River Run Red

Forrest would not—could not—simply withdraw as he had done at Paducah. Indeed, the immediacy with which his attack followed the withdrawal of the flag of truce indicates that he had already made extensive preparations to follow through on his threats. “Bell’s brigade occupied the right,” he wrote, “with his extreme right resting on Cold Creek. McCulloch’s brigade occupied the left, extending from the centre to the river. Three companies of his own regiment were placed in an old rifle-pit on the left and almost in the rear of the fort. On the right a portion of Barteau’s regiment was also under the bluff, and in [the] rear of the fort.” “The commanding ridges eastward and north-eastward of the work were studded with sharp-shooters,” wrote Jordan and Pryor, and one squad had “completely enfiladed” the southern side of the Federal works, “the face most strongly garnished with artillery.”²

Major Charles Anderson warned Forrest that two barges lay moored by the river, awaiting the garrison and ready to be towed away by the New Era. “I was equally particular in impressing upon him the hazardous position of the detachment on the face of the bluff, out of sight of and entirely separated from, the balance of the command.” If Forrest’s assault failed, Anderson pointed out, his men could be wiped out by a combined sortie from the fort and a barrage from the gunboat.

Forrest instructed Anderson to return to his detachment and keep out of the assault on the fort in order to “pour fire into the open ports of the New Era” if she tried to return to the fray. As soon as the garrison fled to the river, Anderson was “to fight everything blue between wind and water,” Forrest commanded, “until yonder flag comes down.” Anderson rode off and relayed these instructions to his men, then took a position on horseback only fifty yards from the parapet but out of sight of the garrison. “From this position I had a full view of the entire waterline in rear of the fort, and much of the slope above it.”³

One of Forrest’s biographers tried to guess Forrest’s thoughts at this moment. By now the Wizard may have concluded that an all-out assault was “all for the best,” wrote Eric William Sheppard. If Forrest had to send his men over the ramparts and into the fort, “better this than any other” fort, for inside its walls “were the two breeds of men they hated most in life—the Tennessee Tories” and the “nigger dressed up as a soldier—the nigger fit for nothing but slavery—the nigger that had set white men all over America for four years at each other’s throats.” It was high time the “Tories and niggers should realize once and for all that they couldn’t stand up to Southerners in fair fight,” and that Forrest made good on his threats. “There’d be hell to pay all right,” Sheppard imagined Forrest thinking, but the time had come to let loose the dogs of war.⁴

Whatever else was preying on his mind, Forrest also realized that from a purely military point of view he had reached the point of no return. “My dispositions had all been made,” he would write President Davis, “and my force was in a position that would enable me to take the fort with less loss than to have withdrawn under fire.”⁵

“His orders to the troops were explicit,” wrote Wyeth. “They were told that they must storm the fort; every gun and pistol was to be loaded; not a shot was to be fired by the assaulting line until they were inside the works and hand to hand; they must make it quick work. The men were informed that the sharpshooters would keep the heads of the Federals behind the parapet until they could cross the ditch and climb the embankment. He would be where he could watch the entire field, and would note which command would be first over the walls.” When the bugle sounded the charge, “they were to go.”⁶

“With a few energetic words,” wrote Hancock, Forrest “stimulated the pride of his men to do their duty.” But there is some debate about what those words were. “General Chalmers,” said Forrest, “tell your men to plant their flags on that cursed fort, and take what they find.” According to one participant Forrest told them to be “merciful to the negroes,” but added that they were not to forget Captain Bob Perry of the 18th Mississippi, who, Forrest’s men had been led to believe, “had been captured and murdered by negro soldiers.” To Captain James Dinkins of Chalmers’s consolidated regiment, Forrest looked like “the incarnation of all the destructive powers of earth” and seemed “to battle what a cyclone is to an April shower” as he trotted slowly back to his observation point, exhorting his men with, “At ’em! At ’em!” “His voice could be heard by the Yankees,” Dinkins recalled, though what the Yankees heard the general chant was not “At ’em” but “No quarter!”⁷

That in any case was the cry his subordinates Bell and Chalmers took up as their men prepared to storm the fort. After French’s men had refused his order to advance earlier that afternoon, Forrest probably concluded that if his men were to vault the parapet, he first had to whip his troopers into a rage. Incensed, and probably inebriated, they hardly needed stirring. “Our men,” wrote Clarke Barteau, “as by one impulse, seem to have determined they would take the fort, and that, too, independently of officers or orders, and had no command been given to ‘charge,’ I verily believe that after the insults given them during the truce they would have taken the fort by storm any way.”⁸

In any case, neither Forrest nor his subordinates took any “effective steps,” wrote Sheppard, to “forestall or guard against the manifestations of the very natural feelings of personal hatred and desire for vengeance which animated many of their men,” and would allow them “for a space prolonged beyond necessity or reason, free license to gratify these feelings at the expense of an enemy for the most part disarmed and helpless.” Despite all the extenuating circumstances, Sheppard concluded that Forrest would “stand convicted at the bar of history.”⁹

The guns on the fort looked so savage, recalled Dinkins, that Chalmers ordered McCulloch to hold back one regiment to sustain a covering fire while the remaining troopers clambered over the works. Even so, to the rebels huddled in the ditches, climbing into the fort looked like “defying death itself.”¹¹

With the withdrawal of the flag of truce, the garrison, including every able-bodied contraband, sutler, and refugee, readied their rifles. The 13th was apparently armed with the carbines that had by then become standard issue for cavalry; the artillerists carried muskets. All but a couple of Sergeant Henry’s and Lieutenant Hunter’s cannoneers had been killed or wounded, and their ammunition was almost gone; nevertheless, they filled their cannon with grapeshot and prayed that their fuses were dry enough to ignite. “All along the inner aspect of the embankment,” the garrison “crouched beneath the parapet, their guns resting on the crest, and all ready for the onslaught” as Major Bradford, with his saber drawn, strode from gun to gun.¹²

The Confederates, for their part, were armed with carbines, shotguns, and muskets, the latter loaded with a lethal close-quarter combination of what they called “three bucks and a ball”—three buckshot and a minié—which was capable of inflicting a ragged wound that “sometimes looked as though it had been done with a hatchet.” Most of them carried six-shooters as well. “Being a courier,” wrote Robert Burfford, “I did not carry a gun, but I had two six-shooters and a horse pistol.”¹³ Only a few officers carried swords.

It was almost 4:00 p.m., and “the two hostile banners were flouting the breeze in disagreeable proximity.” Perhaps five minutes had passed since Forrest received Bradford’s reply, and the eyes of both garrison and attacker alike followed the general as he spurred his horse up to the distant knoll in the company of his German bugler, Joe Gaus. Reaching the summit, he turned and paused a moment to observe Bell pressing more of his men into the northern ditch, and McCulloch’s troopers advancing among the barracks. All was ready.¹⁴

Gaus raised his battle-battered bugle to his lips, and at “the first blare,” wrote Dinkins, “the Confederates opened a galling fire on the parapet as they advanced, which was replied to by the garrison for a few moments with great spirit.” The echoes of the bugle’s first blast, wrote Fort, “broke the spell which bound the garrison, and the firing from artillery and musketry which was now poured upon us was the severest” they had experienced all day. “It made an awful din,” wrote Wyeth. “The wild, defiant yell of the assailants, mingled with the crackle and roar of musketry and the thundering cannon” as they harmlessly swept the surrounding hills with grapeshot. But the fire from the rebels’ sharpshooters was so deadly that the garrison still “could not rise high enough from their cover to fire,” Dinkins recalled, nor reload their artillery “without being shot.” “As the blue caps of the garrison rose above the horseshoe line of the parapet to deliver their volley,” wrote Wyeth, “a shower of missiles whizzed by and into them, while bits of pulverized earth flew in their faces as the bullets from the unerring aim of 250 sharpshooters sped through the air and plowed miniature furrows along the floorlike top of the embankment.”¹⁶

A large force of dismounted troopers “came upon us from the ravine - toward the east of where I stood,” recalled Hardy Revelle. “It seemed to come down Cold Creek. They charged upon our ranks. Another large force of rebel cavalry charged from the south of east, and another force from the northward.”¹⁷

While bugler Gaus continued to sound the charge, “the main Confederate force, as with a single impulse, surged onward, like a tawny wave.” “The sight of negro soldiers,” wrote a rebel participant, had “stirred the bosoms of our soldiers with courageous madness.” “The outside of the fort was in ridges,” recalled Dinkins, “caused by heavy rains washing out gullies,” and these “afforded hand holds to the men in climbing up.” But the deep ditch that Booth had excavated along the outer wall of the parapet was too wide to leap and too deep and slick for a man to climb out of unassisted. Encumbered by their arms and cartridge boxes, unable to obtain footholds upon “the slanting bank of earth where ditch and embankment met,” Forrest’s men skidded straight down to the muddy bottom, some fourteen feet below the breastwork’s crest.¹⁸

An experienced artillerist, the late Major Booth would have rolled grenades and short-fused shells into the ditch and “exterminated these reckless horsemen.” But it did not occur to Bradford, and the rebels paused in relative safety in the bottom of the ditch, cocking their “guns and navy sixes” and making ready for their final lunge.¹⁹

Some three hundred of Forrest’s men hunched down in the ditch to give an equal number of their comrades purchase, lending their backs and shoulders and intertwined hands to boost them to the narrow ledge that separated the ditch from the parapet. From here, in turn, this first rank reached back to haul their comrades up beside them. Peppered by sharpshooters, the defenders could not fire on the men who were now pressed against the opposite side of the breastwork, but they could and did fire at the wave of men rising out of the rifle pits.

Placed in command of the 5th Mississippi after his heroism at Paducah, Lieutenant Colonel Wyly Martin Reed was standing with Lieutenant N. B. Burton some eighty yards from the parapet, exhorting his men to charge, when they were both struck by bullets. Burton fell dead, and Reed, one of Forrest’s preacher-colonels, teetered back, mortally wounded. (“He was a good man,” Forrest would mourn after his death weeks later, “brave and patriotic.”) Charging at the parapets from the 13th’s camp, Private Samuel Allen was also struck dead, and elsewhere men fell wounded.²⁰

When all but the most diminutive rebel skirmisher had managed to clear the ditch, they climbed in one long wave to the crest of the parapet “as nimbly and as swiftly as squirrels. The impetuosity of the attack was remarkable,” wrote Dinkins. “The men had stood by and heard and saw what was going on. Their friends and families had been insulted and outraged. They were ready and eager to avenge those wrongs.”²¹

As Bell’s men broke through the center, Barteau’s 22nd Tennessee had rushed in from the north and McCulloch’s brigade from the south almost simultaneously. Among the first to mount the crest was Second Lieutenant Anderson French of the 22nd, determined to redeem himself and his men after their refusal to advance only a couple of hours before.²³

To the stunned garrison desperately reloading their muskets, their attackers seemed to rise “from out of the very earth.” “They had been told,” wrote Dinkins, “that the rebels could not get over the works and into the fort, and did not believe they could, but the sight of the ‘Johnnies’ was a flat contradiction of the blustering lie.” For the rebels as well, “it was like a terrible shock,” wrote Fort, to be confronted with their foe at such close quarters. There was an awestruck instant of silence as the rebels found their balance and glared down at the thunderstruck garrison. Some of the defenders managed to get off a volley or two, killing Privates John Beard of the 20th and Reuben Burrows of the 15th and wounding several others. Then, with a yell, the rebels fired down upon them.²⁴

Recounting an earlier skirmish, J. K. P. Blackburn described the horrifying damage the cavalry’s carbines and shotguns could inflict on a line of bluecoats. “In a twinkling of an eye almost,” he wrote, “both barrels of every shotgun in our line loaded with fifteen to twenty buckshot in each barrel was turned into that blue line and lo! what destruction and confusion followed. It reminded me then of a large covey of quail bunched on the ground, shot into with a load of bird shot,” leaving them “squirming and fluttering around on the ground.”²⁵

“The charge was simultaneous and well sustained from every point,” wrote Fort, and the assault “an instantaneous success.” As the rebels leaped through the gun smoke and into the fort itself, some of them pressed the muzzles of their guns against the defenders’ blue blouses and fired, inflicting “wounds almost of necessity instantly fatal.” Almost, but a lot of their fire was wild. “I was wounded with a musket ball through the right ankle,” wrote Sergeant Gaylord of 6/B. Two hundred rebels passed by him as he lay bleeding, “when one rebel noticed that I was alive” and shot at him again and missed. Daniel Rankin was shot in the leg at the rim of the bluff, and as his assailant reloaded he threw himself over the edge, stopping his fall by “catching hold of a little locust.” James Taylor and his brother Frank were wounded as they scrambled down the bluff. John Haskins of 6/B was shot in the arm.²⁷

the slaughter sickening. Wearied with the slow process of shooting with guns, our troops commenced with their repeaters, and every fire brought down a foe, and so close was the fight, that the dead would frequently fall upon the soldier that killed. Still the enemy would not or knew not how to surrender. The Federal flag, that hated emblem of tyranny, was still proudly waving over the scene.²⁸

By now “nearly all the officers had been killed,” testified Lieutenant Mack Leaming of the 13th, “especially of the colored troops, and there was no one hardly to guide the men.” The garrison had “fought bravely, indeed,” until the rebels leaped into their midst.²⁹

“In the shortest time after the charge was ordered,” wrote Fort, “we had the indisputed possession of the Fort. It was so incredible a fact that those who had actually performed it could hardly realize its accomplishment. We - could scarcely trust our own eyes: so quickly was the face of affairs changed under great excitement.” Within five minutes of the bugle’s call, the rebels had possession of the fort.³⁰

“As we charged over the ramparts,” wrote Fort, “the enemy’s garrison of mixed complexion retreated over the bluff down to the water’s edge.” The black artillerists and their officers would claim that the whites broke first; Bradford’s whites insisted it was the blacks. “The rebels charged after the flag of truce,” wrote Sergeant Weaver, “the Tennessee cavalry broke, and was followed down the hill by the colored soldiers.”³¹

After a wounded Captain Epeneter staggered down to the river, his messmate, First Lieutenant Peter Bischoff, had taken command of the gun crew at portal 4. A sergeant from the 1st Missouri Light Artillery, Bischoff had transferred to become first lieutenant of 6/A. “During the last attack,” testified Private John Kennedy of 2/D, “when the rebels entered the works, I heard Major Bradford give the command, ‘Boys, save your lives.’”

“The niggers first ran out of the fort,” asserted W. P. Walker of the 13th, and it was only when the rebels “commenced shooting us” that Bradford’s men “ran down under the hill.” The disparity was a mere matter of a few seconds. For all intents and purposes they fled at once. In the ensuing chaos, amid the flash of muzzles, the buzz of minié balls, the roil of gun smoke, the war cry of the rebels and the howls of the wounded, it must have been hard to tell. Civilians less invested in the reputation of any particular regiment - could not tell the difference. “A large number of the soldiers,” recalled the hotelier John Nelson, “black and white, and also a few citizens, myself among the number, rushed down the bluff towards the river.” Dr. Chapman Underwood, observing from the New Era, would also testify that “white and black all rushed out of the fort together, threw down their arms, and ran down the hill.”³⁴

The black troops stationed in the center of the Federal line bore the brunt of the initial attack as Bell’s troops burst in. “What was called brigade or battalion attacked the centre of the fort where several companies of colored troops were stationed. They finally gave way,” Leaming reported, “and, before we could fill up the breach, the enemy got inside the fort, and then they came in on the other two sides, and had complete possession of the fort.” Private William F. Mays testified that “the negroes gave way upon the left and ran down the bluff, leaving an opening through which the rebels entered.”³⁵

If the blacks were the first to flee, it is no wonder. Not only were the artillerists the special targets of Bell’s most concerted attack, for the rebels’ first order of business was putting the garrison’s guns out of commission; they were armed with muskets and, unlike the men of the 13th with their repeating rifles, could get off only one round before the rebels were upon them.

“There were some tents erected within the fort nearest the river,” wrote Jordan and Pryor, “and these blocked the way to rapid egress. As the retreating mass crowded the narrow paths between the tents, they were pelted by the shower of lead which slaughtered them by scores. They fell in piles three or four deep: heaps of bleeding, mangled bodies.” Several artillerists, too sick to join in the defense, had spent the battle on their backs in a row of hospital tents near the rim of the bluff, where, as the battle progressed, they had been joined by wounded men like the civilian John Penwell of Michigan.³⁶

“If there was a single negro soldier there who was not killed,” boasted Robert Bufferd, who emptied all three of his pistols into the garrison, “I never knew it.” “Their fort turned out to be a great slaughter pen,” wrote Achilles Clark of the 20th. “Blood—human blood—stood about in pools, and brains could have been gathered up in any quantity.”³⁹

Some rebel participants reported that there was liquor on the black artillerists’ breath. Barteau testified that he and his staff “found barrels of whisky and ale and bottles of brandy open, and tin cups in the barrels out of which they had been drinking. We also found water-buckets sitting around in the fort with whisky and dippers in them, which showed very clearly that the whisky had been thus passed around to the Federal troops.” Chalmers would swear that “those of the garrison who were sober enough to realize the hopelessness of their situation after the fort was stormed, surrendered, and thus escaped being killed or wounded.”⁴⁰

Watching and listening from the sandbar, the civilian James McCoy - could see “a cloud” of rebels—Dr. Chapman Underwood likened them to bees—swarming into the fort “and our men in the fort running out,” and make out on the river wind “a great deal of screaming and praying for mercy.” The men fell back in no order, but in groups of a dozen or more, dripping from the parapet like wax melting from the rim of a candle. According to Henry Weaver, “Lieutenant Van Horn begged and ordered them to stop, but each one sought safety in flight.”⁴¹

“They ran with all their speed,” wrote Dinkins. “Our men called on them to halt, firing at them as they ran. Not one, however, would halt, unless a bullet caught him. They ran to the high bluff and jumped over. Those who did never knew what the end was. They were too flat to bury.” The artillerists “went over the bluff like sheep through a gate. They would jump as high as they could. They would not surrender.”⁴²

From their sharpshooters’ nests along the earthworks “down by the river under the fort,” Daniel Stamps of 13/E and his sharpshooters had resumed firing at the rebels advancing from upriver. Stamps claimed he dropped a rebel “at every shot,” but then the garrison began to run out of the fort and “down the bluff, close to my vicinity.” Skidding past him, they warned Stamps that the rebels were showing no mercy to white or black, whereupon he dropped his gun as well “and ran down with them, closely pursued by the enemy.”⁴³

Southern sources insist that even as the Union soldiers fled down the bluff, most of them remained armed. “The garrison did not yield,” wrote Dinkins, “did not lay down their arms, nor take down their flag, but fled with guns in their hands to another position in which they were promised relief, and while on their way returned the fire.” As proof they cited the six cartridge boxes Anderson would find “piled against the upturned roots of an old tree,” and the 269 to 275 muskets they claimed they retrieved between the edge of the bluff and the river. Some cartridge boxes and muskets were undoubtedly left over from Stamps and his sharpshooters, but several Federal survivors testified that upon surrendering they did indeed drop their muskets and cartridge boxes by the river. Others may have been carried down the slope during the morning by skirmishers, wounded men, and their escorts. Descending a steep eighty-foot bluff would have been hard enough without toting muskets and cartridge boxes. If most of the guns were found at the base of the slope, that could just as easily confirm what many Union witnesses like John Nelson asserted: that all but a very few of the defenders whom the rebels “hemmed in” had thrown down their weapons as they leaped off the bluff, and that by the time they reached the bottom most of the Federals were “without arms.”⁴⁴

No doubt several Federals did turn and fire up the slope, since the rebels seemed intent on shooting all those who “turned back and surrendered.” “Negroes,” wrote Wyeth, “some few of whom, either insanely intoxicated or convinced from the slaughter that had transpired that no quarter would be shown them, and determined to sell their lives as dearly as possible, still offered resistance and continued to fire at the Confederates,” though he conceded that there were “not many who were guilty of this insanity.”⁴⁵

Though their fire apparently did the rebels no harm, nevertheless it was “enough to justify their assailants to close in upon them from the bluff above and from either side of the riverbank and continue to shoot them down.” In the process, admitted Wyeth, “there were a number of men, both white and black, shot down who were trying to surrender and should have been spared,” though he agreed with Anderson that “the heavy loss in killed and wounded during their retreat was alone due to the incapacity of their commander, the drunken condition of the men, and the fatal agreement with and promise of Captain Marshall of the New Era to protect and succor them when driven from the works.” An officer of Barteau’s 22nd reported that the rebels, “maddened by excitement, shot down the retreating Yankees, and not until they had attained the water’s edge and turned to beg for mercy, did any prisoners fall into our hands. Thus the whites received quarter, but the negroes were shown no mercy.”⁴⁶

Some of Forrest’s defenders deprecate Union testimony that several men were bayoneted to death, on the grounds that neither rebel nor Union cavalry carried bayonets. But the black artillerists were armed with muskets equipped with bayonets, and it does not take much imagination to see how it would have been perfectly possible, and may have struck some rebels as perfectly fitting, to finish off their foes with their own weapons.⁴⁷

Three vagrant accounts assert that the garrison tricked the rebels by raising a flag of truce and then opening fire when the rebels entered the fort to accept its surrender. “The negroes ran out down to the river,” Forrest was quoted as telling the Philadelphia Weekly Times after the war, “and although the [white] flag was flying, they kept on turning back and shooting at my men, who consequently continued to fire into them crowded on the brink of the river, and they killed a good many of them in spite of my efforts and those of their officers to stop them”; but it must be asked why Forrest would have tried to stop his men if they were indeed returning Yankee fire.⁴⁸

“It is true,” wrote Confederate governor Isham Harris, “that a few, black and white, threw down their arms and made signs of surrender—but at the same time the men on each side of them still retained their arms and kept up a constant fire and show of resistance. In the heat, din and confusion of a fire at such close quarters there was no chance for discrimination.” “No one was to blame” for the massacre “but those blind misguided creatures, those poor negroes,” wrote Thomas Berry. “They were officered by a Northern fanatic”—Bradford was actually a Tennesseean—“who urged them to do this dastardly deed,” namely to open fire on the Confederates after the garrison had ostensibly surrendered, thus giving Forrest’s men no choice “but to defend themselves, which they did, and they always did.”⁴⁹

Barteau was especially adamant about the garrison returning fire as they fled. “They made a wild, crazy, scattering fight. They acted like a crowd of drunken men. They would at one moment yield and throw down their guns,” he wrote, “and then would rush again to arms, seize their guns and renew the fire. If one squad was left as prisoners,” Barteau recalled twenty years later, “it was soon discovered that they could not be trusted as having surrendered, for taking the first opportunity they would break loose again and engage in the contest.” “Many of them had thrown down their arms while running and seemed desirous to surrender,” wrote Fort, “while many others had carried their guns with them and were loading and firing back up the bluff at us with a desperation which seemed worse than senseless. We could only stand there and fire until the last man of them was ready to surrender.” And yet, “no one has found a good way to surrender,” wrote one of Forrest’s defenders, “while your fellow soldiers are shooting at the men from whom you are begging for mercy.”⁵⁰

Citing an interview with Forrest, Mercer Otey would claim that as the rebels “unsuspectingly entered the works, they were met by a galling fire poured into them by the fleeing Federals, who were protecting themselves in the shelter afforded by the river bank, while the gunboat opened a brisk broadside on our troops. They were maddened by such perfidy. Many of the enemy were plainly visible trying to pack their boxes of ammunition to the river bank, hoping there to continue the fight. It so exasperated our men that they drove the enemy into the river, and shot them as they tried to gain the gunboat.” Forrest would give a similar account to an adoring interviewer, claiming that “the negroes brought it all upon themselves; that after the white flag had been raised, and while it was flying, they continued to shoot his men, who, much infuriated, shot the negroes.” He boasted that it had “created a great terror of him ever after among the negro troops,” and that for the rest of his war he employed the example of Fort Pillow “as a caution against resistance, and an incentive to prompt surrender when dealing with the commanders of negro troops.”⁵¹

Chalmers claimed that the retreating Federals who returned fire were “the only men shot after the flag was hauled down.” But the preponderance of the evidence suggests a furious, prolonged, and indiscriminate fire that Chalmers himself may have encouraged. As the garrison skidded down the bluff “the detachment from Barteau on the right and the three companies on the left poured into them an enfilading and deadly fire, at a distance of 40 to 100 yards,” recalled Anderson, “while the line of attackers reached the brow and mowed down their rear.”⁵²

From Barteau’s position on the slope of the bluff north of the bastion, “the yells of our troops as they mounted the parapets could be plainly heard above the din and rattle of musketry, and in a moment more the whole force of the garrison came rushing down the bluff toward the water with arms in hand, but only to fall thick and fast from the short range fire of the detachment temporarily under my command, which threw them into unutterable dismay and confusion.” According to Brigham, however, the garrison threw down its arms “as soon as the Confederates got into the fort,” many of them exclaiming, “We surrender.” “We were followed closely and fiercely by the advancing rebel forces,” Revelle recalled, “their fire never ceasing at all. Our men had given signals themselves that they surrendered, many of them throwing up their hands to show they were unarmed and submitted to overwhelming odds.”⁵³

South of the ravine, Anderson’s sharpshooters swung their sights from the closed portholes of the New Era up the riverfront to the Federals fleeing down the bluff, becoming, in effect, an execution squad. “Upon them,” wrote Anderson, “we opened a destructive fire.” “Thus being exposed to a fire from both flanks, as well as rear,” wrote Hancock, “their ranks were fearfully thinned as they fled down that bluff toward the river.”⁵⁴

“The bigger portion of the darkeys,” Benton testified, “jumped down the bank towards the Mississippi river, without any arms at all.” Bradford apparently expected that once his men had cleared the fort, the New Era would open fire on the rebels with canister and advance to the riverfront to tow the survivors away in the two coal barges cabled by the wharf. “They had been promised,” wrote Wyeth, “aid from the gunboat and safety from pursuit when once below the crest of the riverbank.” But contrary to what Forrest would later tell Mercer Otey, Marshall, apparently afraid he would hit his own men, never opened fire, leaving the major and his men trapped along the river’s edge like ducks in a shooting gallery. “Finding that the succor which they had been promised from the gunboat was not rendered nor at hand,” wrote Hancock, “they were greatly bewildered.”⁵⁵

Anderson boasted that his command “did the most destructive as well as the very last firing done at Fort Pillow,” but excused his men’s excesses because from their position they could not see which flag was flying over the parapet. However, they could see the white makeshift flags of truce—from torn white shirts to handkerchiefs—that the garrison desperately waved along the riverbank, and the red hospital flags tied all around Fitch’s field hospital, which should have protected the morning’s wounded from further harm.⁵⁶

“Hundreds were killed in the water endeavoring to escape,” wrote a rebel witness. “Others rushed to the passage between the fort and the river for the purpose of passing down the river towards Memphis.” But Anderson’s men “opened fire upon them, and the enemy rushed upon a coal barge and endeavored to push it off; but a concentrated fire from our whole column, soon put an end to this experiment.” After running down the bluff, Sergeant Henry Weaver of 6/C jumped into the water “and hid myself between the bank and the coal barge. They were shooting the negroes over my head all the time, and they were falling off into the water.” One rebel estimated that “several hundred were shot in this boat” and along Coal Creek “while endeavoring to escape.” The number of Federals in the water “was so great,” he wrote, “that they resembled a drove of hogs swimming across the stream. But not a man escaped in this way. The head above the water was a beautiful mark for the trusty rifle of our unerring marksmen,” and “the Mississippi River was crimsoned with the red blood of the flying foe.”⁵⁷

Anderson’s “furious and fatal” volleys sent the panic-stricken garrison rushing “wildly along the face of the bluff up the river, thinking that way was open for escape.” But as they reached “the upper limit of the fort, the detachment from Barteau’s regiment stationed opposite the mouth of Cold Creek ravine opened upon the fugitives another volley which stopped their flight in this direction, and turned them like frightened sheep once more back in the direction they had first taken when they sought safety beneath the bank.” Together Anderson and Barteau “cut off all effective retreat.” Anderson’s men “employed themselves,” wrote two Union lieutenants, “in shooting down the negro troops as fast as they made their appearance.”⁵⁸