River Run Red

“Strange to say after five hours constant firing,” wrote Sergeant Achilles Clark of the 20th Tennessee, ”the Yankees had not killed a single one” of Russell’s men, “and wounded only a very few,” though one of them was the popular Captain J. Cardwell Wilson of Henry County, who had fallen within sixty yards of the fort, shot through the lungs “while charging at the head of his company.” Carried eighteen miles to a farm and guarded by two of his men, Clark would die six days later.²

Rather than try to break through the garrison’s defenses or risk the landing of Union reinforcements, Forrest finally turned to Chalmers and said, “We’d better give them a chance to surrender.” “It was the plain duty of the Federal commander,” wrote Barteau, “in view of the situation, to yield to the demand and thus save human life.”³

Once the ordnance wagons arrived after their slow, muddy progress from Brownsville, and his men had at last refilled their cartridge boxes, Forrest commanded his bugler to signal a truce. As Bradford ordered his garrison to cease firing and his brother Ted signaled the New Era to stay put, Chalmers assigned the task of carrying his surrender demand to his adjutant general, Captain Walter A. Goodman, whom the little Mississippian described as “a man of brilliant intellect, cool in battle and untiring in his devotion to the cause and the discharge of his duty.”⁴

Headquarters Confederate Cavalry,

Near Fort Pillow, April 12, 1864.

The conduct of the officers and men garrisoning Fort Pillow has been such as to entitle them to being treated as prisoners of war. I demand the unconditional surrender of this garrison, promising you that you shall be treated as prisoners of war. My men have received a fresh supply of ammunition, and from their present position can easily assault and capture the fort. Should my demand be refused, I cannot be responsible for the fate of your command. (Signed)

N. B. Forrest to Major L. F. Booth, Commanding U. S. Forces.⁵

“When the note was handed to me,” Goodman recalled, “there was some discussion about it” among Forrest’s officers, “and it was asked whether it was intended to include the negro soldiers as well as the white; to which both General Forrest and General Chalmers replied that it was so intended; and that if the fort was surrendered, the whole garrison, white and black, would be treated as prisoners of war.” This, at least, is the message Forrest wanted Goodman to convey. But it is doubtful whether the Wizard was sincere, for later, in defending the reenslavement of his black prisoners, he would insist that he was merely following a Confederate policy that he had neither the power nor the right to defy.⁶

“Tie your handkerchief on a stick,” Chalmers instructed Goodman, “and we will put you over the wall. Tell Major Booth that General Forrest desires to avoid any sacrifice of life, and therefore will give him an opportunity to surrender.” But if Booth refused, “say to him, ‘The men are in no humor to be brought face-to-face with the negro soldiers who have insulted their families.’”⁷

Goodman did not have to go far to deliver Forrest’s surrender demand. Flanked by his bodyguards—Captain Tom Henderson of the scouts and Lieutenant Frank Rodgers of Forrest’s Old Regiment—Goodman drew to a halt just to the left of McCulloch’s position on the most elevated stretch of the entrenchment, where he was met by Lieutenant Mack J. Leaming, Captain John T. Young, Captain Theodorick Bradford, and four troopers.⁸

Forrest proceeded to an eminence four hundred yards from the fort to await Bradford’s reply. The garrison’s delegation took the surrender demand back to Bradford, who replied within a few minutes with a note of his own, “almost illegibly written with a pencil, on a soiled scrap of paper, transmitted without envelope.”

“Desiring to conceal from the enemy the fact of the death of Major Booth” and convince Forrest that Booth “was still in command,” explained his adjutant, Lieutenant Leaming, “it was deemed not only proper but advisable that I append his name to the communication.”¹⁰

It was certainly improper, and no less inadvisable. By sustaining this fiction, Bradford may merely have intended to mislead Forrest about the garrison’s losses. Possibly he hoped to obtain better terms than he could hope for in his own name, although it is a tossup whether Forrest would have been more contemptuous of Bradford or an officer of black artillery. Bradford may have seen some indefinable advantage in pretending, as Duckworth had done at Union City, that a superior officer was present. But Bradford was also thinking of the cautionary example of Colonel Hawkins falling for the rebels’ bluff at Union City and the inspiring example set by the defiant Colonel Hicks at Paducah. “Brave to a fault” and not fully cognizant of his peril, Bradford refused to be intimidated by Forrest’s threat.¹¹

Goodman cantered back to deliver Forrest’s response as Forrest himself and several other officers watched from a distance. “If I am compelled to butt my men against their works,” Forrest grumbled to his officers, “it will be bad for them.”¹²

Goodman mildly replied that his fellow officers “had noticed it themselves, and had it stopped; that it was unintentional on their part, and that it should not be repeated.” The garrison’s officers apparently did not demand that the rebels withdraw from the positions they had obtained during the truce, and it is almost inconceivable that Forrest would have acceded to such a demand if they had. The damage was done.¹⁴

As the two delegations awaited Booth’s reply, one of the Union officers “who had remained with the flag expressed the belief that Forrest was not present,” and that like Duckworth at Union City, one of his subordinate officers was posing as the Wizard himself. Another Federal stated that he was acquainted with General Forrest by sight, and demanded that the general show himself. Captain Young himself would recall that “a majority of the officers of the garrison doubted whether General Forrest was present, and had the impression that it was a ruse to induce the surrender of the fort.” No doubt with a sigh of annoyance, Goodman commanded one of his subordinates, Captain Tom Henderson, to ride back to Forrest and suggest to the general “that the enemy might surrender sooner if he were to go forward and satisfy them of his presence.”¹⁵

Forrest impatiently spurred his horse “to the spot where the flag stood and was presented to Captain Young of the 24th Missouri Infantry and also the party who claimed to know the General.” As Forrest galloped out into plain view, “exposing himself to the fort,” he was greeted by a cacophony of “insults and physical gestures from its occupants.”¹⁶

The Union officers “both remarked that they had no longer any doubt” of Forrest’s presence, and yet according to Young many of Bradford’s men would remain convinced “that General Forrest was not in the vicinity of the fort.” They should have consulted some of their artillerists, like the former table servant Willis Ligon, who recognized Forrest from his slave-trading rounds.¹⁷

As Forrest returned to his position on the knoll, Captain Charles Anderson rode up from his station at the mouth of the ravine to report that he had spotted smoke from Union boats downriver and, peering through his telescope, had seen that one was “crowded from forecastle to hurricane deck with Federal soldiers.” Forrest ordered Anderson to position two companies of McCulloch’s brigade on a bluff overlooking the river “within sixty yards of the south entrance of the fort.” Anderson’s sharpshooters descended one of the paths that crisscrossed the face of the bluff and stationed themselves in rifle pits, some of which were washed out, others aswamp with mud and clay clods from the bluff above, as the Yankee steamboats puffed upriver.¹⁸

The garrison’s next reply confirmed the Wizard’s growing suspicion that its officers were merely stalling for time. Still posing as Booth, Bradford asked for an hour more in which to consider Forrest’s terms and to confer with Captain Marshall about surrendering the New Era. Forrest suspected that any consultation with the captain of the New Era would merely be a ploy to arrange the garrison’s rescue or reinforcement. “The gunboat had ceased firing,” according to Forrest’s official account, “and the smoke of three other boats ascending the river was in view, the foremost boat apparently crowded with troops; and believing the request for an hour was to gain time for reinforcements to arrive, and that the desire to consult the officers of the gunboat was a pretext by which they desired improperly to communicate with her, I at once sent a reply by Captain Goodman, who bore the flag, directing him to remain until he received a reply, or until the expiration of the time proposed.”¹⁹

Bradford was no longer counting on the New Era, trapped as she was upstream, but on two Yankee vessels—the steamer Liberty and the gunboat Olive Branch—with their cargoes of infantry and artillery. “After our men had been fighting about four hours, and were pretty well tired out,” wrote Charley Robinson, “the smoke of a steamboat was seen down the river.”²⁰

“You have done well, my boys,” declared Bradford. “Hold out a little longer for there is a boat coming with reinforcements, and if we can hold the place a little longer, we’ll have plenty of help, as there is a thousand soldiers on the boat.”

Robinson would “never forget the glad shout that went up from the little Fort on this announcement nor will I forget how sad we all felt when the boat passed by & never offered to land.” The boat in question was the steamer Liberty carrying a cargo of hundreds (not a thousand) troops, and though it paused by the bar to evacuate the few refugees still huddled inside the coal barge, after a volley from the rebels it continued downstream.²¹

Here Brigadier General George Foster Shepley of Maine, recently dismissed military governor of Louisiana, makes a gratuitous appearance. A small man with a receding hairline and a long but sparse Vandyke, he was probably responsible for much of the corruption in New Orleans for which Ben Butler had been blamed; at one point, either out of frustration or in exchange for a bribe, he issued a blanket pardon that emptied Louisiana’s prisons of its most dangerous criminals. With Hurlbut’s extortionist command at Memphis and Brayman’s scandal-ridden regime at Cairo, Shepley’s inept and corrupt administration was an integral part of the Union army’s squalid continuum along the Mississippi.²²

Ordered to leave New Orleans and report to Grant, on April 6 Shepley had journeyed up the Mississippi aboard the steamer Olive Branch with 150 women and children. “The steamer was unarmed,” Shepley testified, “and had no troops and no muskets for protection against guerillas when landing at wood yards and other places.” After a pause at Vicksburg, Shepley returned to the Olive Branch to find that one Ohio and one Missouri battery with 120 men plus “horses, guns, caissons, wagons, tents, and baggage” had boarded “with orders, as I afterwards learned on inquiring, to report to General Brayman, at Cairo.”

Shepley was discomfited. “The horses occupied all the available space, fore and aft, on the sides of the boilers and machinery, which were on deck. The guns, caissons, baggage wagons, tents, garrison and camp equipage, were piled up together on the bows, leaving only space for the gang plank,” and yet none of the artillerists had small arms, “so that when the boat landed, as happened in one instance at a wood yard where guerillas had just passed, the pickets thrown out to prevent surprise were necessarily unarmed.” ²³

Two and a half miles from Fort Pillow, a party of women had hailed the Olive Branch from the shore to report that “the rebels had attacked Fort Pillow and captured two boats on the river, and would take us if we went on.” Captain B. Rushmore Pegram of the Olive Branch tried to heed their warning and head back down to Memphis. But Shepley, ignoring the boat owner’s pleas for the safety of his craft and the welfare of the women and children among his passengers, countermanded Pegram’s order. Spotting the small Ohio steamer Hope approaching without passengers, the general ordered her captain “to cast off the coal barges he had in tow,” Shepley testified, “and take me on board with a section of a battery to go to Fort Pillow.” But just as the captain began to “disencumber his boat of the coal barges,” Shepley flagged down a larger steamboat called the M. R. Cheek, “and went aboard myself with Captain Thornton, of my staff, and Captain Williams, the ranking officer of the batteries,” some of which they began to transfer from the Olive Branch to the Cheek.

Suddenly yet another boat steamed into view from upriver, this one crowded with infantry. Shepley and his officers “could not distinguish at first whether they were Union or rebel soldiers.” Suspecting that the steamer might be one of the boats that the women had claimed that Forrest had captured, Shepley ordered Pegram to swing the Olive Branch out into the river and overtake the boat. But when the mystery boat drew nearer, they saw it was the Union steamer Liberty with “United States infantry soldiers on board.”

So Shepley and his staff reboarded the Olive Branch and continued upstream with the two steamers following in her wake. As they neared Fort Pillow, “some stragglers or guerrillas fired from the shore with musketry,” apparently prompting one of the steamers to fall back.

In fact, these were Anderson’s sharpshooters, sent up the riverbank to fire two or three “admonitory” rounds at the Olive Branch’s pilothouse. From their position on the bluff, well south of the parapet, they had spotted the steamers approaching. “The channel of the Mississippi River at Fort Pillow runs close under the bluff,” and as the foremost steamer, the Olive Branch, drew near, Anderson ordered two of his men to fire at her pilothouse. The second shot “secured attention at once,” Anderson recalled, and the Olive Branch veered off toward the bar across the river, followed by the Hope and the M. R. Cheek.²⁵

As they reached the New Era, whose engines balked and groaned mid-current more than a mile from Fort Pillow, Shepley could see that the Union flag was still flying from the parapet. An officer from the New Era rowed up to the Olive Branch in a skiff and urged Shepley to continue to Cairo and tell Brayman to send Captain Marshall more ordnance.

Shepley concluded “that the captain of the Olive Branch was not only justified in going on, but bound to proceed” because he would have been “incapable of rendering any assistance, being entirely defenseless. If any guns could have been placed in position on the boat, they could not have been elevated to reach sharpshooters on the high steep bluff outside the fort.” None of which explains why Shepley did not at least stop the Liberty either to confer or to order artillery positioned on the sandbar, thus affording his gunners a more effective angle of fire.²⁶

On the other hand, his timidity and the evasive action of his impotent armada contradict rebel reports that at the time of the truce Yankee boats crowded with troops and artillery were “steaming toward the fort, intent on going to the rescue of the beleaguered garrison,” for the Liberty had already passed out of sight with its cargo of infantry, the New Era never budged, and a couple of rounds from Anderson’s sharpshooters had convinced the remaining Union boats to veer away from the fort and flee.²⁷

The rebels justified Anderson’s violation of the truce by accusing the garrison of not signaling the truce to Shepley, when in fact Shepley saw the flag flying from the river. “The Confederate detachments which went to the riverbank, moreover,” wrote Henry, “did not put themselves in better position for the assault. They put themselves entirely out of that part of the action.” But this is sophistry. The reason they scuttled down to the river was to keep the gunboats and reinforcements at bay and thus facilitate the assault, a movement as vital to the success of the attack as any other.²⁸

Shepley had a general’s aptitude for shifting blame, and certainly there was enough to go around. “Coming from New Orleans, and having no knowledge of affairs in that military district,” he testified, “we had no means of knowing or suspecting that so strong a position,” with “uninterrupted water communication above and below,” had not been adequately garrisoned, “when it was in Constant communication with General Hurlbut at Memphis.” And yet as military governor of Louisiana, Shepley must have or certainly should have known about Forrest’s raids along the Mississippi and the weakness of the Union’s river forts.

Though he told Brayman that he had seen the Union flag go down, Shepley would not venture to guess whether it had been lowered by the garrison or shot from its halyard. “We supposed the object of the rebels was rather to seize a boat to effect a crossing into Arkansas, than to capture the fort.” Had it not been “for the appearance of the Liberty,” Shepley insisted, “I should have attempted a landing at Fort Pillow in the small steamer. If any intimation had been given from the gunboat, or the shore, I should have landed personally from the Olive Branch.” But, he said, “the order given to the contrary prevented it,” though Shepley could have overruled Marshall just as he had overruled Pegram an hour before, or acted independently from the bar, or, for that matter, at least sent one of his steamers downstream to retrieve the Liberty’s infantrymen, land them upriver, and try to reinforce the garrison.²⁹

Instead he ordered the Olive Branch to continue upriver, and as it steamed toward Craighead Point, skipper Charles C. G. Thornton “went to the stern of our boat” and saw that the New Era had “steamed up a little ways, as I supposed for the purpose of firing upon the right flank of the rebels.” Thornton “could see a line of fire or smoke in the woods, which we supposed to be from the musketry of the rebels. We then saw a flag raised up on a pole at the fort, I should think ten or twelve feet high. I supposed that our flag had been shot away, and they were raising it again,” for the garrison’s gunfire was “pretty heavy, while the fire of the enemy appeared to be from musketry.” But by the time he testified a week later, he had “no doubt” that it was the rebel flag he had seen raised, “after the fort was taken.” However, the rebel flag was not raised until perhaps half an hour after the attack, by which time the Olive Branch had turned around Craighead Point.³⁰

Second Lieutenant John C. Akerstrom of 13/A served as the post’s quartermaster general. But he was a murky figure, his name given in some records as John G. and in others as Charles J. He was apparently from New York, but in trying to account for his particularly horrible fate at Fort Pillow, some said he had been recognized by Forrest’s men as a deserter from the rebel army, or in any case as a native of West Tennessee. “Mr. Akerstrom was in his office down under the hill after the flag of truce was in,” observed James McCoy from the deck of the New Era. Akerstrom “made some signs for us to come to him.” Other accounts maintain that it was Ted Bradford and not Akerstrom who had signaled; perhaps they both did: Akerstrom from below, trying to get the New Era’s attention; Ted Bradford from above, trying to beckon back the Liberty.³¹

“After their commander, Major Bradford, had given General Forrest the double cross,” goes one rebel account, “and had carried on peace negotiations with him while making arrangements with the gunboats for assistance, every man in our command felt that the Federals had put themselves outside the pale of consideration—yet Forrest’s men were considerate.” But if Shepley and Thornton told the truth—though it is by no means certain that they did—and the garrison did not signal to the Olive Branch, and the Olive Branch, in turn, saw the flag of truce flying, it would debunk one of Forrest’s counterclaims of Union truce violations that he later made in response to the overwhelming Yankee testimony about Confederate truce violations. ³²

By now the rebels assumed that the garrison would surrender. “Fort Pillow, at least after the Confederates secured possession of the rifle-pits and huts near the parapet, was untenable,” wrote Forrest’s authorized biographers, “and consequently its defense unjustifiable. Indeed, we know of no instance of such manifest indefensibility.” Not only were the Yankees outnumbered; “every foot” of the fort “was completely enfiladed and swept by Confederate sharp-shooters.” In addition, the inner fort was so small and densely crowded “that a sharp-shooter’s bullet could scarcely miss an object, and the jeopardy of the men was the more fearfully augmented.” In fact, according to Jordan and Pryor, Forrest could have established his men under cover at good rifle range and made the work untenable without attempting to storm it. Which begs the question of why Forrest stormed it in the end, especially if it meant losing many more of his men.³³

Nor do these contentions jibe with the garrison’s relatively few dead and wounded. Had the defenders been able to continue firing—rather than holding off during the hour-long truce that enabled Forrest’s men to consolidate, reload their cartridge boxes, rest, consume the garrison’s comestibles, and advance toward the parapets without risking fire from the garrison—they might have held out at least until nightfall, which, had they been better served by the gunboats, may have been long enough to receive reinforcements or arrange an evacuation. Nathan Fulks of the 13th believed “we would have whipped them if the flag of truce had not come in,” and if “we had not let them get the dead-wood on us.”³⁴

Nothing in the story of Fort Pillow is more fraught with confusion and casuistry than the question of whether Forrest’s men violated the truce by crawling forward and improving their positions. A large number of Union witnesses would maintain that they did, but various Southern historians and Confederate veterans of the battle dismissed the charge, citing as proof the fact that by the time of the truce the rebels had already occupied the positions they were accused of subsequently obtaining by deception.³⁵

These accounts refer to ravines, ditches, rifle pits, and entrenchments, and some sources use these terms almost interchangeably. There were two primary ravines involved: the one that led from the junction of the Ripley and Fulton roads down to the river, and another just north of the parapet that ran down to the mouth of Coal Creek; and there is no question that by the time of the truce, some Confederate cavalry had occupied both positions. There is also no doubt that by then other rebel troopers had advanced into the second entrenchment that had been excavated during rebel occupation. But between this entrenchment and the fort lay a series of rifle pits—elongated foxholes, most of them—recently dug by Booth; and finally, along the base of the parapet itself, separated from the wall by a narrow ledge, ran a ditch six to eight feet deep and twelve to fourteen feet wide.

Daniel Rankin has been criticized for first testifying that during the siege the rebels took possession “of our rifle-pits” and then accusing Forrest’s men of sneaking into the “ditch” during the truce. But by “rifle-pits” he meant the positions the garrison’s sharpshooters occupied after the pickets were driven in, and by “ditch” he meant the trench that ran along the base of the Yankee bastion’s exterior.

A number of rebels did indeed infiltrate some of the rifle pits that morning. French and his men occupied a position in the northern ravine, and a detachment of McCulloch’s sharpshooters had taken positions among the three rows of barracks south of the breastwork. But a denial based solely on the fact that some of the rebels already held some of the positions in question cannot preclude the possibility that more men scuttled up the slope and crowded into such positions when the flag of truce was flying, especially when the rebel officers who bore the flag of truce blandly admitted to having observed their men doing just that.

The evidence that while the white flag was still flying Forrest’s men fitfully continued to advance, and were joined in this transgression by more and more of their comrades, is overwhelming. Among the most credible Federal witnesses was Commissary Sergeant Daniel Stamps of 13/E. A crack shot, he had led a squad of sharpshooters outside the works to prevent the rebels from taking positions in the abandoned picket posts around the fort. “We fired very deliberately while we were outside of the fort,” Stamps testified, “and I saw a great many fall dead from the effects of our guns.” Nevertheless, after two hours of effective fire, Bradford had ordered them back into the works. “I staid within the fort perhaps about one hour,” Stamps said, when Bradford ordered his little squad of sharpshooters to “go down under the bluff to repulse the enemy,” who were “reported as coming down Coal Creek.” About halfway down the bluff, Stamps and his men “attained a good position where we could see the enemy very plainly, being ourselves secreted behind some logs. I kept up a steady fire all the time I was in this place,” striking “one of the enemy at nearly every shot.”

After the flag of truce was raised and “all firing had ceased,” Stamps and his men were outraged to see that the rebels Stamps and his squad had been keeping at bay were now rather casually advancing up Coal Creek. “When the rebels had got a good position, where they could pick our men off as they came out of the fort,” he recalled, “I saw them break ranks and get water out of the river and make every preparation for a fight.”³⁶

Accompanying Stamps, James Taylor of 13/E also denounced the rebels for blatantly “disposing their troops, plundering our camp, and stealing goods from the quartermaster’s and other stores. They formed at the same time on two sides of our garrison, and placed their sharpshooters in our deserted barracks.”³⁷

As the rebels moved “up all around in large force,” even unto “the ditch beyond which our cannon were placed,” Jack Ray of 13/B poked his head up over the works and asked some of the rebels “why they came so close while the flag of truce was being canvassed.” But the rebels “only replied that they knew their business there.” When Ray and his comrades “threatened to fire if they came any nearer,” the rebels “jumped into the ditches outside of our fort.” Ray heard some of his officers say “that the white flag was a bad thing,” and the rebels “were slipping on us.” Ray recalled overhearing Lieutenant Akerstrom protesting that “it was against the rules of war for them to come up in that way.”³⁸

The Federal case that Forrest violated the truce would be buttressed by the autobiography of one of his own men: John W. Carroll of Wilson’s 21st, a close associate of Forrest’s and, in later years, a fellow Klansman. “While the flag of truce was up,” he wrote, Carroll and Captain James Stinnett of Company F “with some picked men crawled up close under the guns to be ready in case they refused to surrender” and “to prevent them from discharging their cannon into our ranks.”³⁹

Forrest argued with some justice that during the truce he was forced to move Anderson’s sharpshooters downriver because the Union gunboats appeared to be taking advantage of the truce. But if his men’s other, more substantial (and advantageous) violations along the horseshoe line and down Coal Creek were sanctioned by Forrest and his officers, their only conceivable defense is that they were so confident the garrison would surrender that they believed that moving their men a few yards closer during the truce would simply hasten the garrison’s inevitable capitulation. But Forrest’s cavalry had been accused most recently of committing the same violations at Union City and Paducah, and it is at least reasonable to conclude either that at these moments Forrest lost a significant measure of control over his men or that strictly observing a truce was simply another of those military niceties with which the brutally pragmatic Wizard had no patience.

Maj. L. F. Booth,

Commanding U.S. Forces at Fort Pillow:

Sir: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your note, asking one hour to consider my demand for your surrender. Your request cannot be granted. I will allow you twenty minutes from the receipt of this note for consideration: if at the expiration of that time the fort is not surrendered, I shall assault it. I do not demand the surrender of the gun-boat.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant,

N. B. Forrest,

Major-General, C. S. Army.⁴⁰

According to Jordan and Pryor, Forrest instructed Goodman to add verbally that “so great was the animosity existing between the Tennesseeans of the two commands” that Forrest would not take responsibility “for the consequences if obliged to storm the Place.”⁴¹

“It was said,” Chalmers would write fifteen years later, “that Forrest’s demand for a surrender at Paducah, coupled with an implied threat that he would not be responsible for the consequences if compelled to take the place by assault, showed a predetermination to cold blooded murder. This was the form of his first demand for surrender made at Murfreesboro, and he practiced it afterwards just as he practiced his flank attack, and for the same purpose, and with the same effect, to intimidate his adversary.”⁴²

Chalmers only begged the question. After all, Colonel Hicks at Paducah had just refused to be intimidated by a nearly identical threat, and Forrest must have understood that his do-or-die boilerplate demands would lose their potency if it got around that the Wizard did not follow through on his threats. The threat he made to Bradford may have been “another form of the same threat which Forrest had so often and so successfully used ever since his first capture of Murfreesboro by stratagem and bluff.” But in every previous case, Forrest’s foe had either surrendered on such terms or, as at Paducah, proved too formidable for Forrest to defeat and thus carry out—or refrain from carrying out—his threat. Whether the threat was a matter of strategy, animosity, or pique, the Wizard’s warnings and Bradford’s refusal freed Forrest’s men to show a defiant foe no mercy.⁴³

Forrest may not have demanded a more immediate reply in order to give his own men more time to advance. But he had apparently also received reports that the garrison’s defenders were getting drunk, whereupon he replied, “I will give them time to get drunk.”⁴⁴

The rebels’ assertions that the Union garrison was inebriated would be leveled well after the political storm over the battle was blowing. They were made with the intention of deprecating the black artillerists’ reckless bravery in defense of Fort Pillow and the garrison’s obstinate refusal to surrender. Many Southern accounts would similarly dismiss Fort Pillow’s defense as “lamentable fatuity,” “foolhardiness,” “credulity,” or the consequence of drunkenness and inexperience.

“To those familiar with the two classes, black and white, which composed the bulk of the private soldiers in the garrison at Fort Pillow,” sniffed Wyeth, with their “fondness for intoxicating drinks, especially so with the Negroes just free from slavery, it will readily be accepted that they did not fail to take advantage of the opportunities here offered to drink to excess.” Wyeth ascribed their insulting conduct during the truce and their “insane resistance” to inebriation, though of course they need not have been drunk to hurl insults if they believed, as Bradford promised, that they were about to be rescued by a Union gunboat, nor to fight desperately against a foe that had refused to “be responsible” for their fate and intended, at the very least, to force them back into slavery.⁴⁵

Nevertheless, enough Confederates made this claim—almost fifty, by Robert Selph Henry’s count—that it was probably true. Fortifying troops with alcohol was common enough in both armies, and would have been especially welcome on a day as wet and windy as April 12, 1864. In fact, it may have been doled out during the truce as the garrison’s reward for holding Forrest’s men at bay. Among the relics dug up at Fort Pillow over a century later was a bottle of Dr. J. Hostetter’s Stomach Bitters, a 94-proof “invigorant” that the Union army itself doled out to brace its men for battle.⁴⁶

On the other hand, there was plenty of drinking on both sides that day. Forrest’s men were no strangers to liquor. According to Captain Charles Anderson, the Wizard himself “didn’t know whisky from brandy,” and Tully Brown “never knew him to touch it but two or three times during the war, and that was when he was wounded.” But when it came to his men consuming liquor, he was not always as severe as some have portrayed him. Whiskey was freely consumed in the card games he enjoyed, and the orders he gave to destroy distilleries had more to do with conserving corn for men and horses than preventing the production of moonshine. As for his men, J. D. McKlin of the 2nd waxed ironic about the regiment’s fondness for drink. “We never got drunk,” he said, “but always remained animated and sufficiently patriotic to express ourselves freely as to the certain success of the Confederacy, and our unbounded love for and confidence in our friends, the Jews,” who sold them their wine. During a skirmish in December 1864, Captain Jim Barbour of Forrest’s Old Regiment and his company would get so drunk that they were unable to prevent a small Yankee force from retrieving a group of Union boats their colonel David Kelley had captured.⁴⁷

While the negotiations were stuttering along southeast of the parapet, Forrest’s own men took the opportunity to rummage around among the supplies that the 13th had abandoned when it fled its camp. They soon came upon “any amount of whiskey,” wrote Dewitt Clinton Fort. Meanwhile, McCulloch’s men “broke into the quartermaster’s stores which had been captured at this time, and before they could be compelled to quit the building had had access to a supply of whisky which they discovered there.” Wyeth claimed that “the moment Forrest learned that his men were pillaging the captured stores, he rode there rapidly and put a stop to it in person,” but he may not have found out in time to prevent his empty-stomached men from getting drunk, and it is likely that McCulloch’s men, lurking in the warren of barracks and quartermaster’s stores, managed a furtive swig or two even after Forrest barked at them. “The enemy inside the fort had plenty” as well, Fort recalled, and “the consequence was, that after the usual ceremonies of demand and refusal to surrender the garrison, a fight commenced with renewed vigor (all having imbibed).” But then nothing sobered men more quickly than battle.⁴⁸

At the northern arc of the rebels’ half-moon formation, Anderson French took advantage of the truce to come out from behind the log that had protected him after Forrest’s peremptory order to advance. Taking a seat, the young lieutenant began to engage the black artillerists in conversation. “One of them asked me if I did not get hit before I reached the log,” French remembered, “and when I informed him that I was not hurt, he said that he would get me as soon as that flag left the fort. I therefore kept one eye on it, and as soon as it started out I again took my position behind the log.”⁴⁹

Meanwhile a white Union bugler—a straggler, perhaps, from the scattered picket—decided he would take the opportunity to creep out of hiding and make his way down one of the riverside paths to retrieve a horse he had left tethered in a gulch. Riding up to the head of the ravine, Major Anderson watched awhile as the unsuspecting bugler untied his horse and prepared to ride off. But when he turned around, he encountered Anderson’s six-shooter leveled at his head. “Ordering him to hand me his carbine end-butt foremost,” Anderson recalled, “and then to untie his horse and lead him out ahead of me, I rode down and around” to rejoin Forrest, who by now had entirely run out of patience.⁵⁰

After the battle, some rebels would speculate that Major Bradford must have refused to surrender because he could not assure himself that Forrest would keep his promise and treat the black troops as prisoners of war. “Forrest sent a flag of truce to the white general asking him to surrender,” recalled Andrew Jackson Grantham of the 5th Mississippi, “after which his nigger troops would be treated as prisoners of war.” But as a matter of fact, some rank-and-file rebels intimated to Leaming “that they would not be; and said it was bad enough to give to the ‘home-made Yankees’—meaning the Tennessee soldiers—treatment as soldiers without treating the negroes so, too.”⁵¹

The movement of two howitzers to the low bluff had driven the New Era from the only position in which her promised aid could have been at all available. Marshall did know, and Maj. Bradford ought to have known, that with the channel of the river right under the bluff, and a broad bar with shallow water right opposite the fort, the New Era could not get sufficient “offing” to elevate her guns and do any damage to parties on top of a bluff at least eighty feet above the water line.⁵²

In any case, Bradford “stood a while,” contemplating Forrest’s ultimatum. No doubt the few surviving officers of the black artillery regiments were loath to surrender, if only because it was Confederate policy to execute such officers for inciting a servile insurrection. If Forrest could not be trusted to keep his men in place during a truce, how could he be trusted to keep his promise to treat the artillerists and their officers as prisoners of war? Soon word began to circulate through the garrison that Bradford and his officers had voted unanimously to turn Forrest down. “Major Bradford refused to accept any such terms,” recalled Lieutenants Smith and Cleary, and declared to his officers that if the rebels intended to take the fort “they could try it on.”⁵³

Apparently Bradford’s defiance met with his garrison’s approval, for by all accounts they were generally in good spirits and confident that they “would be able to hold the Fort against the overwhelming forces against them.” “Up to this time,” recalled Sergeant Weaver, “but few had been killed but a good many wounded.” Edward Benton believed that up to the time of the truce fewer than twenty had been killed; Sergeant Gaylord put the number at ten. Dr. Fitch estimated twenty to twenty-five killed or wounded—perhaps half the number of rebel casualties.⁵⁴

Among the dead was Elam Cashion of 13/D. “Tell My Dier sister and Dier little bothers Houdy for me And tell theme To Do the bst they can,” he had recently written his family. “When I think A bout them my heart Fills with greef so that I can’t hardly wright.” Apologizing for his poor spelling, he signed off, “Yours Most truly until Deth, E. V. Cashion.” Tom Cartwright of 13/A had been struck by a bullet whose trajectory into his shoulder and down his spinal cord suggests he may have been shot by a sniper from the 13th’s abandoned camp. Over six feet tall and weighing 190 pounds, the illiterate twenty-one-year-old Irish recruit Thomas Loftis had proved too easy a target to avoid getting shot in the arm.⁵⁵

Along the northern stretch of the parapet, black troops responded to Forrest’s demand with “defiance and insult,” wrote Barteau, “for the same reply that was given to General Forrest seemed to be the one heralded from the negroes on the works to our men on the outside.” The artillerists “called to us with opprobrious names and dared us to the attempt,” indulging “in the most provoking, impudent jeers,” all the more infuriating coming from the lips of former slaves.⁵⁶

Barteau, alone among the rebel officers, claimed that during this time the garrison even fired “several shots” at his men, but that he did not allow his men to return fire. At the southern end of the parapet the artillerists “shouted to McCulloch’s men,” wrote Wyeth, “many of whom had come out from behind the barracks and houses which concealed and protected them, daring them to try to take the fort, and hurling epithets at them couched in most obscene and abusive terms and accompanied by gestures and actions not to be described”: mooning them and shaking their genitals. “If their officers made any effort to put a stop to this unusual exhibition, it was without effect.”⁶⁰