The Decisive Battle of Nashville

As he marched to the sea in the fall of 1864, General William T. Sherman brushed aside the slight Confederate opposition, cutting a swath through the heard of Georgia fifty miles wide. Far to his rear, with the hopes of the South riding on his every move, General John Bell Hood, commanding general of the Army of Tennessee, was marching his way northward in the hope of recapturing Tennessee and Kentucky. If Hood had been successful, Sherman’s march would bear but slight resemblance to a military genius. But Hood’s plan to revive the Confederacy’s chances of victory were crushed during the battle of the war, according to Stanley F. Horn.

In this absorbing account of the battle, first published in 1956, Horn devotes much attention to a detailed summary of the two-day struggle, employing the points of view of both Union and Confederate commanders as well as of the soldiers who took part in the fighting. The battle was so conclusive that none of importance was fought afterwards. As a result, Horn insists, the fate of the Confederacy was sealed and the last hope for victory extinguished.

Stanley F. Horn, who died in 1980, was also the author of The Army of Tennessee and Invisible Empire: The Story of the Ku Klux Klan, 1866-1871.