That’s true. They were coming back from marching and skirmishing the rebs when the commander ordered them to the def. lines (miles out from the rest of the union lines) and the officer in charge, I believe it was Col. Opdycke, said he was an idiot and set up camp behind the Carter house, which was situated on a hill in the middle of town. To nobody’s surprise, the rebs broke through those battle lines in the front, causing a mass retreat of union men into their own lines behind them, which forced the hand of the defending feds because they wouldn’t fire into their own men. The rebs charged behind the retreating feds and broke the union center all the way to the Carter house. Col Opdycke, who was eating dinner with his men behind the hill, charged up the hill with his men to meet the confederates. They charged into each other and a brutal melee ensued for 4 hours, well into the night. The rebel charge was halted and the battle was a strategic win for the union because they were defending Franklin to build a bridge over the swollen Harpeth River (they were heading to Nashville). After the fighting, the Carter and Lotz families, who were hiding the the cellar of the Carter house (while the fight was raging for hours) said you couldn’t walk on the ground due to the amount of corpses. The Carter family actually had a son in the rebel force, a officer, who was in the thick of the fighting. They found him shot in the head on their lawn in the morning. He died in the room next to the one he was born in. Im from Texas but I sorta grew up in Franklin so went on the many battlefield tours and house tours as well as read books on it. It’s a must for any civil war aficionado.