Battle of Nashville: Charlotte Pike

James Wilson's Cavalry Corps went into the campaign poorly armed and mounted, and refitting it took time. Most of its earlier combat had been against Confederate cavalry commanders Forrest, Morgan and Wheeler. On December 15, 1864, Wilson moved west along the Charlotte Pike on the Union right, and a cavalry action of 300 to 400 troopers took place near Belle Meade Plantation. When the morning fog lifted his cavalry drove Confederate horsemen from the ground between the Confederate left and the Cumberland River. The next day it blocked the Granny White Pike.

What the plaque says

Battle of Nashville Forming the outer arc of the Federal main attack, R.W. Johnson's 6th Cavalry Division, Wilson's Corps, here hit Rucker's Confederate Cavalry Brigade, west of Richland Creek. Withdrawing south to Harding Road, Rucker held there until bypassing Federal infantry forced further withdrawal to Hillsboro Pike late in the afternoon.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fisk University and Jubilee Hall — 3.1 mi
  The 1866 school for freed people whose Jubilee Singers paid for Jubilee Hall, a National Historic Landmark, and whose students helped start Nashville's sit-ins.
• Tennessee State Capitol — 4.1 mi
  William Strickland's Greek Revival capitol on Nashville's Capitol Hill, finished in 1859 and built from the bottom up with the labor of enslaved men.
• Civil Rights Room at the Nashville Public Library — 4.2 mi
  A room in the downtown library with a circular lunch counter, a timeline and oral histories of the 1960 Nashville sit-ins, a few blocks from the stores where they began.
• National Museum of African American Music — 4.3 mi
  A downtown Nashville museum, opened in 2021, tracing gospel, blues, jazz, rhythm and blues and hip-hop through Black history from 1619 to 2016.

More markers nearby

• Preston Taylor — 1.4 mi
• Tennessee State Penitentiary — 1.5 mi
• Battle of Nashville: Harding Road — 1.7 mi
• National Negro High School Basketball Tournament — 1.9 mi