BATTLE OP FRANKLIN.

95

and the air had been still and hazy. The smoke of thebattle did not rise or drift away, but settled on the field ina thick cloud, obscuring the vision far more than common.It was said that this had led to the mistake, on Hood’spart, of supposing that his first advantage at the centre wasmuch greater than in fact it was, and resulted in greater de-struction to the Confederate troops, by repeated assaultsafter all real chance of success was gone.

The Confederate accounts of the condition of the field nextmorning are full of tragic interest. Before daybreak it waslearned that the National lines were empty, and the plain wascovered with torchbearers seeking their comrades and friends.Colonel Stafford was found in the ditch General Strahl andhe had so stubbornly held. The dead lay literally in a pileabout him. They had fallen about his legs and behind him,till when he at last received a fatal shot, he did not whollyfall, but was found stiffened in death and partly upright,seeming still to command the ghastly line of his comradeslying beneath the parapet. The color-bearer of the Forty-first Tennessee had fallen between the two lines of breast-works, but neither friend nor foe had been able to reach theflag till it was hidden by the night, and in the morning itwas found where it dropped . 1

But even civil war rarely furnishes so sad a story as thatwhich the Carter family have to tell. The house was occu-pied by an elderly man and his two daughters. Theirpresence during the day had been respected and had kepttheir property from unnecessary disturbance, and the daywas so far gone that they thought there was no need to leavetheir home. The battle, when it came, broke upon them sosuddenly that they did not dare to leave, and they took

Sergeant-Major Cunningham’s pamphlet.