The Carter Farm

The Carter Farm. The Cotton Gin and the Angle. After the Battle of Franklin, veterans on both sides vividly recollected F.B. Carter’s “old cotton gin.” Built early in the 1850s, it figured importantly in countless stories about the heaviest fighting, which unfolded here at the “angle.” Before the battle, Federal soldiers stripped weatherboards and timber from the gin to strengthen the breastworks that angled along the south side of the building. Federal engineers created the angle between the Columbia Pike and the gin to work the line around the front of the building so it would not obstruct small arms and artillery fire. The angle became the focal point of the battle., Just before sundown at 4:35P.M., two Confederate divisions totaling more than 5,000 veteran soldiers under Gens. Samuel French and Patrick Cleburne struck the Federal line and Gen. James W. Reilly’s troops here. Confederate losses were severe from the onset, but the sheer force of the Southern attack broke the Federal position. A Union counterattack soon retook that section of the line. As the sun set the ferocious fighting did not subside. In the waning light, the mixture of smoke, confusion, fear and death created lifetime memories for many survivors. The cotton gin loomed above it all., For Southerners the memories were bitter. Cleburne was dead and his division lay wrecked on the field. For Northerners it was here that the path to the war’s final outcome became clearer., Twenty-five years after the Battle of Franklin the gin was torn down. Its foundation was unearthed in 2015.