River Run Red

For some reason the tally included three black privates, men the Confederacy did not recognize and would not ordinarily have listed as prisoners of war. In fact, the total number of prisoners from black regiments was at least sixty-two, of whom thirteen would escape en route. “The prisoners were placed in my charge,” wrote Barteau, “to be taken to Tupelo. Almost without exception they blamed their officers for the great loss of life. They told me that they had been led to believe that if they surrendered they would be killed by Forrest, and they were surprised and gratified at their humane treatment,” though under the circumstances, and after what they had witnessed and survived, it is unlikely any of them would have dared to complain. “On the route south, to relieve their fatigue,” Barteau reported, “I had my men dismount at times and let the prisoners ride.”²

McCulloch’s men, however, retained a number of black captives “for their personal convenience,” for which Chalmers would chide the colonel a week later. “These negroes must be called in & returned as prisoners at once,” he said. Chalmers had also heard that McCulloch’s men had absconded with a considerable amount of the cash they had looted from stores and plucked from the pockets of the dead and wounded. “This money must be turned over at once to the Quarter Master of your brigade,” Chalmers insisted, “for the use of the Government in compliance with the requirements of orders heretofore issued.”³

The rebels described their prisoners as “unwounded,” but they were probably referring to the 147 whites they led away, of whom only 3 can be documented as having been seriously injured. Of the 62 black captives, however, at least 32 were wounded, most of them seriously: shot in the hip, through both legs, in the shoulder; struck in the head with rifle butts.⁴

Among these was short, “chunky-built” Sam Green of 6/B, who had stuck by his gun with such tenacity. His big toe shot away, his hand plowed up by a minié ball, his hip badly bruised by his cannon’s recoil, his skull cracked from a musket blow to the head after he had surrendered, this hero of the defense of Fort Pillow was nevertheless forced to march “nearly all that night.”

When, years later, a pension examiner asked Green how he could have marched with such injuries, Green replied, “Well, Boss, to tell you the God’s truth, from the sights I saw then that day after we were captured, it just meant walk on that leg or die. And I walked and made no complaint, as it was not healthy for ‘niggers’ to complain in my condition.”⁵

James Brigham “saw officers as well as privates kill and wound prisoners,” and would hear them say “that they intended taking the prisoners still farther into the country and making an example of them.” Some black prisoners, he testified, “were severely beaten” along the way. Among them was John Kennedy of 2/D, who claimed some rebels tied him to a tree and lashed him “with a gun sling.” Bob Winston of 2/B was shot down the next morning because “he would not go fast.” Among the prisoners shuffling along in Bell’s coffle were black women and children the rebels had flushed out of the woods.⁶

The rebels did not release every white civilian captive. Suspected of profiteering or committing outrages or deserting from the rebel army, five of them joined Bell’s coffle. By about 10:00 p.m., the prisoners had marched three miles east of the Mississippi. As the prisoners “were passing by us with some of our wounded,” wrote Dr. Fitch, “the Officer of the Guard ordered me to go with them, and dress their wounds. I started but had not gone but a few Rods before I was ordered to return. On returning, the officer of the guard informed me that Forrest had given orders for me to be held as a Prisoner.” He said that the general ordinarily would not take a surgeon prisoner, but the Yankees were holding one of his surgeons captive “in close confinement.” (“The Federals didn’t recognize surgeons and took them prisoner,” explained Surgeon R. E. Howlett of McCulloch’s 2nd Missouri Cavalry. “This cartel was changed two or three times during the war,” but whenever it was Union policy to take surgeons prisoner, Howlet made sure he “always carried a pistol.”)⁷

His ankle shattered, Sergeant Wilbur Gaylord of 6/B was taken to one of the garrison’s abandoned picket posts and loaded onto a rebel ambulance with the mortally wounded Lieutenant Colonel Wyly Martin Reed of the 5th Mississippi, who would die at Jackson after nineteen days of excruciating pain. They were taken to a farmhouse, where Gaylord spent the night under guard in the out-of-doors “on account of the houses being filled with their wounded. I bandaged my own wound with my drawers,” he said, “and a colored man brought water and sat by me so that I could keep my foot wet.”⁸

Wounded in the left side during the engagement and shot twice—once in the head—after surrendering, Manuel Nichols of 6/B lay on the bluff near a shack filled with wounded black and white soldiers. After one of his comrades entered the house for a drink of water, Nichols “took a stick and tried to get to the house,” but before he could reach it, some of the rebels came along “and saw a little boy belonging to company D. One of them had his musket on his shoulder, and shot the boy down.”

At that moment, Nichols’s “strength seemed to come to me as if I had never been shot,” and he ran down to the river, never pausing even after a rebel, firing from a distance, shot him through the flesh of his right arm.⁹

Dangerously wounded in the armpit and the side, Billy Mays of 13/B was ordered to his feet by an officer wielding a saber. “I succeeded in getting up,” Mays testified, “and got among a small squad he had already gathered up.” But Mays lagged behind and slipped down to the river during the night, concluding that “it was best to lie still.” He did not move again until late that night, when he “crawled in with some of the dead and laid there until the next morning.”¹⁰

Shot “in the arm, and the shoulder, and the neck, and in the eye,” Sergeant William Walker of 13/D had also played possum, even as the rebels rifled his pockets. Like John Haskins, Jacob Wilson of 6/B played dead in the shallows, gradually working his way downriver until he reached a flatboat drawn up on the riverbank. When all was quiet, Wilson crawled in, hauled three more wounded comrades aboard, and cut it loose. Feigning death, they floated downriver until they ground up against the bank, where they would be discovered next day by a squad of Federals.¹¹

A rebel private warned Jerry Stewart of 6/A that “all the colored boys that could escape had best to do so by all means, for General Forrest was going to burn or whip them to death after they got farther south.” Shot after he had surrendered, Sergeant Benjamin Robinson of 6/D was told that the rebels intended to kill him the next morning. Unable to walk, he “crawled down the hill.” Philip Young of 6/A repeatedly heard rebel officers declare that “they intended to kill the last one of the negroes after they got as far down south as they wanted to. A captain in the Confederate army swore he would shoot me after I had been prisoner thirteen days.”¹²

That night a rebel laid claim to George Shaw of 6/B and ordered him “to wait on him a little, and sent me back to a house about two hundred yards, and told me to stay all night.” At five the next morning, “another man came along.”