Battle of Nashville: Redoubt No. 5

After dark on December 15, 1864, Hood withdrew nearly two miles south. Stewart's corps, outnumbered about ten to one on the left, had been wrecked, and reinforcements from Lee's corps covered its retreat. The new line was anchored on the east at Peach Orchard Hill; its west flank ran along hills south from Compton's Hill, soon called Shy's Hill for Col. William M. Shy of the 20th Tennessee, who died defending it. Lee held the right, Stewart the center and Cheatham the left, with dry-stack stone walls in the center.

What the plaque says

Battle of Nashville Hood's Redoubt No. 5 was on this hill. Couch's Division of the XXIII Corps, sweeping to the south of the route of Smith's XVI, captured it and the hills to the east late in the afternoon. Wilson's cavalry, crossing the highway about 2 miles south, advanced rapidly eastward, flanking the Confederate defenses.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fort Negley — 4.4 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 — 5.2 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.
• Fisk University and Jubilee Hall — 5.2 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.
• Civil Rights Room at the Nashville Public Library — 5.2 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.

More markers nearby

• Battle of Nashville: Redoubt No. 4 — 0.5 mi
• Battle of Nashville: Redoubt No. 3 — 1.3 mi
• Confederate Defenses — 1.5 mi
• Homes of David Lipscomb — 1.8 mi