FORT PILLOW MASSACRE (1864)
On April 12, 1864, some 3,000 rebels under the command of Nathan Bedford Forrest overran Fort Pillow, a former Confederate stronghold situated on a bluff on the Tennessee bank of the Mississippi, some 40 miles north of Memphis. The garrison consisted of about 600 Union soldiers, roughly evenly divided between runaway slaves-turned-artillerists from nearby Tennessee communities and white Southern Unionist cavalry mostly from East Tennessee. Under a flag of truce which his men violated by creeping up on the fort, Forrest demanded the garrison’s surrender, threatening that if it refused he would not be responsible for the actions of his men. Believing Forrest was bluffing, Bradford refused, whereupon the Confederates swarmed over the parapet.
The overwhelmed garrison fled down the bluff to the river, where they were caught in a deadly crossfire. Forrest’s men continued to shoot well after the Federals had thrown down their weapons, and many men were killed in hospital tents or as they begged for mercy. By the next morning only about 65 blacks had survived a massacre that had continued intermittently through the night. More than seventy percent of the white survivors would perish in rebel prisons. The Confederates lost about 18 killed.
Northern Radicals seized on the massacre to inflame a wavering Northern public. Though Forrest initially described the river as “dyed with the blood of the slaughtered for 200 yards,” and his field commander bragged that his men had taught “the mongrel garrison” a memorable lesson, Forrest and his staff later either denied there was a massacre or blamed it on the garrison itself.
The Fort Pillow affair became a target of Southern revisionists, and many reference works balk at deeming the battle a massacre. But recent accounts drawn from primary sources conclude emphatically that a massacre did indeed transpire, and that Forrest’s field officers did little to stop it, for which Forrest himself bears the ultimate responsibility.
-
15:00
HistoricalUSA
5 months ago $0.01 earnedThe SHOCKING MASSACRE at Fort William Henry 1757
46 -
14:04
Bumpkin Stuff Adventures
1 year ago $0.02 earnedConfederate graves and Butterfield Overland Stage Station.
1974 -
12:21
ozzardofwoz
1 year agoApril 12, 1861: How Honest Abe Forced the South to Fire the First Shot on Fort Sumter, SC
185 -
0:39
DreamImage TerrorTales
10 months agoGhosts of Gettysburg: Haunted Triangular Field and Eerie Confederate Apparitions
26 -
24:03
Forgotten History Channel
6 months ago $0.08 earnedThe Wounded Knee MASSACRE - Forgotten History
1.17K7 -
5:17
I Read Classic Comic Books
1 year agoThe Sioux Massacres
23 -
1:57
jamesbigleyranches
5 months ago $0.05 earnedThe Fetterman Massacre
28 -
5:10
Cryptic Tales
3 months agoHaunted Gettysburg Civil War's Bloodiest Battle
31 -
20:34
The Edge
8 months agoUtah's Dark Secret: The Mountain Meadows Massacre
581 -
6:07
DocumentariesBrainFood
1 year agoFort Necessity 1754 French And Indian War
24