Every year on the Sunday before the anniversary of the Battle of Franklin, two groups organize re-enactment marches that end at the Carter House.
This Sunday, a couple of days before 152 years pass since the Nov. 30, 1864 battle, two camps- a Confederate and a Union- will march out around 4 p.m.
For the past 20 years, the Sons of Confederate Veterans have met at Winstead Hill, where Confederate Gen. John Bell Hood’s Army of Tennessee mustered on that afternoon. From there, the four of five dozen re-enactors march north toward Carter House.
Meanwhile, for the past six years, in a more recent organizing by the Sons of Union Veterans, a lesser number of Union soldiers gather at what is now Pinkerton Park but used to be Fort Granger. Union Maj. Gen. John Schofield, who had his Army of the Ohio set up in a defensive ring south around Franklin, met Hood’s assault around sundown. The nexus of the thing, on Columbia Pike- the only weakness in the Union line-, was Carter House. The Union re-enactors will march, also starting at 4 p.m., from Pinkerton to Carter House.
Sam Gant, 83, is one of those Union re-enactors. His story reminds one how much closer the Civil War is than it feels, much of the time.
“My grandfather was a Union soldier and I have about 15 collateral ancestors in the Union army,” he said. “Believe it or not, my mother’s half brother died in the Civil War.”
He invites any and all to come watch the march, when both sides meet at Carter House, on Sunday evening.
