NASHVILLE, BATTLE OF

The main area of the eastern campaigns, 186165. Use left sidebar to control the speed of the Covered cannon on the steps of the capitol, Nashville, Tennessee, 1864. Photograph by George N. (December 1516, 1864), in the American Civil War, decisive Union victory over the Confederates that ended organized Southern resistance in Tennessee for the remainder of the war. Hoping to cut the supply lines of the Union general William Tecumseh Sherman and perhaps to threaten Cincinnati, Ohio, and other Northern cities, Confederate General John B. Hood moved back into Tennessee in late 1864, incurring heavy losses in an engagement with General John M. Schofield's Union troops at Franklin, Tennessee, on November 30. As Hood approached Nashville in early December, a Union force of quickly assembled heterogeneous troops under General George H. Thomas marched out of the city and administered a resounding defeat to the South on December 1516. The Confederate army retreated in near disorder to Alabama, and, though Hood escaped, his army virtually ceased to exist as a fighting force.