The Carter Farm

The Carter Farm. Brown’s Division. Confederate Gen. John C. Brown, a native of Giles County, Tennessee, commanded one of the Southern army’s most formidable divisions. It numbered more than 3,700 soldiers; most hailed from Tennessee, but some called Georgia and South Carolina home. Many had been fighting for three years. , On the afternoon of November 30, 1864, Brown’s troops initially confronted Federal soldiers on an advanced line about a half mile from here. When that position collapsed under the weight of Brown’s attack, the Confederate troops charged forward. As they swept toward the main Federal line, under the command of Gen. Thomas Ruger, the rebel yell began to reverberate across the landscape. Some of Brown’s men went “pell-mell” into the tangled locust-tree abatis, and an officer later recalled that many men were “arrested by it.” Nonetheless, just before 4:30 p.m., Brown’s men, who were aligned into two front line brigades and two reserve brigades, hit and crushed a substantial portion of Ruger’s main line. The 50th and 72 Illinois infantry regiments suffered heavily, and Federal troops scrambled back to the secondary line. , Brown’s men surged toward you across the Carter garden and up the slope out of the locust abatis. They pressed the attack but took heavy losses in the effort. Brown was wounded, and Gen. Otho Strahl, one of his brigade commanders, was shot a short distance from here while loading the rifles for his men. As Strahl was being evacuated to the rear, he was hit again and killed.