Nashville - Day 2

Today was Civil War history day. Margaret will elaborate. The photos are from the Carnton Plantation. Photo 1 is the garden and the house side. Photo 2 is the Confederate cemetery - the largest privately owned and maintained cemetery in the country. The story behind all this is hard to synopsize, that's why I'm leaving the telling to Margaret!

I read about this episode in our history from "Widow of the South," a story about this event and those who lived it. The Carnton plantation was quite a prosperous one and the family wealthy and prestegious. On the afternoon of Nov. 30, 1864, the mistress of the plantation, Carrie McGavock watch the advance of the Confederate line come toward the house, walk past on all sides, and advance to meet the entrenched Union Army near Franklin, TN, south of Nashville. The battle lasted five hours. Nearly 1/3 of the Army from Tenn. died. Almost 9,500 soldiers, Union and Confederate, died, were wounded, captured or were never heard of again.

Carnton, less than a mile from the line, became a Confederate field hospital. When the house could hold no more, the porches and yard were filled with the wounded and dead. The blood stains still darken the wooden floors.

The Confederate Army lost a horrible battle that day, and with it many of their best officers. Our guide, a historian, said that the Union line used 400 wagon-loads of cannon balls/ammunition. I can't imagine. And the firing was point blank. It was brutal.

From all this horror, the McGavock's and the citizens of the area buried the dead, Union and Confederate. The Union disinterred their dead transporting the bodies to the North. The survivors help identify their fallen comrades and they were buried on the McGavock's land, grouped in death by state. Florida had 4, GA 69, Tenn 230 -- I don't remember the other numbers, plus many they would name or identify with an outfit.

Day 2 part b, as I posted this before I was ready.

We took a guided tour of the home. It is lovely, this building, constructed in 1826 is four bricks wide on the outer walls, 3-wide on the inner. Plus the main hall/gallery, there are four 20 x 20 rooms on each floor (basement of 7 feet height, floor one: the parlor, dining room, family sitting room and plantation office; floor two: four bedrooms with a smaller room of undetermined use; and an attic. Each room had a fireplace and fine old windows on the north and south sides, none at the ends except at the attic level. There were original items to the house and period items as well. There were floor cloths in the hall and dining room, bare wood in some rooms, carpet in others. Everything was exquisite.

The guide was eloquent and informative, himself a historian who had written a book about the battle. His retelling of the scope and development of the battle was detailed, but never boring, and he took pains to bring it home to us in comparisons we could understand. For instance, if you stopped in Franklin at Starbucks for a cup of joe after the tour, you would never know that bodies of the dead and wounded had been laid in rows up and down the street. Certainly, not a topic of conversation over one's latte.

The cemetery was quiet and as orderly as a parade drill, meticulously kept, cool under the trees. It was a moving experience.