Tennessee’s Forgotten Warriors: Frank Cheatham and His Confederate Division

Benjamin Franklin Cheatham was a Nashville native and a descendant of the city’s founder, James Robertson. Born in 1820, he achieved fame through his military service in the Mexican War and, especially, the Civil War. After the war Cheatham farmed, ran for Congress, and, at the time of his death in 1886, was postmaster of Nashville. Cheatham was one of Nashville’s most popular sons, and his funeral, which drew some thirty thousand people, was reportedly the largest ever held in the city.

Christopher Losson’s study, the first full biography of Cheatham, reestablishes the importance of this colorful and controversial Tennessean who played such a significant role as a general in the Confederate Army of Tennessee and gives us a fuller picture of the progress of the war in the western theater. Cheatham and the men of his division left heir mark at Shiloh, Perryville, Stones River, Chickamauga, and in the Georgia campaign. As a corps commander, Cheatham was also an important figure in the final year of the war, when the army fought its last major battles at Franklin and Nashville.

Although Cheatham and his surviving veterans were convinced that his exploits had secured them a permanent place in Tennessee history, their fame faded with the passage of time. Now, thanks to Losson’s efforts – and through the words they jointed down in diaries, letters, memoirs, and articles – they have been rescued from obscurity.