page_title: 33rd Alabama Infantry Regiment
section_title: Franklin
hierarchical_section_title: 33rd Alabama Infantry Regiment / Back to Tennessee / Franklin
caption_attribution_description: English: Map of the Battle of Franklin of the American Civil War, showing the Union defensive lines at 4:30 PM. Drawn in Adobe Illustrator CS6 by Hal Jespersen. Graphic source file is available at http://www.cwmaps.com/
context_page_description: The 33rd Alabama Infantry Regiment was an infantry unit from Alabama that served in the Confederate States Army during the U.S. Civil War. Recruited from the southeastern counties of Butler, Dale, Coffee, Covington, Russell and Montgomery, it saw extensive service with the Confederate Army of Tennessee before being nearly annihilated at the Battle of Franklin in 1864. Survivors from the regiment would continue to serve until the final capitulation of General Joseph Johnston in North Carolina in 1865.
  In addition to the counties named above, the 33rd Alabama drew recruits from three modern Alabama counties that did not yet exist in 1862: Geneva County, which was then a part of Dale and Coffee counties; Crenshaw County, which would be formed from Covington and other nearby counties after the war; and Houston County, which then formed a part of Dale and Henry Counties.
  Initially assigned to the defense of Confederate forts in Pensacola Bay, Florida, the 33rd was quickly transferred to duty in the Army of Tennessee, where it saw its first significant action at the Battle of Perryville.
context_section_description: On November 30, 1864, General Hood awoke to learn that Schofield's army had slipped by him during the night and was now safely entrenched in Franklin, 12 miles (19 km) to the north. Enraged at this unexpected development, Hood angrily blamed his subordinates—especially Cheatham—for letting the Federals escape. Determined to stop Schofield from uniting with Thomas' main force at Nashville, Hood resolved to attack him head-on at Franklin, even though the Federals were now behind formidable fortifications (built for a previous battle fought there the year before).  These included breastworks six-to-eight feet high fronted by four-foot wide ditches, and thorny obstructions using branches from Osage Orange trees in the area. Although Hood had roughly 39,000 men, only 27,000 would make the attack; this placed them at even odds with the Federals, who had the same number of men.
  Hood's army began to arrive at Franklin around 1:00 pm, with the infantry far outpacing their artillery and other support personnel. Rather than wait for his guns to come up, Hood ordered an immediate assault, as the sun would be setting in just over three and a half hours and he did not want Schofield to get away again. Cleburne, Cheatham and Forrest all protested Hood's plan, but their commander remained determined. So, bereft of artillery support, Cleburne now prepared to lead his division across two miles of open field toward the very center of the Federal line. When General Govan said that few of them would live to see the end of this day, a visibly depressed Cleburne replied: "Well Govan, if we are to die, let us die like men."
  During the attack at Franklin, Lowrey's Brigade formed a second line in Cleburne's division, behind the brigades of Govan and Granbury. Moving through savage cannon fire toward the Carter House Cotton Gin across the field, the 33rd halted briefly with their sister regiments to fix bayonets, having been ordered not to shoot until they reached the Federal trenches. Then screaming their famous "rebel yell" they charged headlong into the breastworks, held in this sector by the 100th and 104th Ohio Infantry regiments, the 6th Ohio Battery and Battery A of the 1st Kentucky.  Behind them stood the 16th Kentucky, the 12th Kentucky, the 8th Tennessee (Union) Infantry, and Battery "A" of the 1st Ohio Battery. Behind them was the 175th Ohio Infantry.
  Two privates of the 33rd left accounts of what happened next.  Private Matthews records:
  Private Andrew Jackson Batchelor, of Company K, gives this account:
  Savage fighting ensued as Cleburne's Confederates briefly penetrated the inner Federal defenses near the cotton gin; Federal soldiers wrote of desperately trying to stop the onrushing tide not just with rifles, but with axes, hatchets, and "anything that came into hand." Cleburne was killed fifty yards from the breastworks, after having two horses shot out from under him and running the rest of the way on foot, sword in one hand and his kepi hat in the other.
  In his autobiography, written two years after the war, General Lowrey recalled his brigade's performance at Franklin:
  The final charge of Patrick Cleburne and his men at Franklin has been featured in Civil War art. Some examples of this include portraits by Dale Gallon, Don Troiani and Mort Kunstler. Of his one-time subordinate, the Irish doctor's son who had risen from a British corporal to a Southern Major General and then to immortality, General Hardee observed: "Where this division defended, no odds broke its line; where it attacked, no numbers resisted its onslaught, save only once; and there is the grave of Cleburne."
  By the time the smoke cleared at Franklin, the Army of Tennessee had suffered a cataclysmic defeat: it had lost 6,252 men in just a couple of hours, including six dead generals, six wounded, and one captured.  In addition, 55 of Hood's regimental commanders became casualties—an appalling loss of mid-level commanders in an army that had lost many, already.  The 33rd Alabama lost two-thirds of its original 285 men; the remnant could no longer function as an indep
caption: Cleburne's assault at the Battle of Franklin. The 33rd Alabama attacked with the rest of Lowrey's Brigade on the right flank of Cleburne's division, which attacked just to the right of the Columbia Pike at the center of the image
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