• What to know if you go

"On the morning after the battle, in a town of nearly 2,500 living, there were almost 9,200 casualties. There were no words to describe such a sight, and within a month, the dead had either been buried on the battlefield in shallow graves or hauled off to Nashville and Murfreesboro: in other words, they quickly disappeared."

Paula Crouch Thrasher/Staff (ENLARGE)

The Brentwood, a bed-and-breakfast inn in Brentwood, Tenn., offers a 'Widow of the South' package that includes tours in the neighboring town of Franklin.

Paula Crouch Thrasher/Staff (ENLARGE)

This stained-glass angel at St. PaulÕs Episcopal Church in Franklin is by Louis Comfort Tiffany. The church was used as one of three Union hospitals after the battle.

Paula Crouch Thrasher (ENLARGE)

Jackie and Paul Dugas (right foreground) visit Carnton Plantation to learn more about Carrie McGavock, heroine of Robert Hicks' 'The Widow of the South.' They had not yet read the novel.

Williamson County [Tenn.] Convention & Visitors Bureau (ENLARGE)

With around 1,500 soldiers buried there, the cemetery at Carnton Plantation claims to be the largest private military cemetery in the country.

Williamson County [Tenn.] Convention & Visitors Bureau (ENLARGE)

The Carter House was caught in the middle of the Battle of Franklin. Union Gen. Jacob D. Cox commandeered the home, turning the parlor into his headquarters. When the battle erupted, the family and others hid in the cellar. The red brick house and its outbuildings still bear marks from bullets.

Franklin, Tenn. — Sometimes, the dead speak louder than the living in this middle Tennessee town where, for five hours on Nov. 30, 1864, one of the bloodiest battles of the War Between the States raged in fields, front yards and downtown streets.

If you turn an ear to the past and listen carefully, you can hear the voices: at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, whose interior was defiled by federal troops who used it as barracks and, later, a Union hospital. At Historic Carnton Plantation, which became a Confederate field hospital and to this day bears age-darkened bloodstains on hardwood floors. At Carter House, where 23 people fearfully hid in the cellar while the chaos of war roiled above them.

Between roughly 4 and 9 p.m. on the last day of November, the ground ran with blood and bodies piled one upon the other at the Battle of Franklin: "The most important Civil War battle no one has ever heard of," says René Evans, who leads walking tours of downtown through her company, Franklin on Foot.

The brutal conflict that came to be known as "Bloody Franklin" pitted the Army of Tennessee, led by Confederate Gen. John B. Hood, against federal troops under Maj. Gen. John Schofield.

Goal: Wipe out Union Army

Hood's lofty but perhaps unrealistic goal was to wipe out the Union Army before it reached Nashville, about 20 miles north. But it was not to be: Union forces, having occupied Franklin since 1862, were entrenched, and the town was well-fortified.

Confederate lines were mowed down as wave after wave advanced along a 2-mile-long stretch of rolling green farmland that became a crimson-soaked battlefield — the so-called "Valley of Death."

When the fighting ended, more than 1,750 Confederates and 189 Union soldiers were dead and thousands injured.

Novel is based on real story

Robert Hicks' best-selling novel "The Widow of the South" (Warner Books, $24.95), based on the heroics of the real-life Carrie McGavock, mistress of Carnton, is set against the backdrop of this evening of carnage and the days, weeks, months and years that followed as residents tried to restore normalcy to their ravaged town — and their lives.

Intrigued by the story, Jackie and Paul Dugas of Ponchatoula, La., had come to Williamson County to learn more about this pivotal battle that further decimated the Southern ranks and signaled the beginning of the end of four years of fighting between the Union and Confederate armies.

Although the Dugases had not yet read the novel, they booked the "Widow of the South" package at the Brentwood, a bed-and-breakfast in neighboring Brentwood, Tenn.

After taking a walking tour of historic Franklin and visiting Carnton, Jackie Dugas was ready to plow into Hicks' 418-page novel, published last August.

"I'm glad I didn't read the book," Dugas says. "Now I can visualize the scenes."

And she found Franklin, with its shops and antique stores, "an extremely sweet, clean little town. ... There's so much history around here, you could go on forever."

Much has changed in downtown Franklin in the nearly 150 years since the devastation. Yet there remain chilling echoes of that horrendous afternoon-into-night.

A look at area history

The Franklin on Foot walking tours start at Landmark Booksellers. The Greek Revival-style brick building with four Doric columns is an 1820s factory store that served as a hospital for soldiers from both sides after the battle.

When the war came to Williamson County in the form of occupying Union troops in 1862, Franklin was a thriving town that had been founded as a planned community by Abram Maury in 1799 and named for Benjamin Franklin.

While homes and businesses in Franklin were not destroyed during the battle, the war dealt a stunning economic blow. The town would not begin to fully recover until 1989 when General Motors announced it would build a Saturn plant in nearby Spring Hill.

Since then, Franklin has prospered, its population growing from 18,000 to about 50,000. The attractive downtown business district bustles with shops, antique stores and restaurants in restored buildings. Special events such as the spring Main Street Festival and Dickens of a Christmas in December draw big crowds.

The town's history comes alive as Evans points out places and tells stories of its former residents — some locations figure prominently in Hicks' book. The tenement settlement around the 19th-century chicken processing plant was known as Bucket of Blood for its frequent knife fights. The infamous neighborhood is referred to in "Widow" as Blood Bucket, she says. The upscale condos under construction on the land are a sure sign of gentrification.

Andrew Jackson met with Indian leaders here

Evans shows us the recently restored frame house built by freed slave Allen Williams, who eventually opened a general store on Main Street that was patronized by blacks and whites. She says he is the model for the character Theopolis in "Widow." His store is now H.R.H. Dumplin's bakery and cafe.

The 1823 Masonic Temple, the first three-story building in Tennessee, is home to the country's oldest lodge meeting continuously in the same location. In 1830, President Andrew Jackson invited leaders of four Indian tribes to meet to attempt to negotiate a treaty clearing the way for relocation. Only the Chickasaw chief came; he signed the treaty, but it was never ratified by Congress.

The temple, which was damaged by a cannonball during the battle ("probably by 'friendly fire,'" Evans says), was one of three Union hospitals.

The tour takes us past St. Phillip Catholic Church, built by Irish railroad workers in 1811; Dr. Daniel McPhail's little red brick house, built in 1815 and now the Williamson County Tourism office; and the Victorian buildings around the square, built with brick between about 1890 and 1910 to replace deteriorating 19th-century wooden structures. The Maury-Darcy Building, the oldest building on the square, built between 1815 and 1817, is now law offices.

You'll also see the 1908 ticket office of the Nashville-Franklin Interurban, an electric commuter train service run by Henry Hunter Mayberry. The building is on the National Register of Historic Places. Mayberry built the mansion Splendored, now called Riverview, on the Harpeth River on the northern outskirts of town for his wife, Marietta.

The statue in the circle in the square is a memorial to Confederate soldiers, erected in 1899 by the United Daughters of the Confederacy, who raised $2,700 over 17 years to purchase the monument. Unfortunately, while it was being placed on the pedestal, a rope broke and a chunk of the soldier's cap was broken off. The statue is affectionately called "Chip" by locals.

Other characters based on real people

In front of the 1858 courthouse, which has been empty since a new courthouse was built in 2004, Evans tells the story of Tod Carter, a rakish young attorney-turned-soldier who wrote a column for the Chattanooga Daily Rebel under the name Mint Julep. He was the inspiration for the character Will Baylor (nom de plume Cotton Gin) in "Widow."

The tour ends at St. Paul's Episcopal, which, when finished in 1834, became the state's first Episcopalian church. It remains the Mother Church of the Diocese of Tennessee.

The church was used not only for barracks and stables during Union occupation, but as one of three Union hospitals after the battle.

"The Union Army totally trashed this church," Evans says. Wood was chopped and burned. Impoverished members had no money to tear it down and rebuild after the war, so it was abandoned.

"The church was saved because the congregation couldn't afford to demolish it," Evans says.

In the early 1870s, a new pastor along with 17 parishioners began to try to salvage the church. By the late 1800s, with $2,000 in raised funds along with some war reparations, the restoration began.

Wealthy families who joined the church after 1900 made possible the eight Tiffany stained-glass windows as they played a game of one-upmanship.

'The Widow of the South'

Visitors to Historic Carnton Plantation drive through a subdivision of large homes with manicured lawns to reach the estate that is at the center of "The Widow of the South." It's hard to imagine this area was in the thick of battle in 1864.

Built circa 1815 and enlarged in 1826 by Randal McGavock, a planter and mayor of Nashville, Carnton was home to John and Carrie McGavock when the war broke out. John McGavock added the Greek Revival porches to the rear of the home. The second-story veranda was used by Gen. Nathan B. Forrest as an vantage point on Nov. 30, 1864. And on the lower porch, the bodies of four Confederate generals — John Adams, Patrick R. Cleburne, Hiram B. Granbury and Oscar F. Strahl — were laid out the next morning.

Carrie McGavock's tireless efforts in aiding and comforting the wounded and assisting surgeons who turned her home into an operating room inspired "The Widow of the South." Although Carrie was married during the war, she is widowed as the book — whose characters are both real and imaginary — opens with a prologue dated 1894.

Hicks, a longtime Carnton Association board member, wrote the book in hopes of stimulating an increased interest in the area's history in the same way John Berendt's "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" spurred tourism in Savannah.

The home's original wallpaper patterns and wall colors have been replicated. Most of Carnton's furnishings, while period-appropriate, are not original to the house. However, the dining room table may have been used as an operating table by army surgeons.

Tenants in the 1960s sanded off some of the bloodstains on the floors, but many remain as eerie reminders of the war's human toll.

Row after row of small stone markers identify the final resting place of nearly 1,500 soldiers the McGavocks interred on two acres of their property in 1866 after moving them from deteriorating makeshift graves on the battlefield. As the book describes, Carrie carefully maintained the records for the soldiers buried in what is considered to be the largest private Confederate cemetery in the country.

Ironically, Randal McGavock named the plantation after his father's birthplace, Carntown, in County Antrim, Ireland. Carnton is derived from the Gaelic word "cairn," a pile of rocks serving as a monument to the dead.

War's pain gets personal

Of all the quotes displayed at the small museum at the Carter House, one especially gives me pause. Along with the photograph of a young man, Pvt. Martin Van Buren Thorn, are these words from a letter home: "I think I have saw my share in this Cruel War. My how I am willing to quit if the Rebles is."

There would be no quitting, no turning back, on Nov. 30, 1864, when the war arrived at the doorstep of 67-year-old widower Fountain Carter's home. The red brick house and its outbuildings still bear pockmarks from bullets — 207 holes made by Minié balls have been counted on the exterior of the red-painted farm office. A 186-year-old pecan tree that still stands in the backyard saw it all.

Many of the original furnishings as well as toys remain in the home: a child's chair, a small trunk of dolls, a sampler stitched in 1817, an 1835 Seth Thomas clock, a chalkboard — all items that remind us that a family lived here when war paid an unwelcome visit.

Union Gen. Jacob D. Cox commandeered the home in the wee hours of Nov. 30, turning the parlor into his headquarters. By all accounts, he was kind to the Carter family. Thinking the Confederates would not be so foolhardy as to engage the Yankees in battle, he did not advise the family to flee. When the battle erupted around them, the family, friends and servants took refuge in the cellar.

They survived, but son Capt. Tod Carter did not. Bleeding from nine bullet wounds, the soldier was brought to a small room in the ell at the rear of the home, where he died Dec. 2, 1864.

Thomas Cartwright, who led our tour, says Carter, nearing his childhood home, pressed on, riding atop his horse, Rosencrantz. He had not seen his home in three years. Rallying his troops, he cried out: "Follow me, boys, I'm almost home. Heaven and earth can't keep me out of this fight on my father's farm."

Carter's last words, says Cartwright, were "Home, home, home."

Cartwright sighs dramatically. "I wish I was making all this up ... but we can't change the past, no matter how painful."

IF YOU GO

Getting there

Franklin is about 250 miles from downtown Atlanta. Take I-75 north to I-24 west toward Chattanooga. Follow I-24 about 112 miles to Exit 74A (Tenn. 840 west) toward Franklin. Take the I-65 exit (Exit 31) and merge onto I-65 north via Exit 31B toward Nashville. Take the Tenn. 96 exit (Exit 65) toward Franklin/Murfreesboro, then turn left on Murfreesboro Road (Tenn. 96) and continue into Franklin. Brentwood is about 10 miles north of Franklin on Franklin Road (U.S. 31).

Where to stay

• The Brentwood, 6304 Murray Lane, Brentwood, Tenn. The two-night "Widow of the South" package includes a deluxe room ($331) or luxury suite ($391), gourmet breakfast for two, an autographed copy of Robert Hicks' book (which can be shipped in advance by Priority Mail), two tickets for the Franklin on Foot walking tour, two tickets for Carnton Plantation and local maps. Available Sundays-Thursdays through December. B&B rates are $125-$165 (three rooms) and $170-$250 (three Jacuzzi suites). 1-800-332-4640, www.brentwoodbandb.com.

• Inn at Walking Horse Farm, 1490 Lewisburg Pike, Franklin, Tenn. The 40-acre walking horse farm two miles off I-65 south of downtown Franklin features four antique-filled bedrooms and full country breakfasts. Two-night minimum. Rates $80-$100. 615-790-2076, www.bbonline.com/tn/walkinghorse/index.html.

• The Old Marshall House Bed and Breakfast, 1030 John Williams Road, Franklin, Tenn. The two-story farmhouse on five acres was built 1867-1869 by Joseph Kennedy Marshall, a Confederate soldier who spent 16 months as a prisoner of war. Three rooms ($115-$135) and a guest cottage in a recently restored 1850s log cabin ($165). 1-800-863-5808, www.oldmarshallhouse.com.

• Magnolia House Bed & Breakfast, 1317 Columbia Ave., Franklin, Tenn. The 1905 Craftsman-style house with four guest rooms is on the National Register of Historic Places. $95-$115. 615-794-8178, www.bbonline.com/tn/magnolia/index.html.

Where to eat

• Sandy's Downtown Grille, 108 Fourth Ave. S. Serving inventive American contemporary cuisine at lunch and dinner Mondays-Saturdays in the circa 1899 Harrison Building, which once housed a hardware store. The restaurant features hardwood floors laid on the diagonal, antique brass chandeliers, black Windsor chairs and original artwork on the brick and terra cotta painted walls. Full bar. 615-794-3639, www.sandysdowntowngrille.com.

Other popular downtown spots include Merridee's Breadbasket, Puckett Grocery Co., Franklin Mercantile and Deli, H.R.H. Dumplin's and McCready's Irish Pub.

Brentwood:

• Wild Iris Cafe, 127 Franklin Road. Creative contemporary cuisine in a strip shopping center storefront setting. Full bar. 615-370-0871.

• Vittles, 4936 Thoroughbred Lane. A meat-and-two kind of spot specializing in hearty country cooking. 615-371-2525.

Attractions

• Franklin on Foot: René Evans offers "Classic Franklin" daytime walking tours of downtown ($10 adults, $5 ages 6-12), evening "Ghost and Gore" tours for mature audiences ($15 over age 14 only) and "I Spy Downtown Franklin" scavenger hunts for ages 5-11 (July 18 and Aug. 3; $5). Tours begin at Landmark Booksellers, 114 E. Main St. 615-400-3808, www.franklinonfoot.com.

• Carnton Plantation, 1345 Carnton Lane, Franklin. Guided tours, $10 adults (a ticket for the "Widow of the South" tour combining Franklin on Foot and Carnton is $18); $9 ages 65 and older; $3 ages 6-12; under 6 free. 615-794-0903, www.carnton.org.

• Carter House, 1140 Columbia Ave., Franklin. Browse through the museum, watch a short video and tour the house that was in the line of fire during the Battle of Franklin. $8; $7 ages 65 and older; $3 ages 7-13; free for age 6 and under. 615-791-1861, www.carter-house.org.

• The Factory at Franklin, 230 Franklin Road, Franklin. This circa 1929 factory six blocks from downtown was built for Allen Manufacturing Co., which went into receivership during the Depression. Since then, it has been the home of Dortch Stove Works, Magic Chef and later the Jamison Bedding Co. It was renovated by Franklin businessman Calvin LeHew in 1997-98. The complex of 11 buildings on the National Register of Historic Places houses shops, galleries, restaurants (the Flying Horse, Stoveworks, Saffire's and Matteo's Pizzeria) and entertainment (Boiler Room Theatre, presenting "Almost a Midsummer Night's Dream" through July 22, "Big River" Aug. 11-Sept. 16). 615-791-1777, www.factoryatfranklin.com.

Information

• Williamson County Convention & Visitors Bureau: 1-800-356-3445, www.williamsoncvb.org.

• The Heritage Foundation of Franklin and Williamson County: 615-591-8500, www.historicfranklin.com.