The monument commemorating the Battle of Nashville recently erected by the Ladies' Battlefield Memorial Association on the historic Franklin pike is of more than ordinary interest to the state and the nation. It stands on an eminence about four miles south of Nashville in a small park located between the Franklin road and the tracks of the Franklin Interurban. It marks the place which Gen. Stephen D. Lee and his men held during the first day of the Battle of Nashville, and it commands a magnificent view of the battlefield, particularly of the Brentwood Hills where Hood's army took its last stand. With these hills in a lovely panorama for its background, it has a setting worthy of its beauty and stands out like a beacon light, pointing the way to the battlefields of Franklin, Columbia and other places which were important in Hood's Tennessee campaign.
Brigadier General Isaac R. Sherwood of Ohio. who for many years was a member of congress of the United States, introduced a bill for the appropriation of $25,000 or $30,000 for the purpose of making a park on the battlefield of Franklin. At the time the bill was introduced, General Sherwood was 96 years of age, and he presented it as his last request before retiring from Congress. In speaking of the Battle of Franklin, General Sherwood said that for valor and bloodshed it goes down in history as one of the most remarkable battles of all time and that when the true history of Franklin and Nashville battlefields is written, the valley of the Harpeth river and the Brentwood hills south of Nashville will be known as valor-crowned hills and dales forever.
Gen. Sherwood
General Sherwood was retired by death, however, before this plan was consummated, and Mrs. James B. Caldwell, president of the Ladies' Battlefield Memorial Association, has suggested that it would be a splendid thing for the association to carry on his work. The old Carter house, which was the center of the hardest fighting in the battle of Franklin, is still standing and would form an excellent nucleus for the park proposed by General Sherwood.
Tennessee is second only to Virginia in the number of battles fought on her soil. The work of marking these fields of valor is still in its infancy, but such monuments as the Nashville Battlefield Memorial, will, undoubtedly, be erected in other places as time goes on. The Battlefield Memorial Association expects its monument to be only the beginning of the work to properly memorialize the battles of Middle Tennessee. The Nashville Memorial is not erected to the Confederacy alone, although its conception, and the labors necessary to make it a reality, are the result of activities of women whose families were not only Confederate in sympathy, but whose fathers and brothers actually served under the Confederacy.
Bronze Figures
The bronze figures at the base of the shaft -- two charging steeds held in check by a youth -- symbolize the North and the South, once separated, but now held together by the younger generation of the World War. The youth, with the North at his left and the South at his right, is facing the east and, although movement is not definitely indicated by the sculptor, it seems that the youth, and the horses he is guiding, are about to move forward toward the rising sun and the dawn. The figure of the angel of peace at the top of the shaft expresses repose and confidence as she looks over the battlefield.
Mr. G. Moretti, sculptor, is due quite as much credit for the message he has given, as he is for the skill he has shown in the execution of the figures and the beauty which the monument, as a whole, presents. He has told the story of the past, interpreted the spirit of the present, and for a moment has caught a glimpse of the future. In the glorified face of the youth and in his magnificently modelled body, he has expressed the idealism and strength of the reunited America -- the new America in which the South has so completely forgiven the past that it can erect on the scene of a bitter defeat a monument to peace, unity and brotherhood.
It is a significant fact that the president of the Ladies' Battlefield Memorial Association, Mrs. James E. Caldwell, was a tiny girl in Nashville during its occupation by Federal troops. Her father, Dr. Charles K. Winston, physician and surgeon, ministered to Confederate prisoners in Nashville and to the wounded on the fields of Franklin and Nashville. Her brother was a Confederate officer, and she lived in a circle of relatives and friends who. when the South felt it necessary to secede, supported the Confederacy with their hearts, their goods and, if need he, their lives.
War Stories Recalled
Her experience is typical of the membership of the Ladies' Battlefield Memorial Association, for the members who do not remember the war from their own experiences, have heard from their infancy, stories of fathers and grandfathers who served with the Confederate army.
Mr. Moretti, sensing the spirit of the women directing the work, has created a memorial to the men -- both the blue and the gray -- who fell on the battlefield at Nashville, but with it he makes a plea for peace. It is a war memorial, but no uniforms, no guns, no swords, nor other trappings of war mar its peace-like beauty. It marks the place where men who had been classmates, neighbors, bosom friends or, perhaps, brothers, waged deadly war against each other. All of them were Americans, all of them believed they were fighting for a just cause and many of them were young men scarcely twenty years of age, loyally following their leaders into the very jaws of death. It is their memory that such sacrifice may never again be necessary -- that the war memorial becomes a monument to peace.
The best interpretation of the work is that of Mr. Moretti, himself, in a letter which he wrote to Mrs. Caldwell, from his studio in Florence, Italy.
Monument's Message
"I love this monument," he wrote, "more than any other work that I have done, and I realize that you planned it and dreamed it long before I did. You will find the figure of the youth still a little less definite and a little less in action than in the sketch, but it may grow to you as it does to me to express a quiet ecstasy. In a sense the entire symbolism of this monument is a vision, and the youth standing quietly in the clouds of tumult holds, calms and unites the struggling forces with something of the strength and vision of the Angel of Peace who inspires him. There is very little of the naturalistic treatment throughout, but I humbly feel that I have been enabled to transmit the spirit that is beyond the flesh. I could work many months perfecting the details of the work, but I could feel ... the message is there and could even be dimmed rather than emphasized by further work."
The message is there, indeed, and as long as the monument stands it will tell the story of a people brave and passionately loyal to the land of their nativity, but great enough to be courageous in defeat. The leaders of the South have fought as hard to erase the bitterness caused during the war, and the reconstruction period, as they have to raise a new, progressive South out of the ashes of the Civil War.
General Robert E. Lee, a great Confederate and an even greater American, set a magnificent example for his defeated, heart-sore people when he admonished them to: "Abandon all local animosities and make your sons Americans." The World War proved that the South had obeyed.
Related stories:
Battle of Nashville and reign of terror here following war described by Mrs. Caldwell
Battlefield monument to be dedicated this month
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