Five Tragic Hours: The Battle of Franklin Book

It is fitting that I finished this book the day Lee's statue came down in New Orleans. Franklin was to the Confederates what Culloden was to the Jacobites. This is a book from another era. The story is told mostly from the Confederate point of view and describes in visceral detail the bloodbath at Franklin. It is a tale of wasted valor. It is a tale that in the future few will tell nor care to hear. The Confederacy is fast being seen as the Nazis of the nineteenth century, eviscerating the complexity and humanity of a tragic era. It was a rotten cause and yet I cannot deny feeling pity and horror at reading about the carnage that swirled about the Carter House.

This is better written than most McDonough books, but it does suffer from a lack of footnotes. That said, it generally correlates rather well with other books on the subject.