On the afternoon of November 30, 1864, despite the objections of Generals Cleburne, Cheatham and Forrest, General John Bell Hood marched his Army of Tennessee down Winstead Hill to the south of Franklin, Tennessee and into battle.

As Union soldiers sang hymns and Confederate bands played "Dixie," Confederate infantrymen, exhausted, hungry and ill-clothed, charged the well-fortified Union line. The fighting was immediately brutal and savage. So much so, that the hours that followed were widely considered the bloodiest of the Civil War.

More soldiers from the Confederate Army alone were killed in those five hours than the Union Army lost in the 7-Day Battle, or the Battle of Shiloh lasting 3 days. Yet only the enduring, twisted osage orange trees bear witness to the events that occurred there 140 years ago.

However, what once was written off as lost to development, now has the opportunity to become the nation’s largest public/private Civil War battlefield reclamation project ever attempted and achieved.