Franklin–Nashville Campaign

Battle context

The Franklin–Nashville campaign, conducted from September 18 to December 27, 1864, across Alabama, Tennessee, and northwestern Georgia, constituted one of the final major Confederate offensives in the Western Theater of the American Civil War. Confederate forces under Hood numbered 44,719 against a Union force of 65,501 under Thomas and Schofield. The campaign's casualty disparity was decisive: Confederate forces suffered 15,097 casualties against 6,598 Union losses, attrition the Confederacy could not sustain at this stage of the war. The series of engagements effectively destroyed Hood's Army of Tennessee as an offensive force, eliminating the principal Confederate field army in the Western Theater and removing any serious Confederate military threat to that region for the remainder of the war.