Seventy miles south of Bowling Green, at the Cumberland River, and occupying the hills adjoining both banks, is Nashville, the capital and largest city of Tennessee, having eighty thousand population. It is in an admirable situation, and is known as the "Rock City," its most prominent building, the State Capitol, standing upon an abrupt yet symmetrical hill, rising like an Indian mound and overlooking the entire city, its high tower seen from afar. In the grounds are the tomb of President James K. Polk, who died in 1849 and whose home was in Nashville, and a fine bronze equestrian statue of General Andrew Jackson, the most famous Tennesseean, whose residence, the Hermitage, was eleven miles to the eastward. Nashville has considerable manufactures, but is chiefly known as the leading educational city of the South. The most prominent institution is the Vanderbilt University, attended by eight hundred students and endowed by Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt with $1,000,000, his colossal statue, unveiled in 1897, standing on the campus. The University of Nashville, originally begun by charter of the North Carolina Legislature as an Academy in 1785, has four hundred students in its Normal Department, which trains teachers for Southern schools, and as many more in its Medical Department. There are also the Fisk University, Roger Williams University, and Central Tennessee College, all endowments for colored students and having about thirteen hundred in attendance. The city has various other educational institutions and public buildings, and in the southwestern suburbs is the famous Belle Meade stock-farm, where was bred Iroquois, the only American horse that was a winner of the English Derby. Nashville was in the midst of the Civil War, and four miles to the northward is a National Cemetery with over sixteen thousand soldiers' graves. The great battle of Nashville was fought just south of the city December 15 and 16, 1864. In November of that year General Sherman had captured Atlanta, Georgia, to the southeast, and the Confederate General Hood, who had lost it, marched in Sherman's rear northward and began an invasion of Tennessee, advancing upon Nashville and forcing General George H. Thomas to fall back within its fortifications south of the Cumberland. For two weeks little was done, the weather preventing, but Thomas suddenly attacked, and in the two days' battle worsted Hood and put his army to flight, pursuing them over the boundary into Alabama, where the remnants escaped across the Tennessee River, a demoralized rabble. Hood's army being thus destroyed, Sherman, who had been waiting at Atlanta, began his famous march to the sea.