Battle of Nashville: Lafayette Street

Steedman's detachment included two brigades of United States Colored Troops. On December 16, 1864, the 13th USCT, trailing in the Second Colored Brigade, went into the Peach Orchard Hill fight essentially alone, reached the Confederate parapet, and lost a flag and 220 officers and men, about 40 percent of its strength. A battalion of the 44th USCT, captured earlier at Dalton, Georgia, was stripped of shoes, overcoats and hats by Confederates at Nashville, treatment white prisoners did not receive. The Tennessee Encyclopedia notes that Black soldiers were part of the assaulting force against Cheatham on December 15.

What the plaque says

Battle of Nashville From a line of departure running NE-SW through here, Maj. Gen. Steedman's Provisional Detachment of 6 brigades at 6:00 a.m. launched a holding attack southwestward against the Confederate right, on high ground about 2 miles south. The main attack, about 5 miles west enveloped the Confederate left after an all-day fight.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fort Negley — 0.8 mi
  The largest inland stone fort of the Civil War, built in 1862 on St. Cloud Hill by more than 2,700 conscripted Black laborers, hundreds of whom died.
• National Museum of African American Music — 1.3 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.
• Ryman Auditorium — 1.3 mi
  The 1892 brick tabernacle in downtown Nashville that was the Grand Ole Opry's home from 1943 to 1974, now a National Historic Landmark and working concert hall.
• Civil Rights Room at the Nashville Public Library — 1.5 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.

More markers nearby

• Hubbard House — steps away
• Cameron-Trimble & Black Self-Emancipation / Education for Black Empowerment — steps away
• Tom Wilson Park — 0.3 mi
• City Cemetery — 0.4 mi