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2003 Preservation March for Franklin

 November 7-8, 2003

'Forty for Franklin - 2003'

On Friday & Saturday, November 7th & 8th, 2003, Civil War reenactors marched "Forty for Franklin" to help Save The Franklin Battlefield, Inc retire the debt on Collins Farm in Franklin.  The twenty-one uniformed reenactors' march departed from McCains, just south of Columbia in Maury County, on Friday and arrived at Collins Farm, 40 miles later, on Saturday afternoon.  They camped at Rippavilla on Friday night.

This year, observers and supporters joined the reenactors for a designated segment of the march in Columbia, Spring Hill, and Franklin.  The Franklin public segment covered the two miles from Winstead Hill Park to Collins Farm on Lewisburg Pike. 

Collins Farm is an important 3.22 acres of the Franklin battlefield that STFB purchased in June 2001.  The land is on the extreme east end of the main trench line where the river and railroad converge at Lewisburg Pike.

This ground was traversed by Gen. W W Loring's Division as they attacked over the railroad embankment and became entangled in the osage orange abatis in front of the Federal trenches, all the while under heavy artillery fire from Fort Granger, less than a mile to the north.  It was this ground of which Lieutenant William H. Berryhill of the 43rd Mississippi lamented, "I cannot see how any human being could live two moments in such a place."  Loring's Division has more battle dead buried at the Confederate Cemetery at Carnton than any other of Hood's divisions.

Each of the twenty-one reenactors represented one of the 18 Union and Confederate states that had regiments engaged at the Battle of Franklin on November 30, 1864.  Missouri, Kentucky, and Tennessee had troops fighting in the battle on both sides.  Other states represented were Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.