FRANKLIN, Tenn. (WKRN) – Four historic Middle Tennessee Civil War battlefields are receiving millions of dollars in preservation grants from the Tennessee Historical Commission.
According to the Tennessee Historical Commission, the four grants total $7,319,500. This is the largest amount of money in the history of the Civil War site’s preservation fund.
Nonprofits Franklin’s Charge Inc. and American Battlefield Trust are each receiving part of the money. Franklin’s Charge Inc. is receiving $957,500 to purchase a nearby building that will be demolished.
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“When that building is gone, it will open up a historic viewshed, certainly, but it also will save a piece of ground that was so heavily contested on the afternoon of November the 30th of 1864, thousands of men literally fighting to the death right behind us over our shoulder, and for the last four or five decades, that building in its entirety has sat there, dominating that piece of landscape, almost taunting you to tear it down and save that piece of ground,” said Joseph Ricci, a historian with Battle of Franklin Trust.