Fight at Hollow Tree Gap

Fight at Hollow Tree Gap. Hood's Retreat from Nashville. (Prelude) In September 1864, after Union Gen. William T. Sherman defeated Confederate Gen. John Bell Hood at Atlanta, Hood led the Army of Tennessee northwest against Sherman's supply lines. Rather than contest Sherman's "March to the Sea,” Hood then moved north into Tennessee, where Union Gen. John M. Schofield, detached from Sherman's army, delayed Hood at Columbia and Spring Hill before falling back to Franklin. The bloodbath there on November 30 crippled Hood's force, but the Confederates followed Schofield to the outskirts of Nashville and Union Gen. George H. Thomas's strong defenses. Hood's campaign ended when Thomas crushed his army on December 15-16., (Main text) Before sunrise on December 17, 1864, enduring icy rain and dense fog, the exhausted soldiers of Confederate Gen. John Bell Hood's Army of Tennessee retreated south through this valley. They had just been defeated at Nashville, and Union forces were in pursuit. Confederate Gen. Edmund W. Pettus's brigade guarded the southwestern side of Hollow Tree Gap (also known as Holly Tree Gap), while Gen. Marcellus A. Stovall's brigade stood on the opposite side of the road with Capt. Hiram Bledsoe's Missouri artillery battery in support. Farther south, Alabama and Louisiana regiments formed the reserve. , ,br> Later that morning, as Confederate cavalry retreated through the gap, gunfire came from the north as a Union cavalry brigade closed in. The 19th Pennsylvania Cavalry and 10th Indiana Cavalry led the charge, with sabers swirling and carbines firing. Almost immediately, Pettus's and Stovall's rear guard surrounded and outgunned the Federals, and the ensuing firefight sent many back through the gap. Minutes later, 10th Indiana Cavalry detachments charged from the east, smashing through two Louisiana regiments and flanking the rear guard. Fearing entrapment, the Confederates fought desperately to break out and continue the retreat southward., When the hour-long fight ended, the Federals had lost at least 22 killed and wounded and more than 60 captured, mostly from the Indiana and Pennsylvania regiments. The Confederates lost about 250 captured, with an unknown number killed and wounded. This bloody clash was the first of several fights which finally end after dark about fifteen miles south at the West Harpeth, the last significant battle in Williamson County., "The guns and other equipment strewn along the road, the apparent abandonment of everything that impeded their flight, every door yard filled with illy clad shivering prisoners, had led us to the conclusion that we had a 'walk over.' Hollow Tree Gap undeceived us." , Capt. Obediah Hayden, 9th Indiana Cavalry, observing the Confederate retreat from Nashville