Freedom by the Sword - US Army Center Of Military History

Middle Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia, 1863–1865 289
did not kill all, or even most, of the prisoners on the Nashville and Chattanooga
Railroad that day. 79
Still, rumors and reports of murdered prisoners continued to reach the regiments
as soldiers escaped and made their way back to Union garrisons. “I have
learned of the death of some more of my boys,” 2d Lt. Morris S. Hall of the 44th
USCI told his sister late in the winter. “I think some twelve have already died. . . .
Oh how terribly some of those men have suffered and without cause. One the last
I heard from him escaped, was recaptured, and then shot down in cold blood. . . . I
can not but feel sad when I think of it. Will not a just God avenge their wrongs[?]”
Hall decided to withdraw the resignation he had submitted after being passed over
for promotion. “I have become attached to my men and the feeling that I was in the
path of duty has always actuated me,” he explained. 80
By the time Colonel Thompson’s brigade of U.S. Colored Troops reached
Nashville, Steedman’s regiments were already there. Thompson’s force, which
had been guarding the Nashville and Northwestern Railroad, did not arrive until
7 December. While Johnson’s trainload of men came under attack by Forrest’s
cavalry southeast of Nashville on 2 December, Thompson’s two thousand troops
found their approach to the city blocked by part of Hood’s army and had to make a
thirty-mile detour by way of Clarksville. “They did some heavy marching but left
no stragglers,” Colonel Mussey noted when they reached Nashville. Thompson
reported to Steedman, and his three regiments joined the rest of the general’s command
on the southeast outskirts of the city. 81
For the next few days, they dug. Their trenches became part of the federal
army’s two lines of defense outside Nashville. The inner line lay on the south and
west, just outside the city itself. The outer, about a mile beyond, extended across
the peninsula formed by a bend in the Cumberland River on which Nashville
stood. Both lines ran along the hills that ringed the city and faced the Confederate
works, which lay a mile and more beyond the Union outer line. In the section held
by Steedman’s command, the defenses consisted of “a breast-work of rails and
earth with a light palisade in front,” as one regimental commander described them.
The troops worked unceasingly to improve the position. “This has been a clear,
warm day,” Chaplain Elgin of the 14th USCI recorded on Sunday, 4 December,
“but its sacred hours have all been spent in building defenses, thus preventing any
services.” 82
Besides digging, Steedman’s troops carried out small offensive operations
against the nearest Confederates. On 5 December, Colonel Morgan’s brigade—the
14th, 16th, 17th, and 44th USCIs and three companies of the 18th USCI—and two
understrength white regiments moved against the enemy opposite their position,
79 Asst Surgeon C. W. Oleson to 1st Lt F. McNeil, 9 Dec 1864, 14th USCI, Entry 57C, RG 94,
NA; Johnson to Adj Gen USA, 2 Jan 1865; 14th and 44th USCIs, Regimental Books, RG 94, NA.
80 M. S. Hall to Dear Sister Emma, 16 Mar 1865, M. S. Hall Papers, Bentley Library, University
of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
81 OR, ser. 1, vol. 45, pt. 1, p. 503, and pt. 2, p. 164; Col R. D. Mussey to Capt C. P. Brown, 12
Dec 64 (quotation), Entry 1141, pt. 1, RG 393, NA; NA M594, roll 215, 100th USCI.
82 OR, ser. 1, vol. 45, pt. 1, pp. 535 (“a breast-work”), 548, and pt. 2, pp. 32–33; Elgin Jnl, 4 Dec
1864 (“This has been”); Jacob D. Cox, The March to the Sea: Franklin and Nashville (New York:
Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1882), p. 109, map.