Brigadier General John Carpenter Carter

Brigadier General John Carpenter Carter. B. December 19, 1837 – D. December 10, 1864. Born in Waynesboro, Georgia, John Carpenter Carter attended the University of Virginia from 1854 until 1856 when he began the study of law at Cumberland University in Lebanon, Tennessee under the tutelage of Judge Abram Caruthers. Carter would later marry Judge Caruthers' daughter and become an instructor of Law at Cumberland University., By the time of the War Between the States, Carter was living and practicing law in Memphis. He enlisted in the 38th Tennessee Infantry as a Captain in June 1861. The 38th would see action at several large engagements including Shiloh, Murfreesboro, and Chickamauga. Carter proved to be a very capable and brave officer and he quickly rose through the ranks, becoming the Colonel of the 38th by April 1862. During Hood's Atlanta Campaign, John Carpenter Carter was promoted to the rank of Brigadier General on July 7, 1864. He was temporarily placed in command of an entire division at the Battle of Jonesboro, Georgia (August 31–September 1, 1864)., Carter was with General John Bell Hood's Army of Tennessee as it crossed the Tennessee River on November 20, 1864 and moved north from Alabama into Tennessee. Heavy skirmishes were fought in and around Columbia in the days that followed. Eventually the two armies would collide in Franklin, Tennessee on November 30. There, on the hills south of town, the Confederate forces assembled and prepared to charge the entrenched Federal Army. Just before dusk, the Confederate soldiers began their frontal assault of the Federal lines, a charge of two miles over open ground. Those that made it to the Federal lines then found themselves in a furious hand-to-hand fight that went on into the night., Brigadier General John Carpenter Carter made this charge with his men and was mortally wounded. He was taken to the Harrison House just south of Franklin where he died of his wounds on December 10, 1864. He was brought to Rose Hill along with several other Confederate officers that fell at Franklin. Families came after the War to claim their dead and take them home. No one ever came for General Carter's remains and he slumbers here yet under the large magnolia tree to the west.