General John Bell Hood

This is John Bell Hood, a very brave man and a disastrous general. He wrecked his army at the Battle Of Franklin and at the Battle of Nashville. I mentioned him in my last February post, where I described how Nashville buried a great battlefield under shopping centers. General Hood lost the use of his left arm and had his right leg amputated. He was a ladies' man , despite his injuries. Civil war diarist Mary Chesnut wrote that her friend Henry Brewster said of Hood, when the General was between battles, " How I want him to go back to the army. Those girls are making a fool of him".

No more, we might add, than the Union army was to do when it defeated Hood in Middle Tennessee.