Cow pasture to housing: A visit to 'hidden' Nashville redoubt

Back end of a Hotchkiss shell and a canister ball from Redoubt No. 4.

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In December 1864, John Bell Hood's Army of Tennessee constructed five redoubts — log-and-earthen forts — in the countryside south of Nashville. On Dec. 15 — Day 1 of the Battle of Nashville — the U.S. Army routed the Rebels, who abandoned these makeshift fortifications. The beleaguered Confederates retreated roughly three miles south as a cannon ball flies, anchoring their extreme left on Shy's Hill, near present-day Harding Place Road. (Worth a visit!) The next day, the U.S. Army again routed Hood's army, which skedaddled to Alabama. (Go to the Battle of Nashville Trust site to see what remains from Redoubts 1 and 3.)

Marker at the site. (Click on image to enlarge.)

In the video, check out the remains of Redoubt No. 4, overrun in the 1980s by an upscale housing development. Somehow soldiers created this defensive work out of frozen ground. Amazing. The Tennessee Historical Society preserved the site, located in a cul de sac on Foster Hill Road. 

A reader of my Civil War Facebook page remembers this ground as cow pasture in 1969. Decades ago, he said he found in front of the works a chunk of a three-inch Hotchkiss shell, one of scores fired on this position by Federal artillery roughly a mile away. Above, from my collection, check out the back end of a Hotchkiss shell and a canister ball discovered at the site.

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