After Atlanta fell, John Bell Hood turned the Army of Tennessee north, back into the state that had given it its name. For the West Tennesseans of the 4th it was a march toward home.
On the afternoon of November 30, 1864, the army formed on Winstead Hill, two miles south of Franklin, and looked across open fields at the Union earthworks. Strahl's brigade went forward behind Gordon's, just west of the Columbia Pike. They broke through the center of the Union line, and the 4th planted its colors on the main works. But the Federals rallied behind a second line, and the Tennesseans were caught in the ditch outside the works, unable to go forward or back.
There General Strahl stayed with his men, loading rifles and passing them up to the soldiers firing over the parapet. He was hit in the neck as he handed an Enfield to Sumner Cunningham. As his men carried him to the rear he was struck twice more and killed. He was thirty-three. He had led the 4th Tennessee at Shiloh, commanded it at Perryville and Murfreesboro, and led its brigade from Chickamauga to the end. The brigade lost 286 men at Franklin. Six Confederate generals died there.
Two weeks later, at Nashville, the army was broken. The 4th held a slope near the Granny White Pike until the line gave way on December 16, and fell back through the hills toward Brentwood. Ordnance Sergeant Thomas L. Taylor, who had kept the company's roll, was captured that day and sent to Camp Douglas, Illinois. Dr. John W. Buchanan, an original member of the company who had become an assistant surgeon, was captured at Franklin on December 17.
On the retreat, Hood asked Strahl's old brigade to volunteer as part of an infantry rear guard that would fight alongside Nathan Bedford Forrest's cavalry to hold off the pursuit until the army was across the Tennessee River. They agreed. Many of them were barefoot, their feet wrapped in strips of blanket and bleeding on the frozen roads. They guarded the Duck River crossings, fought at Anthony's Hill on Christmas Day, and turned and threw back the Union advance at Sugar Creek the next day.
At Corinth in January 1865, the West Tennessee regiments were given a thirty-day furlough. Almost every man came back. They went east to North Carolina, fought in reserve at Bentonville, and in April, what was left of the 4th and 5th Tennessee made up a single company. They surrendered near Greensboro on April 26 and were paroled on May 1.
Merritt was not with them. On May 4, 1865, he surrendered at Citronelle, Alabama, and on May 11 he was paroled at Gainesville, Alabama, with men of Forrest's command, on a roll of Brigadier General A. W. Campbell's brigade made up of soldiers from many units. The roll still lists him as a corporal of the 4th Tennessee Infantry, of Shelby County. How he came to be there is not recorded. The likeliest moment is the January furlough, when the regiment was sent home to West Tennessee and Forrest's command was close by.
He gave his home as Collierville. He went back to it.
Sources: Luke W. Finlay, "Fourth Tennessee Infantry," Military Annals of Tennessee (1886); Franklin battlefield markers; compiled service records of Merritt R. Brown, Thomas L. Taylor and John W. Buchanan, National Archives.
The story of Corporal Merritt R. Brown, the Wigfall Grays and their town is told in An Honor Unearned: From the Streets of Collierville, Tennessee, to Edgefield, South Carolina, by Michael Louis Meece. Available on Amazon in paperback and Kindle. More about the book at anhonorunearned.org.