Bracken's Boys at Bloody Franklin
For many years after the Civil War, the men of the Sixteenth Kentucky Infantry would hold reunions, many of them in Maysville where four of the regiment’s companies were raised. As the years went by and the veterans of the Sixteenth became less in number, they combined their reunion with another locally raised unit, the Tenth Kentucky Cavalry, and welcomed veterans from other regiments as well. Attending the reunion on September 18, 1912 was Levi W. Hess, a member of the Sixteenth’s Company H. Hess had enlisted in October 1861, and was mustered into service with the Sixteenth on December 18th as a private. He served his full term of service, and then reenlisted as a veteran on the first day of 1864. He would muster out of the service on July 15, 1865 at Company Shops, North Carolina. After the war he moved to Lincoln, Illinois. After having made the journey to be once again with his comrades in blue, Hess died upon his return to Illinois, where he is buried in Elkhart Cemetery in Logan County. While in Maysville for the reunion he wrote a letter to the Maysville Daily Public Ledger about his remembrance of the bloody battle of Franklin, Tennessee:
THE BATTLE OF FRANKLIN, TENN.
Editor Public Ledger: I have traveled some hundreds of miles to attend the reunion of the Tenth Kentucky Cavalry and the Sixteenth Kentucky Infantry Regiments in the war between the states. As the Sixteenth was made up largely of Maysville boys, and the remnant of them were meeting in their home town, I would like to trespass a little upon your time and space and say a few things about “the Sixteenth Kentucky at Franklin.”
It was November 30th, 1864. The Sixteenth Kentucky was the last to leave Columbia at midnight of the 29th and marched out through a gap in the enemy’s line, reaching Spring Hill just before daylight and formed a part of the rear guard of Schofield’s Army, to Franklin, reaching the latter about noon on the 30th. Being the last troops in, we found the line of defense already formed behind a light line of breastworks. We marched through a gap on the Columbia Turnpike with the Twelfth Kentucky filed to the right, and the two regiments went into position in reserve some eighty yards in the rear of the other regiments of our brigade, the First, Third Division, Twenty-third Corps. The right of both sections of this brigade rested on the Columbia pike; the One-Hundred and Fourth Ohio on the front line, with the One Hundredth on its left; then the Eighth Tennessee extending to Casement’s Brigade. The Sixteenth Kentucky was sent to the pike directly in the rear of the One Hundredth and Fourth Ohio and the Twelfth Kentucky on its left.
As soon as this formation was made and a light line of defense thrown up by dogging a ditch two feet deep, throwing the dirt to the front, the next thing was to prepare a meal of sow belly, hard tack and coffee, for we had eaten little since the morning before, and, after this a sleep. But Hood did not intend us to rest long, The later had marched his army of seasoned Confederates through the gap in the hills bordering the Harpeth valley, and at its edge formed his divisions by brigade fronts, and, without taking the usual precaution of throwing out a skirmish line, began his advance on Schofield’s line, driving back two brigade that formed a post of observation; the latter crossing the main line directly in front of the Twelfth and Sixteenth Kentucky and scattered like dry leaves before an autumn wind. At this juncture the two right regiments in front of us gave way and marched back over our line, but when remonstrated with, broke. Our center was now pierced, and for the length of two full regiments was in possession of General Pat Cleburne’s Division, the best division command in Hood’s Army and a hard fighter, as we know, for we had met him before.
I omitted to say that a cotton gin stood a little East of the pike that pierced the line at the center. It stood directly between the One Hundred and Fourth Ohio and the Sixteenth Kentucky, and became one of the landmarks of that field.
The reserve line was commanded by Col. Sam White, who, just at an important moment, received a bad wound in the face and was unable to give a command. It was now our province to charge and take the front line and a section artillery as well, all in possession of Cleburne’s men, but no order came. But there was a man for the occasion, and for forty-eight years I have heard ringing in my ears the clear voice of Captain Henry D. Palmer of Company H, who stepped to the front and ordered, “Sixteenth Kentucky, forward, charge!” and were the last words he ever uttered, for in a few moments he had given up his young life that his country might live. At the word of command the Sixteenth Kentucky sprang forward for the charge, and the Twelfth, being soldiers, came up on the left, and both moved as one regiment to the objective point in our front, the enemy. In the charge the Sixteenth divided on the old cotton gin, six companies going West of it and four East of it. When those two regiments reached the front line Hood’s men were determined to hold on, for now they had our center broken and could turn and whip us in detail or drive us into the river and capture all who wouldn’t take water. It was a hand-to-hand struggle and lasted some twenty minutes, but at the end of that time Cleburne’s men were on the outside of the works or prisoners or dead.
Location of Sixteenth Kentucky at the Battle of Franklin.
I will not undertake to describe the scene, only to say that the Sixteenth re-captured the section of artillery lost at the beginning and it did good work, and at the embrasures in the line the dead were piled up nearly as high as the guns - like a wood chopper cutting sticks and throwing each successive one across the other until the pile was finished. Gen. Pat Cleburne and his horse, as well, were killed directly South of the old gin in front of the center of the Sixteenth Kentucky, and the dead on the outside lay literally in heaps.
In after years at one of these reunions the writer was introduced to and talked with major Stanley of Hod’s staff, and he said in part, “The next morning I started to count the dead. I began at the pike and went East 300 feet and counted fifteen hundred dead. It made me sick and I quit and went back.”
His count was directly in front of where the Sixteenth Kentucky was and where Cleburne fell. It was here and in the melee at the works that Lieut. Joe Heiser of Company C, one of the best boys of the regiment, gave up his young life, and the writer feels proud that his home comrades have perpetuated his memory by naming a Grand Army Post after him.
Additional information:
James Samuel White was the lieutenant colonel of the Sixteenth at Franklin. He would survive his wound, resigning his commission on May 12, 1865.
Captain Henry D. Palmer is buried in Fleming County Cemetery. For some unknown reason he also has a memorial stone in the Fort Logan Cemetery in Denver, Colorado.
Joseph Heiser Post was based in Maysville and was responsible for creating the forty-two foot tall Grand Army of the Republic monument that graces Maysville Cemetery.