Nashville 1864

A highly illustrated account of the often-overlooked Franklin–Nashville campaign during the American Civil War between the Confederate Army of Tennessee and the Union Army of Cumberland, which could have changed the result of the whole conflict.

In September 1864, the Confederate army abandoned Atlanta and were on the verge of being driven out of the critical state of Tennessee. In an attempt to regain the initiative, John Bell Hood launched an attack on Union General Sherman’s supply lines, before pushing north in an attempt to retake Tennessee’s capital Nashville.

Alongside maps and artwork, this book examines the three-month campaign that followed, one that confounded the expectations of both sides. Instead of fighting Sherman’s Union Army of the Tennessee, the Confederates found themselves fighting an older and more traditional enemy: the Army of the Cumberland. This was led by George R. Thomas, an unflappable general temperamentally different than either the mercurial Hood or Sherman.

The resulting campaign was both critical and ignored, despite the fact that for eleven weeks the fate of the Civil War was held in the balance.