In
April, 1864, General Nathan Forrest
and his men captured Fort Pillow in Jackson, Tennessee. The fort contained
262 African American and 295 white soldiers. It was afterwards claimed
that most of these soldiers were killed after they surrendered.
Abraham Lincoln condemned the atrocity
but refused to agree to the demands of William
Seward (Secretary of State), Salmon Chase
(Secretary of the Treasury), Gideon Welles
(Secretary of the Navy) and Edwin M. Stanton
(Secretary of War), that an equal number of Confederate prisoners
should be executed in an act of revenge.
After the war an official investigation discovered evidence that "the
Confederates were guilty of atrocities which included murdering most
of the garrison after it surrendered, burying Negro soldiers alive,
and setting fire to tents containing Federal wounded." However,
N was never prosecuted for the offence and he went on to become the
first Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.
(1)
Harper's Weekly, (30th
April, 1864)
On
the 12th April, the rebel General Forrest appeared before Fort Pillow,
near Columbus, Kentucky, attacking it with considerable vehemence.
This was followed up by frequent demands for its surrender, which
were refused by Major Booth, who commanded the fort. The fight was
then continued up until 3 p.m., when Major Booth was killed, and the
rebels, in large numbers, swarmed over the intrenchments. Up to that
time comparatively few of our men had been killed; but immediately
upon occupying the place the rebels commenced an indiscriminate butchery
of the whites and blacks, including the wounded. Both white and black
were bayoneted, shot, or sabred; even dead bodies were horribly mutilated,
and children of seven and eight years, and several negro women killed
in cold blood. Soldiers unable to speak from wounds were shot dead,
and their bodies rolled down the banks into the river. The dead and
wounded negroes were piled in heaps and burned, and several citizens,
who had joined our forces for protection, were killed or wounded.
Out of the garrison of six hundred only two hundred remained alive.
Three hundred of those massacred were negroes; five were buried alive.
Six guns were captured by the rebels, and carried off, including tow
10-pound Parrotts, and two 12-pound howitzers. A large amount of stores
was destroyed or carried away.
(2)
Harper's
Weekly, (18th February, 1865)
With a fine tact of simple
honesty the President, in his little speech at the opening of the
Fair in Baltimore, said exactly what we all wished to hear. The massacre
at Fort Pillow had raised the question in every mind, does the United
States mean to allow its soldiers to be butchered in cold blood? The
President replies, that whoever is good enough to fight for us is
good enough to be protected by us: and that in this case, when the
facts are substantiated, there shall be retaliation. In what way we
can retaliate it is not easy to say.
There is no evidence from Richmond, and there will be none, that Forrest’s
murders differ from those of Quantrell. On the other hand, we must
not forget that the same papers which brought the President’s
speech promising retaliation brought us also the return of the rebel
General in Florida, containing, for the relief of friends at home,
the names and injuries of our wounded men in his hands, and the list
included the colored soldiers of the Fifty-fourth and Fifty-fifth
Massachusetts regiments. But if public opinion has justified a stronger
policy from the beginning - if the criminally stupid promises of M’Clellan
and Halleck to protect slavery and to repel the negroes coming to
our lines had never been made, we should not now be confronted with
this question, because the rebels would never have dared to massacre
our soldiers after surrender. But yet to be deterred from retaliation
from fear of still further crimes upon the part of the rebels is simple
inhumanity.
Let us either at once release every colored soldier and the officer
of their regiments from duty, or make the enemy feel that they are
our soldiers. It is very sad that rebel prisoners of war should be
shot for the crimes of Forrest. But it is very sad, no less, that
soldiers fighting for our flag have been buried alive after surrendering,
and it is still sadder that such barbarities should be encouraged
by refraining from retaliation. Do we mean to allow Mr. Jefferson
Davis, or this man Forrest, or Quantrell, to dictate who shall, and
who shall not, fight for the American flag? The massacre at Fort Pillow
is a direct challenge to our Government to prove whether it is in
earnest or not in emancipating slaves and employing colored troops.
There should be no possibility of mistake in the reply. Let the action
of the Government be as prompt and terrible as it will be final. Then
the battles of this campaign will begin with the clear conviction
upon the part of the rebels that we mean what we say; and that the
flag will protect to the last, and by every means of war, including
retaliation of blood, every soldier who fights for us beneath it.
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