered by the Confederates during the war.