Turners, also volunteered and enlisted in Cleburne's command. These
three stalwart young men from Phillips County followed Cleburne
and fought under his battle flag on those bloody fields at Shiloh,
Murfreesboro, Ringgold gap, and Atlanta; and they were with him that day
in November in front of the old gin house at Franklin as the regiment
formed for another and what was to be their last charge. The dead lay
in heaps in front of them and almost filled the ditch around the
breastworks, but the command though terribly cut to pieces was forming
as cooly as if on dress parade. Above them floated a peculiar flag,
a field of deep blue on which was a crescent moon and stars. It was
Cleburne's battle flag and well the enemy knew it; they had seen it
so often before. "I tip my hat to that flag" said the Federal General
Sherman years after the war. "Whenever my men saw it they knew it meant
fight." As the regiment rushed on the Federal breastworks a gray clad
figure on a chestnut horse rode across the front of the moving column
and toward the enemy's guns. The horse went down within fifty yards of
the breastworks. The rider arose, waved his sword, and led his men on
foot to the very ramparts. Then he staggered and fell, pierced with a
dozen balls. It was Cleburne, the peerless field-marshal of Confederate
brigade commanders. The Southern cause suffered a crushing defeat at
Franklin and the casualty list recorded the names of Nat Turner, Dick
Berry, and Milt Wiseman, who like their beloved commander had given
their life for their country. There is an inscription on the stone base
of the magnificent bronze statue of General N. B. Forrest astride his
war horse in Forrest Park in Memphis that could well be placed above
the graves of Cleburne, Turner, Berry, and Wiseman, those brave, heroic
soldiers from Phillips County. The inscription in verse is as follows:

Those hoof beats die not on fame's crimson sod
But will live on in song and in story.
He fought like a Trojan and struck like a god
His dust is our ashes of glory.

Interviewer: Zillah Cross Peel
Information given by: Seabe Tuttle
Residence: Washington County, seven miles east of Fayetteville.

Seabe Tuttle who was born in slavery in 1859, belonged to James
Middleton Tuttle of Richland, which was about seven miles east of
Fayetteville.

"I was just a baby when the war was but I do recollect a lot of things
that my ma told me about the War. Our folks all c