Protecting the Nashville Battlefield and the Historic Bass Neighborhood

The southern defensive line of the Federal works during the Battle of Nashville. Credit: Library of Congress.

The battle

Two weeks earlier, fighting on the defensive at the Battle of Franklin, the Union army had inflicted heavy casualties on the Confederate Army of Tennessee and wrecked its command, killing or wounding more than 60 Confederate field officers, 14 of them generals. That tactical Union victory left the Confederate leadership in a kind of strategic paralysis. General John B. Hood ordered his army to advance on the Union stronghold of Nashville on December 2, 1864, even though it lacked the men and supplies to attack the city directly.

Unable to attack, and unwilling to retreat for fear of losing what morale his army had left, Hood dug in south of Nashville, hoping to draw Major General George H. Thomas into a frontal assault like the one Hood himself had made at Franklin. It never came. Instead, on December 15 and 16, the Union army struck both Confederate flanks, taking key positions through the efforts of the U.S. Colored Troops of Steedman's Division. Hood was forced to withdraw, and the Army of Tennessee was finished as an effective fighting force for the rest of the war.

The Bass neighborhood

With a Battlefield Land Acquisition Grant, the Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County will preserve part of the Nashville battlefield and its direct link to the Bass neighborhood, one of the city's earliest free Black communities.

The neighborhood grew after the Civil War, during Reconstruction, through the determination of formerly enslaved people, free Black workers and returning veterans of the U.S. Colored Troops to put down roots and build a thriving Black neighborhood — many of them men who had served in, or helped build, the city's defences during the war. That effort continued into the civil rights era, when the area expanded into a modest district of Black homes, small businesses and industrial buildings. Only remnants of those buildings remain, and the local government means to protect that legacy along with the battlefield.

The grant program

Battlefield Land Acquisition Grants, from the National Park Service's American Battlefield Protection Program, help preservation partners across the country acquire and protect threatened battlefields of the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812 and the Civil War. The program also funds related work through Battlefield Interpretation Grants, Battlefield Restoration Grants and Preservation Planning Grants, encouraging community-led care of historic places at the state, tribal and local levels.

Sources

Based on "Protecting the Common Legacy of the Battle of Nashville and the City's Historic Bass Neighborhood," published by the National Park Service, American Battlefield Protection Program; rewritten in hubnx's own words.

• The article places Major General George H. Thomas in command of the Union army at Franklin as well as at Nashville; this page names him only for Nashville.
• The article names the Confederate army both "Army of the Tennessee" and "Army of Tennessee"; this page uses the latter throughout.