Spring Hill, Tennessee
November 29, 1864

The struggle for Spring Hill was the result of an attempt by Confederate Gen. John Bell Hood to prevent an isolated Union column from retreating to nearby Franklin. Fighting began in earnest around 4:00 p.m., with the Federals turning back several piecemeal and poorly coordinated Confederate attacks. As it grew dark, the Southerners finally gained a strategic position from which to cut off the Union retreat, but Hood's order to attack never reached his subordinates, and they did not press their advantage. The Confederates bivouacked for the night, leaving open the road north to Franklin.

In what has been called "one of the most controversial non-fighting events of the war," while Southern soldiers slept, the entire Union army passed them by. The result of this failure was the Battle of Franklin, an unmitigated disaster for the Confederacy, which cost them 6,200 casualties and six general officers.

Threat: Expansion of the Nashville and Franklin suburbs is eating away at large portions of the Spring Hill Battlefield. In the mid-1990s, CWPT and Maury County were able to preserve 110 acres, but the remainder is quickly and irreversibly being lost to booming residential and commercial development.

For example, in January 2007 construction began on a massive commercial development near where Maj. Gen. Patrick Cleburne's lines stood on the afternoon of November 29, 1864. The 62-acre, 465,000-square-foot shopping center, called the Crossings of Spring Hill, will contain a SuperTarget, Kohl's and 31 other retail units.

Priority: CWSAC classified Spring Hill as a Priority I, Class B battlefield.

Please note that no attempt is made to rank the sites within History Under Siege— instead, the battlefields are listed in alphabetical order.