FRANKLIN — A state grant of $960,000 was awarded Wednesday to help preserve part of a Civil War battleground upon which a strip mall currently exists. The money, awarded by the Tennessee Department of Transportation as an enhancement grant, is to help purchase the property so that preservationists can install a small park.

The one-acre site on the corner of Columbia and Cleburne streets is near a former cotton gin and the Carter House. Historians describe it as the epicenter of the Battle of Franklin where Union and Confederate forces met Nov. 30, 1864....