The Battle of Nashville was a resounding victory for Union forces during the American Civil War, effectively ending the fighting in Tennessee.

Nashville was the first Confederate state capital captured by Union forces, having been taken on Feb. 25, 1862, in the wake of the seizures of Fort Henry and Fort Donelson. By November 1864, when Confederate Gen. John Bell Hood decided to attack the fortified city, the Union troops in Nashville had had more than two years to prepare.

The Confederate attack on Nashville was the result of a feint that wasn't, an attempt by Hood to make Gen. William T. Sherman chase him instead of embarking on his "March to the Sea." After Sherman claimed Atlanta, on September 2, Hood peeled off to the west and headed for Tennessee, aiming to cut off Sherman's supply line. What Hood didn't know is that Sherman wasn't at all interested in maintaining that line of supply. He did send two corps of the Army of the Cumberland under Maj. Gen. George Thomas to augment Nashville's existing defenses. Also with Thomas's troops in the force that eventually reached Nashville were members of the United States Colored Troops (USCT), an all-African-American force.

At Spring Hill, Tenn., on November 29, a Union force under Maj. Gen. John Schofield extricated itself from the fight and slipped past the opposing Confederate troops to Franklin. The following day, an incensed Hood ordered a frontal assault on the heavily fortified town; the ensconced Union army fired at will, tearing through the advancing Confederate troops and inflicting casualties numbering 6,000.

Schofield and his men withdrew from Franklin that night and entered Nashville, there to join Thomas and his combined forces. Altogether, the Union defense force of Nashville numbered 55,000. As well, most of those troops were veterans of hard fighting in the West, at places like Vicksburg. Ringing the city was a system of forts and fortifications; on the north and east sides of the city lay the Cumberland River, patrolled by U.S. Navy warships and ironclad gunboats.

On December 2, Hood, with a force less than half of Thomas's, arrived. He twice sent forces off to other locations, hoping to draw the Union troops out from behind their fortifications. Thomas waited until he was ready, marking a severe ice storm as an excellent opportunity to forestall the fighting.

The Union attack commenced on December 15 with a diversionary attack on the Confederate right. Spearheading this attack were troops from the First Colored Brigade, of the USCT. The real attack was to hit the left and the center, and the diversion drew enough attention away from those two areas that main attack, when it came, was largely successful.

The heaviest fighting on the second day was on Peach Orchard Hill and on Compton's Hill. Again, an initial strike at the Confederate right created an opening that Union troops needed to hit the rest of the Confederate defenses. Again, Union troops made headway, taking Compton's Hill in the process. (This hill was afterward known as Shy's Hill, after Confederate Col. William Shy, who died defending it.)

It was a battered Hood's army that retreated from Nashville, having lost a total of 6,000 men (1,500 dead and injured, the rest captured or missing). Union losses were fewer: 387 dead, 2,558 injured, 112 captured or missing). The Army of Tennessee saw no more combat; Hood led it to Tupelo, Miss., and, on Jan. 13, 1865, resigned his command.