Battlefields that Were

[tbutler]

The Battle of Franklin seems to be one of the least-known major Civil War battles. Arguably, it broke the back of one of the largest remaining Confederate armies and (in conjunction with the following Battle of Nashville) effectively ended the fighting in the Western Theater, but I'd never heard of it before spending time with a friend who lives there.

Part of it may be that, like many Civil War battlefields, most of the site had been overtaken by development. As noted here, a Pizza Hut covered the area where one of the major Confederate generals fell, until recently; "A Domino's Pizza in a small mini-mart at the northeast corner of Columbia Ave. and Cleburne St. still stands in the center of the key battlefield area." You can see it's closed now in the picture above, but there's still a big contrast between the naked pavement and the lush green of the grass and trees.