Massacre at Fort Pillow

5fish said:

Here is an interesting take on the Ft Pillow massacre. It is from the Southern point of view and some Southern eyewitnesses too and a Southern paper... One guy said the Color Troops were getting drunk before the fall...

https://www.historicalpublicationsllc.com/civilwarnews/the-atlanta-appeal-justifies-fort-pillow/article_225e4900-bf5f-11ed-98c7-5f3747cc9a11.html

Even acknowledging the bloodshed, the Confederate press sought to absolve Forrest of the Yankee libel that he had ordered a massacre and took up all lines of counterargument. Many of them can be seen in the following editorial of the Memphis/Atlanta Appeal.

The next day, with Confederates still holding the fort, two Northern vessels appeared offshore. A truce was arranged for the Federals to bury their dead and gather their wounded in and around the fort. These were put onboard one of the transports, the Platte Valley, which steamed upriver to the army hospital at Mound City, Illinois.18

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Oh SHIT, now all Hell is gonna break loose, I ain't gonna get in the middle of this one...again.

O' Be Joyful said:

Oh SHIT, now all Hell is gonna break loose, I ain't gonna get in the middle of this one...again.

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But, Obi... It's your thread!

diane said:

But, Obi... It's your thread!

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it is - looks like he wants to abandon it

diane said:

But, Obi... It's your thread!

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It'd like trying to argue w/ lost causers about who owned Ft. Sum(p)ter it's the no win star trek scenario, Kobiashi Maru. And Kirk cheated.

O' Be Joyful said:

It'd like trying to argue w/ lost causers about who owned Ft. Sum(p)ter it's the no win star trek scenario, Kobiashi Maru. And Kirk cheated.

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This is true - there's a lot to discuss about Ft Pillow that doesn't go that route, though! (Kirk - well, his baby mama did say he wasn't a Boy Scout.)

O' Be Joyful said:

argue w/ lost causers

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I am not a Lost Causer but the link has his biographer's opinions on the topic of Ft. Pillow. They tend to give Forrest a pass but I argue that he was the commanding officer on site(which he was) and is responsible for what his men did. He gets no pass because he did not even try to hold his men back. Nathan is clever and he knows the following:

Among the tons of articles on the subject, my favorite is still Albert Castel’s in Civil War History (March 1958). In it he quotes Dudley Cornish’s The Sable Arm (1956),in which the historian declares, “It has been asserted again and again that Forrest did not order a massacre.” Given the enemy garrison he faced—half Tennesseans-turned-traitor, the other half ex-slaves fighting their former masters—Cornish dismisses the whole thing by concluding, “he did not need to.”41

It was the first time Forrest's men fought and captured Color Troops so all the fears of slave uprising were there before them, slaves with guns and fellow turncoat Southerners working with them. I do dismiss Forrest's complicity in the event. He chose not to stop it. I could argue he wanted to send a message to all colored troops this would happen if you faced him. Forrest is clever and likes to play with the psychology of people. It is what Genghis
Khan would have done...

I like this "lost them"...

Truer was the statement that Forrest’s men had “lost them.” “Lost them” was a euphemistic phrase used by Confederate when they executed Union prisoners. In The War-Time Journal of a Georgia Girl (1908), Eliza Frances Andrews describes her conversation in late 1864 with a Southern soldier, Sam Weller, who told her how, after capturing some of Sherman’s men, they “just took ‘em out in the woods and lost ‘em.”

“It is not strange that negro prisoners were “lost,” the Appeal judged, and suggested that the black troops had been egged on by white officers, who deserved the same fate.

5fish said:

I am not a Lost Causer but the link has his biographer's opinions on the topic of Ft. Pillow. They tend to give Forrest a pass but I argue that he was the commanding officer on site(which he was) and is responsible for what his men did. He gets no pass because he did not even try to hold his men back. Nathan is clever and he knows the following:

Among the tons of articles on the subject, my favorite is still Albert Castel’s in Civil War History (March 1958). In it he quotes Dudley Cornish’s The Sable Arm (1956),in which the historian declares, “It has been asserted again and again that Forrest did not order a massacre.” Given the enemy garrison he faced—half Tennesseans-turned-traitor, the other half ex-slaves fighting their former masters—Cornish dismisses the whole thing by concluding, “he did not need to.”41

It was the first time Forrest's men fought and captured Color Troops so all the fears of slave uprising were there before them, slaves with guns and fellow turncoat Southerners working with them. I do dismiss Forrest's complicity in the event. He chose not to stop it. I could argue he wanted to send a message to all colored troops this would happen if you faced him. Forrest is clever and likes to play with the psychology of people. It is what Genghis
Khan would have done...

I like this "lost them"...

Truer was the statement that Forrest’s men had “lost them.” “Lost them” was a euphemistic phrase used by Confederate when they executed Union prisoners. In The War-Time Journal of a Georgia Girl (1908), Eliza Frances Andrews describes her conversation in late 1864 with a Southern soldier, Sam Weller, who told her how, after capturing some of Sherman’s men, they “just took ‘em out in the woods and lost ‘em.”

“It is not strange that negro prisoners were “lost,” the Appeal judged, and suggested that the black troops had been egged on by white officers, who deserved the same fate.

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There's a lot I can agree with there, and there is a little more on Forrest's side as to why he was at Ft Pillow in the first place. Sherman had ordered the fort closed as it was not needed but the commander of the district, Hurlbut, kept it open. There is a lot of dispute about why - many believe Hurlbut was profiting from smuggled goods and cotton which he denied. He had given orders, however, that this area of Tennessee be 'grubbed up', meaning hard times on the civilians there. Neither the Union or the Confederates could control outlaw elements of their armies, nor depredations by outlaw civilians. There was little law and order. Forrest had received several reams of complaints from various communities about the situation and had written to Union authorities about what was happening. One of these instances was the incredibly brutal murder of seven of his scouts and their lieutenant. The scouts were buried up to their heads and died like that, and the officer was tortured to death at his father's home. One of the units that was particularly hated was Hurst's Worst. Fielding Hurst used Ft Pillow as a launching base for his raids (as did Bradford), and had so far overstepped his authority that a court-martial was being set up for him. That didn't happen. Belle Edmonson's diary (she was a lady spy for Forrest and her brother one of his scouts) notes that nearly every day the locals would find a dead Union soldier, almost always colored. It was pretty sketchy around there for sure. If Confederate renegades didn't harass you, Union ones would! In fact, it was so bad the people in the area were begging Forrest to leave a brigade there to protect them. He couldn't possibly do that, of course. Forrest's mom had a plantation just above Ft Pillow, and the area was full of his kith and kin. This was a main reason for the orders to 'grub up' the place, to let Forrest's family know helping the rebels, particularly him, would gain little survival value. Sherman had made it a point to target Forrest's family, by the way. That made things very personal indeed.

Turning a blind eye may well have been what Forrest did. I don't think he ordered it but he certainly knew it might happen, and that he might well not be able to stop it if it did. The final charge took place without him, which was uncharacteristic, but he was in the rear being tended to by medics for broken ribs from his horse falling on him some time earlier. It's an unanswerable question as to the timing of his visit to the medics. Did his ribs finally cause too much pain and he couldn't lead the charge, or was it a convenient and perfectly legitimate reason to absent himself from something he knew might be very bad? Sherman, in his investigations, commented that Forrest was too far in the rear to hear what was going on inside the fort and considered that to be exonerating. When a messenger arrived, Forrest did mount up and go into the fort, arriving after a considerable amount of killing had already been done and had a very hard time stopping it from continuing. He drew both his sword and his pistol and promised to kill the next man who fired a shot. As the men knew by experience he would certainly do this, they stopped. He was totally unaware of what had happened at the bluffs, where most of the killing had happened. The commander directly on the field was Chalmers. Chalmers was the one who lost control of the men and did not stop it before it began. He doesn't get much mention as to blame, but being as he was the officer in command while his commander was absent, he should be given a solid share of the blame.

One of the big reasons Forrest was never charged with war crimes, and never had his day in court although he wanted it, was simple. Sherman had a lot of explaining to do!

None of this, however, changes the fact that a massacre took place within the battle and that it was thoroughly race motivated. Civilians took part in some of the grimmest atrocities that took place outside the fort, and this was activity that was outside Forrest's control. The foregoing is meant to explain, not exonerate Forrest. He was the general who planned and carried out the assault, and he did know it would be more than nasty.

5fish said:

I am not a Lost Causer but the link has his biographer's opinions on the topic of Ft. Pillow. They tend to give Forrest a pass but I argue that he was the commanding officer on site(which he was) and is responsible for what his men did. He gets no pass because he did not even try to hold his men back. Nathan is clever and he knows the following:

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you show me an anti forrest lost causer and i might consider reading the rest of your post


... btw, i really don't think @O' Be Joyful considers you a lost causer either

rittmeister said:

you show me an anti forrest lost causer and i might consider reading the rest of your post


... btw, i really don't think @O' Be Joyful considers you a lost causer either

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If you find an anti-Forrest Lost Causer, they will be riding a unicorn.

diane said:

If you find an anti-Forrest Lost Causer, they will be riding a unicorn.

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a pink unicorn but certainly not a grey hobbyhorse

I found this gem...from the highest ranking officer to survive the Ft. Pillow massacre.. he wrote a 17 pages account of the event... There is a link in the article to his account...


First Lieutenant Mack Leaming served in the 13th Tennessee Regiment in the Union Army. As the highest-ranking officer in his regiment to survive, Leaming wrote his regiment’s official report of the battle. Nearly thirty years later, he wrote a vivid seventeen-page account of the battle and its aftermath. It stands as testimony to the brutality and ruthlessness of the battle.

Here is the Leaming OR report... He was wounded he made the Mason's signal for help and one of the Confederate captains came to his aid...


In conclusion, it may not be altogether improper to state that I was one of the number wounded, at first considered mortally, after the surrender; and but. for the aid soon afterward extended to me by a Confederate captain, who was a member of an order to which I belong (Free Masonry), I would in all probability have shared the fate of many of my comrades who were murdered after having been wounded. This captain had me carried into a small shanty, where he gave me some brandy and water. He was soon ordered to his company, and I was carried by the rebels into the barracks which they had occupied during the most of the engagement. Here had been collected a great number of our wounded, some of whom had already died. Early the next morning these barracks were set on fire by order of a rebel officer, who had been informed that they contained Federal wounded. I was rendered entirely helpless from the nature of my wound, the ball having entered my right side, and ranging downward, grazed my lung. and deeply imbedded itself in my nip (where it still remains) out of easy reach of surgical instruments. In this condition I had almost given up every hope of being saved from a horrible death, when one of my own men, who was less severely wounded than myself, succeeded m drawing me out of the building, which the flames were then rapidly consuming

Ft. Pillow had no military value to General Forrest so why lose 14 men to give a message to colored troops and deserters enlisting in the Union army? He was sending a message to Color troops and turncoats in West Tennessee... It backfired...

The winning feeling that was experienced by the Confederates was short-lived as they abandoned the fort the same day as when they fought and died for it. The Confederates won the battle and gained control of literally nothing. Ft. Pillow was not a demographic jewel and had little to no value as a southern target.

Here is what Grant agrees with me:..

Later, in his Memoirs, Ulysses S. Grant, who was not present at the battle, wrote of the battle:

Forrest, however, fell back rapidly, and attacked the troops at Fort Pillow, a station for the protection of the navigation of the Mississippi River. The garrison consisted of a regiment of colored troops, infantry, and a detachment of Tennessee cavalry. These troops fought bravely, but were overpowered. I will leave Forrest in his dispatches to tell what he did with them.”The river was dyed,” he [Forrest] says, “with the blood of the slaughtered for two hundred yards. The approximate loss was upward of five hundred killed, but few of the officers escaping. My loss was about twenty killed. It is hoped that these facts will demonstrate to the Northern people that negro soldiers cannot cope with Southerners.” Subsequently, Forrest made a report in which he left out the part which shocks humanity to read.[20]

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Yes, Grant was appalled by what happened and he understood why it happened, the real why. Forrest showed the real Southern attitude - these people are dead because you tried to make soldiers of them and they couldn't handle us superior people, so stop it. That was something Grant knew but hadn't understood completely before USCT were utilized. He even picked up on it from his good friend Sherman, who resisted having black troops in his army but finally gave in saying he thought they could stop a bullet as well as a hay bale. Sherman was no better than Forrest with these prejudices. I give Grant a lot of credit for being ahead of his day in his racial views. Forrest came around in the last years of his life more than any other Confederate general. Lee never reprimanded his men for targeting almost exclusively black soldiers at the Crater, and Mahone didn't get the press on his neck for it. All over, the USCT knew they were going to be the first killed and the last rewarded, and they'd be fighting with both hands tied behind their backs by their white officers. They proved everything the slave owners thought about slavery was wrong - and that meant the premise for going to war was wrong, too. Ft Pillow had ramifications like no other battle.

5fish said:

Ft. Pillow had no military value to General Forrest so why lose 14 men to give a message to colored troops and deserters enlisting in the Union army? He was sending a message to Color troops and turncoats in West Tennessee... It backfired...

The winning feeling that was experienced by the Confederates was short-lived as they abandoned the fort the same day as when they fought and died for it. The Confederates won the battle and gained control of literally nothing. Ft. Pillow was not a demographic jewel and had little to no value as a southern target.

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This was part of a raid - either to destroy enemy property or take what they could not destroy. There was no aim to maintain control of points on a map.

Tom said:

This was part of a raid - either to destroy enemy property or take what they could not destroy. There was no aim to maintain control of points on a map.

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The point of the raid on Ft Pillow was, officially, to gain supplies from the fort. However, Forrest mentioned 'tending' to Ft Pillow, which meant something else completely. His objective was to remove a base for the 6th TN USA and the 13th TN USA. Both Hurst and Bradford were in trouble with Union authorities but little was done to actually stop their activities. The Hurst Nation, which was a Union stronghold consisting of Hurst's clan, was McNairy Co, not far from Memphis and near Forrest's childhood hometown of Selmer. Hurst was pretty close to being a war lord.

Confederate activity in the area had been noted as increasing for some time, but Hurlbut ignored it and so did Sherman. Lionel Booth and his Sixth Memphis Colored Artillery showed up but no backup. Booth asked for help - he was reading the situation right and believed the forces approaching to be larger than a raiding party. Big security failures by the Union. Hurlbut didn't think it was any serious threat, marauders perhaps - nothing that couldn't be handled easily. Didn't seem to remember the only Confederate who could get behind Union lines and operate effectively was Forrest.

Tom said:

This was part of a raid - either to destroy enemy property or take what they could not destroy. There was no aim to maintain control of points on a map.

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Forrest raid was not just by destroying but also to collect goods for the their war needs and Ft. Pillow does not fit what they were targeting. Ft. Pillow does meet any tactical or strategic value either.

Now Old Hurst was a Union man so you think he going to get good press in the South or by Lost Causers after the war... Hurst was not at Ft. Pillow...


Hurst swore to get even with the town before the war’s end. Confederates responded by personally targeting Hurst and his family for alleged depredations against civilians and soldiers, and he once barely escaped capture by Confederate forces. Confederate guerillas tortured and executed one of Hurst’s nephews and injured Fielding’s aged sister during a night raid on her home. Hurst retaliated by capturing those believed responsible and executed five prisoners, burying them as mile markers along the Old Stage Road leading to Purdy. Such acts drew the attention of the Confederate government to Hurst’s actions in West Tennessee, and Confederate Brigadier General Nathan Bedford Forrest swore revenge on what he considered the renegade Hurst’s wartime atrocities.

As conditions in West Tennessee deteriorated with the amplified internecine warfare, Hurst battled not only with Forrest and other guerillas but with Federal commanders who threatened to court-martial him for a growing number of complaints about his regiment’s conduct while conducting counterinsurgency operations. Nevertheless, they ordered Hurst to “grub up” West Tennessee and destroy Forrest who had returned in late 1863 to disrupt Union supply lines. As promised, Hurst subsequently returned to Jackson, set it ablaze, and proceeded to Brownsville, where he burned a sizeable number of suspected Confederate sympathizers’ homes and businesses. Forrest pursued Hurst throughout the spring of 1864 and forced the Sixth Tennessee Cavalry (USA) ignominiously back into Memphis.


The old town, consisting of a store, mill, and several houses, was located on each side of the Mill Creek Bridge, about one mile north of the current town. It was burned by the 6th Tennessee Union Cavalry under Col. Fielding Hurst on March 9, 1864. The post office was then moved to Dr. Arnold's store, which was near the corner of Middlefork Road (The Jackson-Saltillo Road) and Highway 22A (The Lexington-Purdy Road). Also on March 9, 1864 was the brutal murder of Lt. J. W. Dodds, who was on furlough from his unit, by a group from the 4th, 6th, and 7th Tennessee US Cavalries (Official Records War of the Rebellion, Serial 059 Page 0118 Chapter XLIV. CORRESPONDENCE, ETC.-UNION) "The murders committed are as follows: Lieutenant Willis Dodds, Company F, Colonel Newsom's regiment Tennessee volunteers, Forrest's command, under orders from his commanding officers, collecting his command, was arrested at the residence of his father in Henderson County, Tenn., on or about the 9th of March, 1864, by the command of Colonel Thornburgh, of the Federal army, on their march through this portion of the State eastward, and put to death by torture."Private Silas Hodges, a scout, acting under orders from Colonel Tansil, states that he saw the body of Lieutenant Dodds very soon after his murder, and that it was most horribly mutilated, the face having been skinned, the nose cut off, the under jaw disjointed, the privates cut off, and the body otherwise barbarously lacerated and most wantonly injured, and that his death was brought about by the most inhuman process of torture." Dodds is buried at Unity Baptist Church Cemetery, 2.5 miles south of Middle Fork. Units involved in the foray where Thornburgh's 4th Tenn. US Cavalry, Hurst's 6th Tenn US Cavalry, and Hawkin's 7th Tenn US Cavalry. On March 2, 1872 the Whig-Tribune of Jackson, Tennessee, mentioned that Johnson and Wiley Bowman, from the 7th Tenn US Cavalry, had been arrested in Missouri on the murder and jailed in Jackson, Tennessee, and were sent to Lexington, Tennessee for trial.

I found this long blow-by-blow from March of 1864 to December between Hurst and Forrest. Forrest was writing to Union Command about Hurst. The whole time Hurst was going around causing great evil in Tennessee and Mississippi. You now came to see the lead-up to the massacre at Ft. Pillow

It's under the Hurst Nation Marker: @diane

https://mcteer39.wordpress.com/preserving-history/historical-markers/

“Whereas it has come to the knowledge of the Maj. Gen. commanding that Col. Fielding Hurst . . .has been guilty of wanton extortion upon the citizens of Jackson, Tennessee and other places guilty of depredation upon private property, guilty of house burnings, guilty of murders, both of citizens and soldiers of the Confederate States . . . I therefore declare . . . (them) outlaws, and not entitled to be treated as prisoners of war . . . .” Forrest was never to personally capture Hurst, although men of his command still skirmished with the 6th Tennessee. On April 20, Gen. James R. Chalmers wrote that Col Neely had “. . . drove Hurst hatless into Memphis, leaving in our hands all his wagons, ambulances, papers, and his mistresses, both black and white.”


This is Dixierifle from the CWT website...

Battle of Ft Pillow - Overview

An Overview of the battle of April 12, 1864

www.custermen.com

.

6th Tennessee Cavalry (US) was also known as the 1st West Tennessee Cavalry under the command of Colonel Fielding Hurst. There was at least one casualty from this regiment at the Battle of Fort Pillow. One of the reasons for General Forrest's West Tennessee Raid in March-April 1864 was to try to hunt down Col. Fielding Hurst and his regiment, who were harassing the civilians and holding towns for ransom. The 6th Tennessee Cavalry narrowly escaped Forrest in a skirmish outside of Memphis.

Here is Bradford Battalion Cavalry...

14th Tennessee Cavalry Regiment – Tennessee & the Civil War

On February 2, 1864, Major Bradford, commanding the 13th Tennessee Cavalry, was ordered to move with his entire command and occupy Fort Pillow. Adjutant Leaming reported they reached Fort Pillow on February 8, where they were instructed to use all diligence in recruiting and mounting, with authorization “to impress horses from both the loyal and the disloyal, giving vouchers only to those who might furnish unmistakable evidence of their loyalty to the Government of the United States.” By April 1, a fifth company, under Captain Poston, was ready for muster into U. S. Service, and the company was ordered to report to Memphis for mustering. By this time, April 10, Fort Pillow was being threatened by Confederate forces under Major General Nathan B. Forrest, and, at the request of Major L. F. Booth, 6th U.S. Heavy Artillery, Colored, then commanding the post, the company remained to assist in the defense of Fort Pillow.

http://www.civilwararchive.com/Unreghst/untncav.htm#14thcav


Organized December, 1863. Consolidated to a Company April, 1864, and assigned to 14th Tennessee Cavalry as Company "A," then to 6th Tennessee Cavalry as Company "E."

SERVICE.--Attached to District of Cairo, Dept. of the Tennessee. At Paducah, Ky., January, 1864. Ordered to Fort Pillow, Tenn., February 4, 1864, and garrison duty there until April. Forest's attack on and massacre at Fort Pillow April 12.

5fish said:

Forrest raid was not just by destroying but also to collect goods for the their war needs and Ft. Pillow does not fit what they were targeting.

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400 rifles, six pieces of artillery, 200 horses and quartermaster stores valued at $100,000.