River Run Red: Massacre: 4:30
P.M., April 12, 1864
1 “it was General Forrest’s orders . . .” Daniel Stamps in
RJSCW. The 2nd Missouri Cavalry was the only regiment left at Fort Pillow that morning.
2 Testimony of James Walls; pension file of James Taylor; James Walls in pension file of Isaac J. Ledbetter.
3 Quote extrapolated from “saying he wanted them to kill niggers.” William A. Dickey in
RJSCW. 4 William A. Dickey in ibid.
5 Fitch, “Monthly Report.”
6 “could not surrender . . .” F. A. Smith and William Cleary in
RJSCW. “some five or six . . .” Fitch, “Monthly Report.”
7 “none of them . . .” F. A. Smith and William Cleary in
RJSCW. 8 David W. Harrison in
RJSCW; Missouri Democrat, April 15, 1864.
9 Shelton saw them shoot five or six black troops on the hill. “They shot all they - could find,” he said. Afterward, under guard in a shack with the wounded, he saw the rebels drag out two black soldiers and shoot them, and watched as the rebels buried several dead soldiers in the ditch by the works. (John W. Shelton in
RJSCW.)
10 Hardy Revelle in ibid.
11 “I was the second man . . .” Pension file of Elias Falls; Elias Falls in
RJSCW; pension file of Jordan and Eli Irwin; Alsie Williams in pension file of Peter Williams. But he was . . . Duncan Harding in
RJSCW. 12 Up to this point Tyler had not spotted a single rebel officer on the scene.
13 Testimony and military record of Daniel Tyler; Register of Courts-Martial: Records and Sentences Received: January 1865-January 1866, RG393/2/2898 in NARA;
Cairo News, April 16, 1864; “Daniel Tyler,”
Liberator, July 22, 1864. The
Liberator’s account quotes from a probably fictitious letter Robert Hall was supposed to have sent to his wife after the battle, and recounts the April 13 death of Manuel Nichols, who in fact survived the battle to testify for the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War ten days later. I prefer the Daniel Tyler who testified with such clarity before Wade and Gooch and joked with the reporter from the
Cairo News. 14 “The officers . . .” Sandy Addison in
RJSCW. “but the enemy . . .” Jerry Stewart in pension file of Ransom Parks; pension file of James Winston; George Houston and Jerry Stewart in
RJSCW. 15 “could see . . .” Charley Robinson/Family: April 17, 1864.
16 Mack J. Leaming in
RJSCW. 17 “Many of the white men . . .” Wyeth,
That Devil Forrest, pp. 326-329. “some darkeys . . .” Daniel Rankin in
RJSCW. 18 The artillerists’ . . . Jordan and Pryor,
The Campaigns of Nathan Bedford Forrest, pp. 438-440. “The Mississippi’s . . .” Blount, “Captain Thomas Blount and His Memoirs.” Fleeing up Cool Creek . . . Anonymous,
History of Tennessee. Joseph Ray . . . Nelson Payton in
RJSCW. “saw one man . . .” Charles Key in ibid.
19 “They shot them . . .” Chapman Underwood in
RJSCW. “I don’t suppose . . .” James McCoy in ibid.
20 “seemed to seethe . . .” Berry,
Four Years with Morgan and Forrest, pp. 269-271. “Numbers of the garrison . . .” Dinkins,
Furl That Banner, p. 154. “wild with fright . . .” Jordan and Pryor,
The Campaigns of Nathan Bedford Forrest, p. 328. “The actual loss . . .” Forrest/Jefferson Davis: April 24, 1864, in Wyeth,
That Devil Forrest, p. 335.
21 “We surrender!” Brigham said he remained in the woods for two days and nights, but he must have been mistaken, for if, as he testified, he saw Akerstrom’s remains it had to have been on the following day. James R. Brigham in
RJSCW. “were shot . . .” Lieutenant Leaming used the same phrase. “Some of the colored troops jumped into the river,” he testified, “but were shot as fast as they were seen.” (Mack J. Leaming in
RJSCW.) “One poor fellow . . .” Dickey also testified that he saw “negroes thrown into the river by rebels, and shot afterwards, while struggling for life.” George Shaw was apparently one of them. (William P. Dickey and George Shaw in
RJSCW.)
22 John Haskins in
RJSCW. “Kill the Last Damn One”: Bradford’s Battalion: 4:00
P.M.-7:00 P.M., April 12, 1864 1 William H. Albritton and Thomas Loftis in pension file of John C. Simmons; James P. Meador in
RJSCW; John C. Simmons in pension file of James P. Meador.
2 “kneel down . . .” James P. Meador in
RJSCW. 3 Wyeth,
That Devil Forrest, pp. 338-339; D. Z. Alexander in pension file of Bryant Johnson.
5 An old friend . . . T. J. Parr of Russell’s 20th Tennessee Cavalry was assigned to guard Federal prisoners the night after the battle. He was stationed at the little church where Forrest’s white prisoners were incarcerated on the night of the thirteenth; he later recalled talking to Johnson through an open window. But neither . . . Only two months after joining the 13th, he was charged with desertion from Company D for ducking off to see his family, but the charges were soon dropped, and Johnson was still with the regiment when it was transferred to Fort Pillow. (Military record of Bryant Johnson; D. Z. Alexander, A. W. Foster, T. J. Parr, and D. B. Silph in pension file of Bryant Johnson.)
6 Dr. Kellogg in medical report, and Mary Jane Cooksey in pension file of Woodford H. Cooksey; testimony of Woodford H. Cooksey. Italics mine. I have extrapolated a quote from the following verbatim testimony: “He had damned nigh a notion to hit me in the head on account of staying there and fighting with the niggers.” (Woodford Cooksey in
RJSCW.)
7 Jason Loudon in
RJSCW; military record of Leonidas Gwaltney.
8 Robert Lincoln/L. C. Houk: February 6, 1883, Records of Office of Quartermaster General/Cemeterial/1828-1929/RG92/Box 56/NM81/576; statement of Hardy Revelle.
9 The next morning . . . Eli Cothel [Carlton] in
RJSCW; pension file of Cordy B. Revelle; Lieutenants F. A. Smith and William Cleary in
RJSCW. After a tour of Fort Pillow in 1883, Cordy and Hardy Revelle’s brother Ike wrote Secretary of War Robert Lincoln to deplore the condition of the federal graveyard at Fort Pillow. Lincoln replied that all federal remains at Fort Pillow had been transferred to the federal cemetery at Memphis. (Robert Lincoln/L. C. Houk: February 6, 1883, Records of Office of Quartermaster General/Cemeterial/ 1828-1929/RG92/Box 56/NM81/576.) “about two minutes . . .” John Ray in
RJSCW. “Since that time,” testified McCoy, “I have been told that they wounded him and then nailed him to a door and burned him up, but I didn’t see that myself.” Leaming testified that he had “very good reason for believing that was the case, although I did not see it.” (James McCoy and Mack J. Leaming in ibid.) Jack Haskins . . . John Haskins in ibid. “Here is . . .” Carlton, who had worked for Akerstrom, was told he had been burned to death. (Eli Carlton in ibid.)
10 William P. Walker in pension file of Daniel Rankin; William P. Walker in
RJSCW. 11 “They were shooting . . .” Daniel Rankin in ibid. “Shot in the hip . . .” James N. Taylor [Tayler] in pension file of Isaac J. Ledbetter; statement and medical report of James N. Taylor. W. J. Mays quoted the same cry. The 2nd Missouri Cavalry was the only regiment left at Fort Pillow that morning. “Kill them . . .” “The general cry from the time they charged the fort until an hour afterwards was, Kill ’em. Kill ’em; God damn ’em, that’s Forrest’s orders, not to leave one alive.’” (W. J. Mays in
RJSCW.)
12 Wiley Robinson . . . Wiley Robinson in
RJSCW. 13 Paroled to Mound City, where he nearly died of “bowel trouble,” Ledbetter was discharged in July. He became a Methodist minister and postal clerk and fathered six children. Probably the longest-lived of the survivors of the Fort Pillow massacre, Isaac J. Ledbetter died in Morrilton, Arkansas, in 1935. (Isaac J. Ledbetter in
RJSCW; John L. Poston, James N. Taylor [Tayler], and James M. Walls in pension file of Isaac J. Ledbetter.)
14 Among the men . . . John L. Poston in pension file of Neal Clark. the already badly injured . . . Ezekiel Arnold in the pension file of Andrew J. Glass. Daniel Fields . . . Columbus R. Allen and John N. Green in pension file of Daniel B. Fields. Robert McKenzie . . . Pension file of Robert B. McKenzie.
15 Nathan G. Fulks in
RJSCW. Black Flag: 6th USCHA and 2nd USCLA: 4:00
P.M.-6:00 P.M., April 12, 1864 1 The few . . . William T. Smith and Henry F. Weaver in pension file of Thomas McClure; Litton,
History of Oklahoma at the Golden Anniversary of Statehood, vol. 3, pp. 1028-1029. Though First . . . Daniel Van Horn/T. H. Harris: April 14, 1864, in
ORCW. 2 Frank Hogan in
RJSCW. Emphasis mine.
3 Henry Weaver in ibid. I have extrapolated this quote from Weaver’s account: “. . . The rebel remarking that they did not shoot white men, but wanted to know what in hell I was there fighting with the damned nigger for.”
5 Wilbur H. Gaylord in pension file of Samuel Green; pension file of Wilbur H. Gaylord; Wilbur H. Gaylord in
RJSCW. 6 Alfred Coleman in
RJSCW. 7 Alexander Nayron [Nason] in ibid.
8 Achilles V. Clark/George B. Halstead: April 19, 1864, in TSLA (RMC).
9 The Confederates either lost track of him in his hiding place or simply left him for dead, but Edmonds survived somehow and was picked up the next morning and taken to Memphis, where he spent two months recovering from his wounds and was misidentified as Arthur Edwards by Wade’s committee. Deemed unfit for duty, he was discharged in early November. After the war, Edmonds became an itinerant preacher, but his wife, Fannie, refused to travel with him, and divorced him in 1870. Preaching may have been about all he was fit for. The wounds to his head gave him a “swimming so that I cannot stoop,” his right wrist was shattered, and his shoulder was so mangled by a burst of rebel buckshot that his arm merely hung by his side. He lived the rest of his life in a series of communities that suggest a decline: first Memphis, then Tupelo, then Delta Bottoms, Mississippi. (William Ellis, Thomas Greer, Shed James, Alexander Nason, Henry Robinson in pension file of Arthur Edmonds; Arthur Edwards [Edmonds] in
RJSCW.)
12 William Henry’s wife’s family owned 125. (Wade Pruitt, “The Bugger Saga”; Slave Schedules: 1860 Lauderdale County, Alabama; McDonald, “A Walk through the Past: People and Places of Florence and Lauderdale County, Alabama”; Hill, “History of Greenhill, Alabama and Surrounding Counties and 54 Cemeteries.”) Ray’s children, all of whom eventually entered the cattle business in Texas, would choose Jarrett for their last name as well.
www.alabamawaterfowl.org/archive.
13 Pension file of Joseph Key; Jesse Smith, Taylor Jarrett, and Henry Garner in pension file of Joseph Key.
14 They arrived at Okolona with about 200 prisoners, “embracing 160 whites and 40 negroes, including women and children.”
Charleston Mercury, May 2, 1864.
15 Edward B. Benton in
RJSCW. 16 “Yes,” he said . . . William F. Mays in ibid. Elias Falls recalled hearing some of his comrades exclaim that the rebels “had killed two women and two children.” Elias Falls in ibid. James Lewis . . . James Lewis in ibid. “The description of the slaughter in the second principal point of the committee’s report,” wrote Henry, “is rhetoric. The aged, the women and children, and the civilians in the fort who did not wish to join in the fight, were placed in a coal barge early in the morning and towed by the
New Era ‘to a big island up the river,’ as testified to by Captain Marshall and referred to by other witnesses. In a letter to Gen. Chalmers, then a member of Congress, the surgeon of the garrison at Fort Pillow, Dr. C. Fitch, referred thus to charges of the murder of ‘babes’: ‘I don’t believe there was a babe there for any one to kill, as early in the morning all of the women and all of the noncombatants were ordered on to some barges, and were towed up the river to an island by a gunboat before anyone was hurt.’” (Henry,
“First with the Most” Forrest, p. 261.) Fitch, who soon after the massacre provided some of the most horrifying testimony about the massacre in his report, was strangely glib and conciliatory when, years later, Chalmers contacted him in an effort to defend himself against the charge, recently repeated by a senatorial foe, that he was the officer who ordered the boy dropped from the horse and shot. And his comrade . . . Thomas Addison in
RJSCW. 17 Rachel Parks and Jerry Steward [Stewart] in pension file of Ransom Parks; pension file of James Winston; George Houston and Jerry Stewart in
RJSCW. 18 Pension file of Tom Addison; G. W. Barrett, Gabriel Lane (aka Calvin McLellan), and Jesse Wilson in pension file of Tom Addison; testimony of Tom Addison (JCCW).
19 Pension file of Thomas Addison; G. W. Barrett, Gabriel Lane (AKA Calvin McLellan), and Jesse Wilson in pension file of Tom Addison; Testimony of Tom Addison in
RJSCW. 20 Deposition of Sherry Blain in pension file of Robert Blain; Aaron, Gundy, Lewis, and Robert Blain in pension file of Sherry Blain.
21 Sandy Cole . . . Sandy Cole in
RJSCW. Left by the rebels . . . Nathan Hunter in ibid.
22 His wound left a deep depression just behind his left ear. He spent the rest of his life as a Memphis teamster and “chore boy,” collecting a pension of eight dollars a month. Dizzy, half deaf, he complained in old age that “most all the time I has a deadly pain on [the right] side of my head. It works down the leader of my back,” he said, “and hurts me powerful.” (Alexander Nayron [Nason] in
RJSCW; Alexander Nason in pension files of Charles Fox, Thomas Hooper, Willis Ligon, and Charles Macklin [Koon]; Samuel Hughes in pension file of Charles Macklin [Koon]; pension files of John Cowan, Arthur Edmonds, Anthony Flowers, and Thomas Grier.)
23 Benjamin Robinson in
RJSCW. 24 Jacob Thompson in ibid.
25 Struck over the head . . . Burgess apparently ascribed his subsequent mood swings to a case of syphilis he claimed to have contracted during the war, but his doctor could never find any evidence of it. Burgess’s first wife, by whom he had eight children, died in 1906, whereupon this luckless old veteran married a woman named Lewisa who, within a few months of their wedding, was killed in Brinkley, Arkansas, by a cyclone. (Henry Gill and Joseph Waldrup in pension file of Armstrong Burgess.) Oliver Scott . . . Recovering after the fighting was over, Scott was kept a prisoner by General Forrest, who took him to Aberdeen, Mississippi, from which place he escaped in the spring of 1865 and returned to his command at Memphis. After the war he lived in Memphis and then worked as a farm laborer in Osceola, Arkansas. The doctor who examined him in old age reported that “his injuries have so affected him as to affect his mind and cause frequent head aches in rainy” and also “in very hot weather.” (James Murrell in pension file of George Washington Perkins; Benjamin Jones and Delgie [Scott] Simmons in pension file of Oliver Scott.)
26 Charley Robinson/Family: April 17, 1864.
27 “In many instances . . .” F. A. Smith and William Cleary in
RJSCW. James Walls . . . James Walls in ibid. “saw them take . . .” Alfred Coleman in ibid.
28 Edward Benton in ibid.
29 Fitch, “Monthly Report.”
30 Eli Carlton in
RJSCW. I have extrapolated a quote from “A fellow who was ahead asked, ‘if I surrendered.’” (John Penwell in ibid.)
31 Coming to . . . “Some negro soldiers were lying down in the wood floor tents,” wrote one of Forrest’s defenders. “We do not know whether they were sick or drunk—or merely trying to escape the battle. We do know that some of these men were shot during the engagement.” Davis, “What about Fort Pillow?” Corporal Frank Hogan . . . Frank Hogan in
RJSCW. John Kennedy . . . Lamberg/ Kappner: April 20, 1864, RG94/Box 8: Records of the 2nd USCLA in NARA.
32 “fired into the hospital . . .” Wiley Robinson in
RJSCW. “nearly all . . .” “I made a post-mortem examination, and found that the outer table of the skull was incised, the inner table was fractured, and a piece driven into the brain.” (Horace Wardner in ibid.)
“I Thought My Heart Would Burst”: Forrest: 4:00 p.m.-8:00 p.m., April 12, 1864 1 Jordan and Pryor,
The Campaigns of Nathan Bedford Forrest, pp. 438-440.
2 dictionary sense . . . According to
Webster’s New Twentieth Century Dictionary (second edition) a massacre is “1. the indiscriminate, merciless killing of a number of human beings or, sometimes, animals: wholesale slaughter. 2. An overwhelming defeat, as in sports. [Slang].” Forrest’s defenders . . . “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.” (Barteau in Hancock,
Hancock’s Diary, p. 367.)
3 Forrest had watched . . . Hancock,
Hancock’s Diary, p. 363. One officer . . . Officer of 2nd Tennessee Cavalry (CSA) in the
Charleston Mercury, May 2, 1864. Bruised from his earlier . . . Rumors circulated that Forrest “received four flesh wounds at Fort Pillow. He is concentrating all his force at Jackson,” wrote Major J. Murphy of the 5th Tennessee Cavalry on April 20, “and has ordered them to be provided with ten days’ rations; they are trying to make the impression that they are going to Memphis. One of my scouts assures me that he will cross the river. I think he will, and is watching his opportunity.” (J. Murphy/R. Rowett: April 20, 1864, in
ORCW.) James Brigham may have been the source. “The last attack was made by General Forrest in person, who headed the column. Forrest was wounded in three places, and his horse shot under him.” (James Brigham in
RJSCW.)
4 Barteau ordered . . . Wyeth,
That Devil Forrest, p. 329. “They would not, or at least did not, take down their flag. I ordered this done myself by my own men in order to stop the fight.” (Barteau in
Detroit Free Press, December 1, 1884.) “After I entered . . .” John Nelson in
RJSCW. “Fortunately for those of the enemy who survived this short but desperate struggle,” wrote Forrest, “some of our men cut the halyard”—Anderson said it was Forrest himself—“and the United States flag which floated from a tall mast in the centre of the fort came down. The force stationed in the rear of the fort could see the flag, but were too far under the bluff to see the fort, and when the flag descended they ceased firing; but for this, so near were they to the enemy, that few, if any, would have survived unhurt another volley.” (Forrest/Jefferson Davis: April 24, 1864, in Wyeth,
That Devil Forrest, p. 335.)
5 But if he paid . . . Jordan and Pryor, writing on Forrest’s behalf, claimed that his first order “was to collect and secure the prisoners from possible injury, while details were made from them for the burial of the Federal dead.” His first order of business, however, was to roll a Parrott gun into place and fire on the
New Era. In any case, he apparently did not issue his “first order” until well after the battle had mutated into a massacre. (Jordan and Pryor,
The Campaigns of Nathan Bedford Forrest, p. 440.) “We are hard pressed . . .” James R. Brigham in
RJSCW; Missouri Democrat, April 15, 1864. “After he had . . .”
Cairo News, April 16, 1864. “was instantly riddled . . .” Lieutenants F. A. Smith and William Cleary in
RJSCW. 7 “with several others . . .” Achilles V. Clark/George B. Halstead: April 19, 1864, in TSLA (RMC). The other account . . . Fort, “Memoir.” Fort’s defense of his comrades’ actions at Fort Pillow is as intriguing for what it does not say as for what it does. “I was at Fort Pillow,” he wrote, “and have never been so cowardly as to deny it. I did nothing there to shame any man, and saw nothing for which Genl Forrest could be justly blamed.” Fort is merely denying that he engaged in the slaughter and denying Forrest’s responsibility, not the massacre itself, which he seemed to regard as all for the best. “Thus terminated an affair which utterly destroyed that garrison: which greatly relieved West Tennessee for many miles around from frequent depredations, by robbing bands which periodically went out from this Hd Qrs under the absurd pretence of protecting that country against guerilla outrages.” Fort described “hard fighting of about nine hours duration, and blood enough spilled to enrage both sides; the attacked determining even to be put to the sword rather than surrender; an assault successfully made, many killed and wounded on both sides, and many prisoners taken. Instead of this it was represented, published, promulgated, denounced and outlawed that an overwhelming force marched in and wantonly murdered a weak and unresisting garrison, refusing to take any prisoners, but cruelly putting every man to the sword. This version was published throughout the Northern states at that time and having since remained uncontradicted with the truth has been believed every where almost.” But the Union casualties were comparable only up to the time of the truce. No one claims every man was put to the sword, but it is clear that once the rebels entered the fort, rebel casualties ceased and Yankee casualties increased to enormous proportions.
8 Fitch, “Monthly Report.” Italics mine.
9 “’Twas but the . . .” Officer of 2nd [22nd] Tennessee Cavalry (CSA) in the
Charleston Mercury, May 2, 1864. Lee H. Russ . . . “A puff of smoke, followed by the almost deafening crash of the explosion, told that we were masters of the situation. We watched the flight of this first shot, and found that it flew too high and some three hundred yards to the rear of the gunboat. Again we loaded and fired as before, the writer firing the blank charge into the touchhole of the cannon, and, failing to get far enough to one side, was struck and knocked down by one of the wheels as the gun rebounded. This shot proved to be better, and we were getting the range. This shot alarmed the crew on board the gunboat, for immediately her signal bell was sounded, and, while we were reloading, her hoarse whistle began to answer, and by the time our gun was again ready for action she began to move off upstream. This third also fell short, as did the former ones, and, glancing on the water, it passed only a few feet to the rear of the gunboat. Had the boat remained stationary, this shot would certainly have struck her about the water line, something like one third her length. By this time she was under a full head of steam, rapidly retreating up the river. We loaded and fired as rapidly as we could, and succeeded in getting in two more shots, though harmless ones, before she was lost to sight around a sharp bend in the river.” (Lee H. Russ, “Firing a Captured Cannon at Fort Pillow,”
CV, June 1904.) James Marshall was aware of only one Parrott gun firing at him. (James Marshall in
RJSCW.) But in some accounts, two Parrott guns were brought to bear on the
New Era. “As soon as we entered the fort,” wrote Hancock, “two of the captured guns were turned upon the gunboat, which caused her to move further up the river in place of coming to the relief of the garrison, as her commander had distinctly agreed to do. (So well was one of these guns handled by B. A. High (who was afterward made Orderly Sergeant, Company G, Second Tennessee) [Forrest worked the gun with him, according to a Union survivor] that Forrest offered to promote him to the rank of Captain and allow him to go with the captured guns to Mobile, Alabama. He declined to take the command of the battery from the fact that he was not willing to leave his comrades. He would have accepted if Forrest had kept the battery with his own command.)” (Hancock,
Hancock’s Diary, p. 360.) Brewer is mistaken when he asserted that Captain Morton manned the guns. Morton was not present at Fort Pillow, and Walton’s battery of two guns was still positioned well east of the breastworks. Brewer, “Storming of Fort Pillow.”
10 Fitch, “Capture of Fort Pillow”; Fitch, “Monthly Report.”
11 It took only five . . . Marshall counted two, Chapman Underwood three in
RJSCW. “over and around us . . .” James Marshall: Report: April 15, 1864 (NFWW). “a proud, exultant shout . . .” Officer of 2nd Tennessee Cavalry (CSA) in the
Charleston Mercury, May 2, 1864.
12 “I had to leave . . .” in Jordan and Pryor,
The Campaigns of Nathan Bedford Forrest, pp. 436-438. “part of our own men . . .” James Marshall in
RJSCW. Sergeant Henry Weaver of 6/C backed up Marshall, testifying that the
New Era - could not have opened fire “without killing our own men” because “they were all mixed up together.” (Henry Weaver in ibid.) Forrest was also more understanding of Marshall’s dilemma. The
New Era “had, as I afterwards understood, expended all her ammunition, and was therefore powerless for affording the Federal garrison the aid and protection they doubtless expected of her when they retreated towards the river.” Forrest/Jefferson Davis: April 24, 1864, in Wyeth,
That Devil Forrest, pp. 335-336. “came to . . .” James Marshall: Report: April 15, 1864, in
NFWW; N. D. Wetmore Jr./Editors,
Argus: April 13, 1864 (
NFWW). Arkansas civilian . . . Elvis Bevel in
RJSCW. “I saw the Union soldiers, black and white, slaughtered while asking for quarter; heard their screams for quarter, to which the rebels paid no attention. About one hundred left the fort and ran down the bank of the bluff to the river, pursued by the rebels, who surrounded them; in about twenty minutes, every one of them, as far as I could see, were shot down by the rebels without mercy. I left at this time, getting on the gunboat.”
13 191 rounds . . . James Marshall: Report: April 15, 1864 (
NFWW). “recreant at this . . .” Hancock,
Hancock’s Diary, p. 360. “The naval commander . . .” Dinkins, “The Capture of Fort Pillow.” “It would have been . . .” Anderson, “The True Story of Fort Pillow.” “steamed up the river . . .” William A. Winn in
RJSCW. 14 Fitch, “Monthly Report.”
15 Several witnesses . . . Isaac Ledbetter was asked if he saw any rebel officers while the shooting was going on. “None there that I know,” Ledbetter replied. “I did not see them until they carried me up on the bluff.” James Walls: “I do not know as I saw any officers about when they were shooting the negroes. A captain came to me a few minutes after I was shot; he was close by me when I was shot. . . . I did not hear a word of their trying to stop [the shooting]. After they were shot down, he told them not to shoot them any more. I begged him not to let them shoot me again, and he said they would not.” Daniel Stamps conceded, however, that he couldn’t distinguish rebel officers “as I can our officers. Their uniform is different.” Wounded men like Benjamin Robinson who never fled over the bluff testified to encountering a great many officers in the fort: “lots of them,” as he put it. The only general seen by the river was apparently Chalmers. (See also Jacob Thompson and William Cleary in
RJSCW and pension file of Jacob Jones.) “One rebel . . .” William F. Mays in
RJSCW. 16 Aaron Fentis in
RJSCW. 17 Isham Harris in the
Charleston Mercury, May 6, 1864.
18 “six pieces . . .” Forrest/Jefferson Davis: April 24, 1864, in Wyeth,
That Devil Forrest, p. 336. “crackers, cheese . . .” Officer of 2nd Tennessee Cavalry (CSA) in the
Charleston Mercury, May 2, 1864. Jacob Thompson . . .” Jacob Thompson in
RJSCW. “
Did you see any rebel officers about there when this was going on? Yes, sir; old Forrest was one.
Did you know Forrest? Yes, sir; he was a little bit of a man. I had seen him before at Jackson.” Critics of the Union version of what transpired at Fort Pillow cite this exchange to discredit all of the black troops’ testimony. But the general Thompson saw was very likely Chalmers, who commanded the assault and was a pint-sized version of Forrest, down to his high forehead, swept-back hair, and goatee. “Generals Chalmers and Bell . . .” Wyeth,
That Devil Forrest, p. 329.
19 “the mongrel garrison . . .” Chalmers in Willoughby, “Gunboats and Gumbo.” General Chalmers “came by with his brigade and commenced killing - everybody live and wounded,” but “General Forrest stopped him.” (Pension file of Jacob Jones.) “strong guard” . . . Fitch, “Monthly Report.” Chalmers was compelled . . . Wyeth,
That Devil Forrest, p. 329. “One Confederate within [Chalmers’s] observation, who disregarded this order, he personally arrested and placed under guard for the offence.” Wyeth,
That Devil Forrest, p. 593. Dr. Fitch . . . Fitch, “The Capture of Fort Pillow.”
20 “Both Generals . . .” Dinkins, “The Capture of Fort Pillow.” “Generals Forrest and Chalmers,” wrote Dinkins, “seeing the panic, called on the men to cease firing, and after a few minutes succeeded in restoring order.” (Dinkins,
Furl That Banner, p. 154.) Dr. Fitch would testify fifteen years later that Chalmers saved his life by threatening to shoot any rebel who molested him. Fitch, “The Capture of Fort Pillow.”
21 “the flat of his sword . . .” Berry,
Four Years with Morgan and Forrest, pp. 269-271. “and threatened him . . .”
Cairo News, April 16, 1864. a story Union . . . Young “stated that General Forrest shot one of his own for refusing quarter to our men.” N. D. Wetmore Jr./Editors,
Argus: April 13, 1864, in
NFWW. 22 Samuel H. Caldwell/Wife: April 15, 1864, in Cimprich and Mainfort, “Fort Pillow Revisited.”
23 “to help . . .” Alfred Coleman in
RJSCW. “Kill all . . .” Major Williams in ibid. And yet his men “kept on shooting. They shot at me after that,” Williams testified, “but did not hit me; a rebel officer shot at me. He took aim at my side; at the crack of his pistol I fell.” “There’s another dead nigger,” he said, moving on.
24 Manuel Nichols in ibid.
25 Military, pension, and ration commutation files of Samuel Green; Reason Barker, Thomas Brown, Morning Clay, Felix Davis, Steven Davis, Wilbur H. Gaylord, Henry Gillespie, Benjamin Jones, Pearson Lee, Henry Meeks, J. C. Shearer in pension file of Samuel Green; Samuel Green in pension files of Henry Dix and Jacob Jones. The general would probably have recognized the body of twenty-one-year-old Joseph Jackwood, who lived near his former home in sparsely settled Tippah County, Mississippi. (Pension file of Joseph Jackwood.)
26 J. Altshul, Andrew Clopton, Abraham Huggins, Abner W. Ligon, David and Nelson Mooring, Alexander Nason, Monroe Wilson, and Phillip Young, in pension file of Willis Ligon.
27 Dinkins,
Furl That Banner, pp. 155-156.
28 The other CSA Middletons were Alva and John J., who served in Mississippi infantry regiments. (Peter Jolly; Elizabeth Middleton Jones; Arabella, George, Josephine, Steven, and Thomas F. Middleton; and George Oliver in pension file of Adam Middleton.)
29 Charles Macklin . . . Macklin ran away with Jim Stokes, and Moses and Alexander Nason; Martha Colbert, Samuel Hughes, Alexander Nason, Mary Jane Hicks Purnell, and Jane and Sam J. Smith in pension file of Charles Koon [Macklin]. Hughes’s masters were Lieutenant Richard T. Gardiner and Private F. C. Gardiner of the 15th Tennessee. A slave belonging to Captain Thomas Buchanan of the 15th was armed and permitted to take part in the regiment’s combat. (Willoughby, “Bayonets and Bloomers.”) “the negroes belonging . . .” Forrest: General Order 65: July 10, 1864, in RG94/Chapter 2/v.299 (Chalmers) in NARA. Consequently, they did not . . . Samuel Hughs in pension file of Charles Macklin.
30 “love and affection . . .” John H. Meeks/John C. Black: March 24, 1888, in pension file of Frank Meeks. Among the local men who might have recognized his body were Captain John R. Adams and Privates Thomas Benton Kendrick and R. W. Michie of the 19th Tennessee Cavalry; W. H. Harris, Company I, 16th Tennessee Cavalry; J. P. Wilson of Company A, 21st Tennessee Cavalry. James Lewis in
RJSCW. 31 “Just after the firing . . .” Hancock,
Hancock’s Diary, pp. 363-364nn. Hancock conceded that “such was the animosity between the Tennesseans of the two commands, and as such is frequently the case in places taken by storm, some, no doubt, were shot after they had thrown down their arms and besought quarter; no such cases, however, happened to come under the immediate observation of the writer,” who remained atop the bluff. Ibid., pp. 361, 363.
Plunder: Fort Pillow: 5:00
P.M.-Midnight, April 12, 1864
1 “some few . . .” Adolf Lamberg/Kappner: April 20, 1864, in RG94/Box 8: Records of the 2nd USCLA in NARA. Shot in the ankle . . . William Gaylord in
RJSCW. “another man . . .” D. W. Harrison in ibid. Emphasis mine.
2 Cairo News, April 16, 1864.
3 Mack J. Leaming in
RJSCW. 4 Burney, “Some Texas Rangers.”
5 Less fastidious . . . Pension files of John Cowan and James Stokes; Benjamin Jones in pension file of Oliver Scott; Captain Adolf Lamberg (2nd USCLA)/ Colonel Kappner: April 20, 1864, RG94/Box 8: Records of the 2nd USCLA in NARA; John Cowan, Hardy N. Revelle, James Lewis, Daniel Tyler, W. P. Walker and Henry F. Weaver in
RJSCW. Others . . . Hardy Revelle, W. P. Walker in
RJSCW. 6 Charley Robinson/Family: April 17, 1864.
7 “When the fight . . .” Carroll, “Autobiography and Reminiscences,” p. 28. “shooting and robbing . . .” William F. Mays in
RJSCW; Mack J. Leaming in ibid. “I was wounded and knocked down with the but of a musket and left for dead, after being robbed, and they cut the buttons off my jacket.” James Lewis in ibid. “They robbed . . .” Edward B. Benton in ibid.
8 Thinking Nathan Hunter . . . Nathan Hunter in ibid.
9 “They thought . . .” William P. Walker in ibid. “Yes, sir; they ran their hands in my pockets—they thought I was dead—they did all in the same way.” John Haskins in ibid. Some rebels . . . “Thinking that if I should be discovered, I would be killed, I emerged from my hiding place, and, approaching the nearest rebel, I told him I was a citizen. He said, ‘You are in bad company, G—d d—n you; out with your greenbacks, or I’ll shoot you.’ I gave him all the money I had, and under his convoy I went up into the fort again.”(John Nelson in ibid.) - Thomas Addison testified that as he played dead a rebel “searched my pockets and took my money. He said: ‘God damn his old soul; he is sure dead now; he is a big, old, fat fellow.’” (Thomas Addison in ibid.) “Soon after . . .” (Mack J. Leaming in ibid.)
10 Fleeing to within . . . Carl A. Lamberg/I. G. Kappner: April 20, 1864, in
ORCW. “I had some . . .” Emanuel Nichols in ibid.; “Daniel Tyler” in the
Liberator, July 22, 1864; testimony and statement of Ransom Anderson.
11 “After the fight . . .” Samuel H. Caldwell/Wife: April 15, 1864, in Cimprich and Mainfort, “Fort Pillow Revisited.” Forrest assessed . . . “Vidette” in
Atlanta Memphis Appeal, May 2, 1864; Forrest/Jefferson Davis: April 24, 1864, in Wyeth,
That Devil Forrest, p. 336.
12 Officer of 2nd Tennessee Cavalry (CSA) in the
Charleston Mercury, May 2, 1864.
13 Edward B. Benton in
RJSCW. 14 “and taken into the town . . .” Henry Weaver in ibid. “At the top . . .” Hardy Revelle in ibid.
15 Charley Robinson/Family: April 17, 1864.
16 James Brigham in
RJSCW. 17 Hancock,
Hancock’s Diary, p. 400.
18 Forrest’s defenders . . . “
You say they had bloodhounds; did you see any of them? Edward Benton: Yes, sir; and not only I but others saw them. One other, Mr. Jones, was treed by them, and staid there a long time.
What Jones was that? I don’t know his given name. He lives on Island 34. I can find out his name. He is not any too good a Union man, but is rather southern in his feelings.” Edward B. Benton in
RJSCW; he made the same claim to General Rosencrans. (
New York Herald: April 24, 1864.) But not only . . . Rogers and Patterson, “Concerning the Nathan Bedford Forrest Legend.” “No man in all that country [West Tennessee] is safe,” wrote Isaac Hawkins while Forrest’s recruiters were active. “The con-feds are conscripting: hunting men and boys down with hounds—and in some instances young men are so torn up by the dogs, as to be unable to travel.” Isaac Hawkins/[Hurlbut]: September 20, 1863, in RG94/E729A/Box 4 in NARA; S. L. Phelps/A. H. Foote: December 10, 1861, in
NFWW. In any case . . . Elvis Bevel in
RJSCW. 19 “to complete the burial . . .” Jordan and Pryor,
The Campaigns of Nathan Bedford Forrest, pp. 442-443. Some historians claimed that Forrest departed immediately after the firing stopped, but, like Henry, I take Major Anderson’s word that he remained “into the late evening.” Anderson, “The True Story of Fort Pillow.” Chalmers commanded . . . Wyeth,
That Devil Forrest, pp. 330-331. and follow Forrest . . . In asserting that any atrocities committed after dark had to have been the work of skulkers or local thugs, Wyeth wrote that “McCulloch, with Chalmers, followed at dark, leaving the fort entirely abandoned by the Confederates. The Federal wounded were left in charge of their surgeon. The rear guard of the Confederates encamped for the night two miles from the river. After dark that evening not a soldier of Forrest’s command was nearer Fort Pillow than two miles, where General Chalmers went into camp. If the excesses charged by some of the survivors were committed after that time and before six o’clock of the following morning (April 13th), they were done by guerrillas, robbers, and murderers, with which this section of the country, as is well known, was then infested, and who, following in the wake of either army like hyenas, preyed without mercy upon the weak and defenseless.” (Wyeth,
That Devil Forrest, pp. 330-331.) But there is ample evidence that McCulloch and his men did not leave until much later than nightfall, which, at that time of year, occurred around 7:00 p.m.; that the burial parties labored under rebel supervision at least until 10:00 p.m. (“They were burying pretty much all night,” Woodford Cooksey in
RJSCW); and that McCulloch’s men camped not two miles away but no farther than one mile, from which point they could easily have slipped back during the night. (“Bell withdrew his brigade about one mile and a half east and encamped, while McCulloch’s Brigade camped nearer the fort.” Hancock,
Hancock’s Diary, pp. 363-364.) Finally, those who witnessed crimes that night invariably described the assailants as rebel soldiers.
20 Bell and his brigade . . . Hancock,
Hancock’s Diary, pp. 363-364. “Among the mass of sworn testimony examined by the author [Wyeth], it is shown that with but one exception, the perpetrator of which was arrested by General Chalmers on the spot and placed under guard, not a gun was fired or a prisoner injured after the flag of the garrison fell.” But Wyeth must have entirely dismissed or failed to examine any of the Federal testimony. It is significant that in defending themselves against these charges, Forrest, his officers, and his biographers did not collect a single deposition from an enlisted man. He also neglected to remember that Chalmers himself recalled that Forrest had been forced to threaten one of his men for disobeying his cease-fire order. (Wyeth,
That Devil Forrest, p. 329.) Bell claimed in a memorandum to Wyeth that his men camped fifteen miles from the breastworks that night, but he confused this night with the night of the thirteenth. (Tyree H. Bell in Wyeth,
That Devil Forrest, p. 593.) By seven o’clock . . . Jordan and Pryor,
The Campaigns of Nathan Bedford Forrest, pp. 442-443. Frank Hogan . . . Frank Hogan in
RJSCW. 21 Alfred Coleman in
RJSCW. 22 “earnest in his expressions . . .” Robert McCulloch in Wyeth,
That Devil Forrest, p. 593. Perhaps McCulloch was hard of hearing. “They shot a great many that evening.” (Thomas Addison in
RJSCW.) “I heard guns away after dark shooting all that evening, somewhere; they kept up a regular fire for a long time, and then I heard the guns once in a while.” (John F. Ray in ibid.) “The enemy carried our works at about 4 p.m., and from that time until dark, and at intervals throughout the night, our men were shot down without mercy and almost without regard to color.” (Mack J. Leaming in ibid.) “I heard firing all night.” (George Houston in ibid.) “the best fighting men . . .” Barteau in the
Detroit Free Press, December 1, 1884.
23 “the unwounded . . .” Charles Anderson in Henry,
“First with the Most” Forrest, pp. 256-257. Several survivors . . . Mack J. Leaming in
RJSCW. “As fast as possible . . .” Hancock,
Hancock’s Diary, p. 362. “The most of our wounded . . .” Fitch, “Monthly Report.”
24 “procure a skiff . . .” Forrest/Jefferson Davis: April 24, 1864, in Wyeth,
That Devil Forrest, p. 336. “Sir,” it said . . . Forrest in ibid., pp. 329-330.
25 “The object was . . .” Jordan and Pryor,
The Campaigns of Nathan Bedford Forrest, p. 442; Henry,
“First with the Most” Forrest, pp. 256-257. “taken off by citizens . . .” Charles Anderson in ibid.
26 After what Marshall . . . Forrest/Jefferson Davis: April 24, 1864, in Wyeth,
That Devil Forrest, p. 336. “fearful . . .” James Marshall in ibid., p. 330.
27 Burfford, “In the Wake of Fort Pillow with Forrest in Command.” Some of Burfford’s account is very similar to Anderson’s and was probably based on it.
28 Alexander Nason in
RJSCW. 29 The officers’ corpses . . . Hancock,
Hancock’s Diary, p. 363; Fitch, “Monthly Report”; Jordan and Pryor,
The Campaigns of Nathan Bedford Forrest, p. 440. Most, but apparently . . . Eli Bangs in
RJSCW. Some were buried . . . William B. Purdy in ibid. Major Booth . . . Benjamin Robinson in ibid. where a rebel trooper . . . “Major Booth and some of the other officers were burried in a separate grave. A Rebel soldier had taken off his Uniform, and was parading around with it on.” (Fitch, “Monthly Report.”) Sergeant Benjamin Robinson testified that “they took his clothes all off but his drawers; I was lying right there looking at them.” (Benjamin Robinson in
RJSCW.)
30 As the rebels . . . Fitch, “Monthly Report.” “the unwounded . . .” Charles Anderson in Henry,
“First with the Most” Forrest, pp. 256-257. Forrest described the details as “Federals and Negroes,” thus denying the artillerists legitimacy as Union soldiers. (Forrest/Jefferson Davis: April 24, 1864, in Wyeth,
That Devil Forrest, p. 336.) overall command . . . Captain O. B. Farris (Company K, 2nd Tennessee) superintended the burial of the dead. Hancock,
Hancock’s Diary, p. 363.
31 “They were all pitched in . . .” James Marshall, William B. Purdy, John W. Shelton in
RJSCW. “Some had just been thrown . . .” Eli Bangs in ibid.
32 Black prisoners . . . Granville Hill (regiment unknown) testified to having been a slave of the same master—a man named Warren—as Thomas Davis of 2/B. He said he helped bury Davis on April 13. (Pension file of Thomas Davis.) Charles Williams . . . Carroll Harris, Granville Hill, and Mary Warren in pension file of Thomas Davis.
33 “there seemed to be . . .” Frank Hogan in
RJSCW. “working his hand . . .” Benjamin Robinson in ibid.
34 “He laughs over his adventures, and says he is one of the best ‘dug-outs’ in the world.”
Cairo News, April 16, 1864.
35 Though a few . . . Deposition of Sandy Addison and Charles Williams in pension file of Robert Green testified that they were “detailed to return and help bury the dead.” Corporal Reason Barker and Private Henry Miller in pension file of Harry Hunter testified that they buried Harry Hunter of 6/D. others who witnessed . . . John Shelton in
RJSCW. 36 Dinkins,
Furl That Banner, pp. 155-156.
37 For over four hours . . . Fitch, “Monthly Report.” “left unattended . . .” Anderson in Henry,
“First with the Most” Forrest, pp. 256-257. “After securing . . .” Officer of 2nd Tennessee Cavalry (CSA) in the
Charleston Mercury, May 2, 1864.
38 A. W. Ellet/Porter: July 3, 1863 (
NFWW ).
39 In disputing . . . Jordan and Pryor,
The Campaigns of Nathan Bedford Forrest, p. 443; Wyeth,
That Devil Forrest, pp. 591-592. Billy Mays was taken for dead by a rebel arsonist. (William J. Mays in
RJSCW.)
40 John Penwell in
RJSCW. 41 James Walls and William J. Mays in ibid.
42 Nathan G. Fulks in ibid.
43 Ransom Anderson in ibid. Daniel Tyler and W. P. Walker testified that they did not see anyone burned alive; James Walls and Isaac J. Ledbetter said they had been told about it by others. All in ibid.
44 “all other evidence . . .” Henry,
“First with the Most” Forrest, pp. 265-266. Whatever the merits . . . Officer of 2nd Tennessee Cavalry (CSA) in the
Charleston Mercury, May 2, 1864; Elias Falls in
RJSCW. “Walk or Die”: Prisoners: From April 12, 1864 1 John Goodman: List of Prisoners Cap’d by Major General Forrest at Fort Pillow, & in Tennessee—Deserters, Men of Bad Characters, Flags &c. &c. Apl 12/ 64: undated (copied in Dept. 198—December 21, 1886) in RG249/107/896 in NARA.
2 C. R. Barteau in Wyeth,
That Devil Forrest, p. 594.
3 L. T. Lindsay/McCulloch: April 19, 1864, in RG94/Chapter 2/v.289 (Chalmers) in NARA.
4 Jordan and Pryor published a list that included 53 black prisoners and 3 of their white officers: Epeneter, Bischoff, and Hennessy of 6/A. Pension and military records suggest that there were six more. (“List of Prisoners Captured at Fort Pillow,” Jordan and Pryor,
The Campaigns of General Nathan Bedford Forrest, p. 704.) Though Chalmers’s own adjutant’s list shows 155 white prisoners, including 141 men of the 13th, Chalmers later reported that “One hundred and sixty-four white men and 40 negroes were taken prisoners, making an aggregate of 273 prisoners. It is probable as many as half a dozen may have escaped. The remainder of the garrison were killed.” (Chalmers/J. P. Strange: May 7, 1864, in
ORCW.) “Seven officers and two hundred and nineteen enlisted men (fifty-six negroes and one hundred and sixty-three whites), unwounded, were brought off as prisoners of war, which, with the wounded, make an aggregate of those who survived, exclusive of all who may have escaped (it was said that about twenty-five escaped in a skiff), two hundred and ninety-six, or a little over half of the garrison.” (Hancock,
Hancock’s Diary, p. 364.) “Something over three hundred of them did so after having been convinced that further resistance was useless. Besides the wounded who were paroled we carried something over two hundred and fifty of them to Mississippi and I know that several made their escape. “(Fort, “Memoir.”) My own count shows 62 blacks and 147 whites, for a total of 209; over half of the blacks (32) and 41 whites were wounded, most of them seriously. (Military, regimental, and pension records of the 2nd USCLA, 6th USCHA, and 11th USCI.) But by the time the prisoners reached Holly Springs there were only 104 white and 30 black prisoners. Some had escaped, some had been killed, and some were simply never heard from again. (Philip Young in
RJSCW.)
5 Pension file of Samuel Green.
6 “saw officers . . .” James Brigham in
RJSCW. “with a gun sling . . .” Captain Adolf Lamberg (2nd USCLA)/Colonel Kappner: April 20, 1864, RG94/Box 8: Records of the 2nd USCLA in NARA. Bob Winston . . . Harden Capers and Duncan Harding in
RJSCW. Capers referred to him as Corporal Robert Win-sent. Among the prisoners . . .
Charleston Mercury, May 2, 1864. (See also “List of Prisoners Captured by Forrest at Fort Pillow,” RG249/107/Item 896 in NARA.
7 five of them . . . They were D. Allgood (“a boy from Kentucky), W. T. Cameron of Tennessee, George Washington Crafts of Minnesota, and J. Schaffer. Brigham testified that “there were from twenty-five to thirty black soldiers carried off as prisoners, and not over thirty to thirty-five white,” which may have been all he saw or an attempt to exaggerate the scale of the massacre. (James Brigham in
RJSCW; “List of Prisoners Captured by Forrest at Fort Pillow,” RG249/107/Item 896 in NARA.) “were passing by us . . .” Fitch, “Monthly Report.” “The Federals . . .” Howlett, “Dr. R. E. Howlett in the Civil War.”
8 Wilbur H. Gaylord in
RJSCW. 9 Manuel Nichols in ibid.
11 Brown,
The Negro in the American Rebellion. 12 “all the colored boys . . .” Jerry Stewart in
RJSCW. “crawled down . . .” Benjamin Robinson in ibid. “they intended . . .” Philip Young in ibid.
13 Thomas Addison in ibid.
14 George Shaw in ibid. Emphasis mine. Henry Christian may have witnessed this same incident. “I saw two shot; one was shot by an officer. He was standing, holding the officer’s horse, and when the officer came and got his horse he shot him dead.” (Henry Christian in
RJSCW.)
Paroled: Fort Pillow: April 12-13, 1864 1 In the night . . . Hollis, “The Diary of Elisha Tompkin Hollis.”
2 Woodford Cooksey in
RJSCW. (Emphasis mine.)
3 The 2nd Missouri Cavalry was the only regiment left at Fort Pillow that morning.
4 James Walls in
RJSCW; pension file of James Taylor; James Walls in pension file of Isaac J. Ledbetter.
5 Brown,
The Negro in the American Rebellion, pp. 246-247.
6 “one white woman . . .” Eli A. Bangs in
RJSCW. “a gun . . .” Chapman Underwood in ibid.
7 At Mound City, Leaming “received good care and medical treatment in the U.S. general hospital.” Leaming testified before Wade and Gooch in the hospital, with Lieutenant John Porter lying in the next bed, “unable to speak.” The only other paroled officer to live long enough to reach Mound City, Porter would die of his wounds in June. “As to the course our Government should pursue in regard to the outrages perpetrated by the rebels on this as well as on a number of occasions during the existing rebellion,” Leaming proposed the following January, “. . . some sort of retaliation should be adopted as the surest method of preventing a recurrence of the fiendish barbarities practiced on the defenders of our flag at Fort Pillow.” (Mack J. Leaming in ibid.)
9 T. Pattison/Porter: April 13, 1864, in NFWW.
10 W. Ferguson (
Silver Cloud)/T. Pattison: April 14, 1864, in NFWW.
12 Missouri Democrat, April 15, 1864.
13 Pulling back . . . W. Ferguson (
Silver Cloud)/T. Pattison: April 14, 1864, in NFWW. “some twenty . . .” W. Ferguson in
RJSCW. Heaving the
Silver Cloud . . . James Marshall: Report: April 15, 1864, in
NFWW. 14 N. D. Wetmore Jr./Editors,
Argus: April 13, 1864, in ibid.
15 Daniel Stamps in
RJSCW. 16 Aboard the
Silver Cloud . . . Wilbur H. Gaylord and Mack J. Leaming in ibid. Lieutenant Frank Smith of Company D was forty years old and spent much of his time in the 13th chasing deserters. “shoot one man . . .” William Cleary in ibid.
17 At Forrest’s temporary camp . . . Peters,
Lauderdale County, p. 47. Fearing that the
New Era . . . Anderson, “The True Story of Fort Pillow.” Elisha Tompkin Hollis was one of the men sent back. “Wednesday—April 13, 1864 Beautiful day, sent back to Fort and there remained most of the day under truce. In the evening we marched several miles out and camped.” (Hollis, “Diary of Elisha Tompkin Hollis.”) That Forrest felt . . . Wyeth,
That Devil Forrest, p. 591.
18 Report of Major Anderson: April 17, 1864, in
NFWW. 19 Anderson, “The True Story of Fort Pillow.”
20 William Cleary in
RJSCW; Anderson, “The True Story of Fort Pillow.”
21 Charles W. Anderson/W. Ferguson: April 13, 1864 (
NFWW).
22 Charles W. Anderson and W. Ferguson: Agreement: April 13, 1864 (
NFWW).
23 The little general had just granted Dr. Fitch a parole, which read: “I Charles Fitch Asst Surgeon 13th Tenn. Cav. U.S. Volunteers, having been captured by the Confederate forces, do give my Parole of honor that I will not bear Arms, nor do any other Military service in any capacity whatsoever for the United States, until Exchanged, except to attend to the wounded of the U.S. Forces captured at Fort Pillow by the Confederate States forces.” Fitch, “Monthly Report.”
24 Anderson, “The True Story of Fort Pillow.”
25 Chapman Underwood in
RJSCW. 26 E. Nigh/T. H. Harris: January 24, 1864, in RG 393, Records of the U.S. Army Continental Commands: 1821-1920, General Records, 16th Army Corps, Letters Received, 1864. Box 1.
27 “in great stress . . .” Anderson, “The True Story of Fort Pillow.” “It was a subject . . .”
Missouri Democrat, April 15, 1864. The
Democrat may have confused Young with Lieutenant Cordy Revelle, whose brother Hardy worked as a clerk in a merchandising firm at Fort Pillow.
28 Anderson, “The True Story of Fort Pillow.”
29 “Those wounded . . .” N. D. Wetmore Jr./ Editors,
Argus: April 13, 1864, in
NFWW. 30 Thomas Loftus [Loftis] and Daniel N. Rankin in pension file of Francis A. Alexander; William H. Albritton, Emerson B. Eldridge, G. L. Ellis, Daniel N. Rankin, and John C. Simmons in pension file of Thomas Loftis.
31 James P. Meador and John C. Simmons in pension files of Thomas Loftis; William H. Albritton and Thomas Loftis in pension file of John C. Simmons.
32 William H. Albritton and Thomas Loftis in pension file of John C. Simmons; James P. Meador in
RJSCW; John C. Simmons in pension file of James P. Meador.
33 George W. Craig, Thomas Loftis, and John C. Simmons in pension file of William Albritton; William Albritton in pension files of John C. Simmons and James P. Meador.
34 After suffering . . . Wiley Robinson in
RJSCW. Jim McMichael . . . James McMichael in ibid. “They shot the most after they had surrendered,” he gasped to Wade and Gooch. “They sent in a flag of truce for a surrender, and the major would not surrender. They made a charge and took the fort, and then we threw down our arms; but they just shot us down.”
35 Shot four times . . . William P. Walker in pension file of Daniel Rankin; testimony, statement, and pension file of William P. Walker. Wounded in the side . . . Testimony of Isaac J. Ledbetter; John L. Poston, James N. Tayler, and James M. Walls in pension file of Isaac J. Ledbetter.
36 Daniel Rankin in
RJSCW. 37 Statement and testimony of Daniel H. Rankin; Martin V. Day and William P. Walker in pension file of Daniel H. Rankin; Daniel Rankin in pension files of Francis A. Alexander, Thomas Loftis, and Hartwell D. Stovall.
38 Testimony and statement of Daniel Stamps; John T. Stamps and John H. Copher in pension file of Daniel Stamps; Daniel Stamps in pension file of John M. Condray.
39 “About two o’clock . . .” Edward B. Benton in
RJSCW. By now . . . Jewell,
New Orleans. 40 Fitch, “The Capture of Fort Pillow”; Fitch, “Monthly Report.”
41 Billy Bancom . . . Pension file of William A. Bancom. Frank Key . . . Frank Smith and Chapman Underwood in pension file of Franklin A. Key. Shot in the back . . . Testimony of David W. Harrison;
Missouri Democrat, April 15, 1864.
42 Pension file of Tom Addison; G. W. Barrett, Gabriel Lane (aka Calvin McLellan), and Jesse Wilson in pension file of Tom Addison; Thomas Addison in
RJSCW. 43 Still shaking . . . Ransom Anderson in
RJSCW. 44 In 1903, at the age of about sixty, Sherry Blain impressed a pension agent as “rather dull and thick witted” but honest. Pension file of Sherry Blain; Sherry Blain in pension file of Robert Blain; Abraham Huggins, Ellen Thornton, Allen James (Walker) and David Weston in pension file of Sherry Blain (Thornton); George Houston in pension file of Samuel Green; Aaron Fentis in
RJSCW. 45 His arm shattered . . . Moore,
Women of the War, pp. 310-312; Eli Cothel in
RJSCW. After the war . . . William Ellis, Thomas Greer, Shed James, Alexander Nason, Henry Robinson in pension file of Arthur Edmonds; Arthur Edwards [Edmonds] in
RJSCW. 46 Statement of Hardin Capers, April 23, 1864, in Mason Brayman Papers, Chicago Historical Society.
47 Alexander Nayron [Nason] in
RJSCW; Alexander Nason in pension files of Charles Fox, Thomas Hooper, Willis Ligon, and Charles Macklin [Koon]; Samuel Hughes in pension file of Charles Macklin [Koon]; pension files of John Cowan, Arthur Edmonds, Anthony Flowers, and Thomas Grier.
48 Emanuel Nichols in
RJSCW; “Daniel Tyler” in the
Liberator, July 22, 1864; Ransom Anderson in
RJSCW.
Aftermath: Touring the Fort: April 13, 1864 1 F. A. Smith and William Cleary in
RJSCW. 2 Anderson, “The True Story of Fort Pillow.”
3 Pension file of John G. Woodruff and in
RJSCW. 4 “I merely went on shore,” he said, “but did not pretend to leave the boat.” Chapman Underwood in ibid.
5 The corpses he saw were probably those of the men killed that morning, the rest having been buried or left smoldering in the rubble.
7 Franklin,
Virginia Repository, April 27, 1864.
8 N. D. Wetmore Jr./Editors,
Argus: April 13, 1864, in
NFWW. 9 “a handsome young fellow . . .” Maury,
Recollections of a Virginian, pp. 216-217. “he could not control . . .” William Cleary in
RJSCW. 10 By now . . . Captain J. W. Colburn in Quartermaster General’s Office (endorsement): December 28, 1883, Records of Office of Quartermaster General/ Cemeterial/1828-1929/RG92/Box 56/NM81/576 in NARA. “cheerfully and pleasantly . . .” Anderson, “The True Story of Fort Pillow.”
11 Ferried across . . . Abner Buford, Rachel Parks, George Patterson, Jerry Steward in the pension file of Ransom Parks. Nancy Hopper . . . Rebecca Williams and Nancy Hopper in
RJSCW; pension file of Daniel Hopper. Rosa Johnson . . . Rosa Johnson and Rebecca Williams in
RJSCW; pension files of Joseph Johnson and William Read Johnson. Anne Jane Ruffin . . . David Sneed in pension file of Thomas Ruffin; Anne Jane Rufin [Ruffin] in
RJSCW; William Cleary in ibid.
12 Nancy Hopper, Rosa Johnson, and Anne Jane Rufin [Ruffin] in
RJSCW; Joseph E. Harvey (9th Minnesota Infantry)/Mary: May 31, 1864, Minnesota Historical Society (ms. P591).
13 For all that, Akerstrom remains a murky figure whose name was either Charles J. or John Charles, and whose widow’s application was thrown out for lack of evidence of his ever having served. (William Cleary, James McCoy, Jane Rufin, and R. A. Smith in
RJSCW; pension file of John C. Akerstrom;
RJSCW.)
14 Jacob Thompson . . . Jacob Thompson in
RJSCW. Common practice . . . Goodspeed Publishing Company,
History of Lincoln County, pp. 367-368; Brown in Andrews, ed.,
From Fugitive Slave to Free Man, p. 34; McCandless,
A History of Missouri, vol. 2, pp. 59-63; McReynolds,
Missouri, p. 169. Nevertheless, what these . . . Anne Jane Rufin [Ruffin], Rebecca Williams, Nancy M. Hopper, and Jacob Thompson in
RJSCW. 15 James Marshall: Report: April 15, 1864, in
NFWW. 16 Thomas Clark and Robert Cribbs in pension file of Robin [James] Ricks.
17 Some artillerists . . . Henry Richardson in pension file of Daniel Ray. Sandy Addison . . . Sandy Addison and Charles Williams in pension file of Robert Green. The Greens had a daughter named Mary and a son named David.
18 N. D. Wetmore Jr./Editors,
Argus: April 13, 1864, in NFWW.
19 Fitch reported . . . Fitch, “Monthly Report.” Among these . . . John Poston and William J. Stephens in pension file of John H. Porter. Jordan died . . . Medical record of William Jordan [Jerdon].
20 Mound City Dispatch, April 14, 1864, in
Christian Recorder, April 30, 1864.
21 Almost as disgraceful . . . William E. Johnson in
RJSCW; neither Lieutenant Cleary nor James Marshall of the
Platte Valley was among the officers who fraternized with the enemy. (William Cleary and James Marshall in ibid.) “Very free . . .” William Johnson in ibid. Astonishingly . . . John G. Woodruff in ibid.;
Owensboro (KY)
Monitor, April 20, 1864.
22 Anderson, “The True Story of Fort Pillow.” “General,” Woodruff would write Brayman, “since I left I see a scurlous attack on me in the Cairo ‘Extra’ news. I shall be back Monday when I will explain to your entire satisfaction.” (Woodruff/Brayman: April 15, 1864, Brayman Papers.)
23 “I went on board . . .” John Penwell in
RJSCW. “I thought . . .” Mack J. Leaming in ibid.
24 Missouri Democrat, April 15, 1864.
25 Chapman Underwood in
RJSCW. 26 James McCoy in ibid. “Notwithstanding the evidences of rebel atrocity and barbarity with which the ground was covered, there were some of our army officers onboard the
Platte Valley as lost to every feeling of decency, honor, and self-respect, as to make themselves disgracefully conspicuous in bestowing civilities and attention upon the rebel officers, even while they were boasting of the murders they had there committed. Your committee were unable to ascertain the names of the officers who have thus inflicted so foul a stain upon the honor of our army. They are assured, however, by the military authorities that - every effort will be made to ascertain their names and bring them to the punishment they so richly merit.” Report of the Subcommittee in
RJSCW. 27 Missouri Democrat, April 15, 1864.
28 A little before 5:00 . . . Burfford, “In the Wake of Fort Pillow with Forrest in Command.” Anderson assured . . . Anderson, “The True Story of Fort Pillow.”
29 N. D. Wetmore Jr./Editors,
Argus: April 13, 1864, in
NFWW. 30 “The
New Era . . .” James Marshall in
RJSCW. “The
Red Rover . . .” N. D. Wetmore Jr./Editors,
Argus: April 13, 1864, in
NFWW; Alexander M. Pennock in
RJSCW; James Marshall: Report: April 15, 1864, and T. Pattison/Porter: April 13, 1864, in
NFWW. 31 “We then mounted . . .” Anderson, “The True Story of Fort Pillow.” Spurring their horses . . . Hancock,
Hancock’s Diary, p. 365; Wilbur H. Gaylord in
RJSCW. 32 Wyeth,
That Devil Forrest, pp. 587-588.
33 W. R. McLagan in
RJSCW. 34 “a notorious spy . . .” Ibid. “The Rebel soldiers . . .” Fitch, “Monthly Report.” The last Frank Hogan . . . Frank Hogan in
RJSCW. 35 Fitch, “Monthly Report.”
36 W. R. McLagan in
RJSCW. 37 C. C. Washburn/Forrest: June 19, 1864, in
ORCW. 38 “It was an act . . .” Jordan and Pryor,
Campaigns of General Nathan Bedford Forrest, p. 455. “If he was . . .” Forrest/Washburn: June 25 [23], 1864, in
ORCW. “there is nothing . . .” Wyeth,
That Devil Forrest, p. 588.
39 With his father’s “best horse and two pistols,” eighteen-year-old Robert Z. Taylor joined Bell’s brigade at Fort Pillow immediately after the battle and was assigned to guarding Forrest’s prisoners. Robert Z. Taylor in
TCWVQ. 40 Clarke R. Barteau in
Detroit Free Press, December 1, 1884.
41 Peter Bischoff in pension file of John T. Young.
42 In the meantime . . . Forrest/Polk: April 25, 1864, in
ORCW. 43 Washburn/S. D. Lee: July 3, 1864, in
ORCW. Emphases mine.
44 Memphis Daily Avalanche, May 2, 1866. Phineas Thomas Scruggs was called Reverend in some records. Scruggs had a law degree and was a judge at some point in his career. A business associate and political ally of Forrest, he was born in Nashville on March 26, 1806, and died in Memphis in 1878. The commandant at Cahaba was Colonel H. C. Davis. (Gene Scruggs/Author: December 5, 2002 (e-mail); Nashville city directories.
45 John T. Young/Washburn: September 13, 1864, in
ORCW; pension file of John T. Young.
46 Cairo News, April 16, 1864.
47 “geographical wedge piercing . . .” Forrest C. Pogue Public History Institute,
The Civil War in the Jackson Purchase Region of Kentucky. But Cairo was . . . Dickson, Inspection Report, RG98/Box 93/4720 in NARA; John Rinaker (122nd Illinois Volunteer Infantry)/Semi-Weekly Return of Effective Force at the Post of Cairo: April 25, 1864, in NARA.
48 “to destroy the large . . .” Pennock/Welles: April 15, 1864, in
ORCW. But on the night . . . Cairo was as plagued by dissension and accusations of disloyalty as Paducah was. Union agents were obliged to sift through calumnious letters from neighborhood gossips. A Mrs. H. S. Horn reported that Isaac and Mary A. Newton had abused and insulted her children for singing “sutch Union songs [as] Red White & Blue & Union Forever,” and a cavalry orderly accused Mrs. Newton of singing “songs unbecoming a lady.” (Forrest C. Pogue Public History Institute,
The Civil War in the Jackson Purchase Region of Kentucky; T. H. Harris /[Hurlbut] April 17, 1864, in 16th Army Corps (Letters Received) RG98, Part 2, Entry 391, Box 7 in NARA;
U.S. v. Isaac Newton, depositions of Mary A. Newton and F. G. Newell: June 8, 1864, in NARA.
49 Brayman: Report: May 2, 1864, in
ORCW. 50 “Mary Bickerdyke was a one-woman whirlwind whose sole aim during the Civil War was to more efficiently care for wounded Union soldiers, no matter what. If improving the level of care meant scrubbing up after filthy, incompetent doctors, then she would scrub every surface in sight. If improving the level of care meant antagonizing the hospital staff by threatening to report drunken physicians, then she would antagonize them. If improving the level of care meant ordering a staff member who had illegally appropriated garments meant for the wounded to strip the clothes off, then she would order him to strip. Bickerdyke stepped on a lot of male toes, but she won most of her fights. One ruffled male appealed to General William Tecumseh Sherman to take action against her, but was disappointed by the reply he received: ‘Well, I can do nothing for you; she outranks me.’”
www.pinn.net/~sunshine/whm2002/c_war.html.
51 Horace Wardner in
RJSCW. 52 “Dr. Wardner says . . .”
Cairo News, April 16, 1864. But before the week . . . Horace Wardner in
RJSCW. When an officer . . . Hurlbut: Special Order 97: April 18, 1864, in RG94/E112-115/P1-17/v.5 in NARA.
53 LeRoy Fitch/David D. Porter: April 16, 1864, in
NFWW. 54 “captured by the enemy . . .” Marshall gives somewhat conflicting testimony about his maneuvers that morning. In one he mentions towing a coal barge to “Flower Island,” a misnomer for Flour Island, which was located off Fulton, but then seems to suggest that he saw rebels racing around Coal Creek burning barges. My account is an attempt to reconcile his two accounts with the testimony of Ferguson, Fitch, and Pennock. “I put the refugees . . .” Report of Acting Master Ferguson: April 14, 1864, in
NFWW. “and we followed them . . .” James Marshall in
RJSCW. Moose and
Hastings . . . James Marshall/David D. Porter: April 15, 1864, in U.S. Navy Records, M89/Box 132 in NARA; Pennock/ Welles: April 14, 1864, in
NFWW; LeRoy Fitch/David D. Porter: April 16, 1864, in
NFWW. 55 “At last we hailed the Gun Boat which came & took us aboard & whose Officers treated us with every comfort the boat afforded. I stopped on the Boat all that day & as they were picking up wounded men & those who had escaped. I - REALLY was in hopes that George might have got away & that the boat would yet pick him up.” (Charley Robinson/Family: April 17, 1864.)
56 All through the night . . . Major Williams in
RJSCW. During the
Silver Cloud’s . . . Duncan Harding in ibid.
57 Wilbur H. Gaylord in ibid.
58 On April 14 . . . Elvis Bevel in ibid. but a day later . . . USS
Moose log, April 15, 1864. Charley Robinson . . . Charley Robinson/Family: April 17, 1864. As late as . . . LeRoy Fitch/David D. Porter: April 16, 1864, in
NFWW. On April 17, the steamboat
Ike Hammett accidentally rammed the already crippled
New Era as she escorted her above Fort Pillow, forcing Marshall to return his gunboat to Cairo for repairs. (A. M. Pennock/Thomas Pattison: April 18, 1864, in U.S. Navy Records, M89/Box 132 in NARA.)
59 Cairo News, April 16, 1864.
60 Dinkins, “The Capture of Fort Pillow.”
61 Berry,
Four Years with Morgan and Forrest, pp. 269-271.
62 “With this affair . . .” Johnston, “Civil War Recollection.” “West Tennessee . . .” Chalmers in Willoughby, “Gunboats and Gumbo.”
63 Forrest, report dated April 15, 1864, in Wyeth,
That Devil Forrest, p. 333.
64 It was “unfortunate” . . . Davis, “What about Fort Pillow?” But however inconvenient . . . Henry Smith Randle in
TCWVQ. 65 Memphis Daily Appeal, May 2, 1864.
66 Jones,
A Rebel War Clerk’s Diary at the Confederate States Capital vol. 2, pp. 187-189.
67 Agnew also heard that Forrest was in a foul humor because Southerners had begun to pilfer the Union wagons he had captured, carrying away food and blankets. (Agnew, “Diary.”)
68 “Out of 700 men . . .”
Charleston Mercury, April 21, 1864. “I write with pleasure . . .” Officer of 2nd Tennessee Cavalry (CSA) in
Charleston Mercury, May 2, 1864. “Your brilliant . . .” Polk/Forrest: April 24, 1864, in
ORCW. 69 Montgomery Mail in
Macon Southern Confederacy, January 19, 1865.
70 Hurlbut in Wyeth,
That Devil Forrest, p. 314.
71 Fuchs,
An Unerring Fire, p. 45.
72 Benjamin Densmore/[Brother]: April 15, 1864, Benjamin Densmore and Family Papers (A0413), Minnesota Historical Society.
73 Henry,
“First with the Most” Forrest, pp. 244-245; Jordan and Pryor,
The Campaigns of Nathan Bedford Forrest, pp. 416-417.
74 Daily Missouri Democrat, April 15, 1864.
75 After driving . . . David D. Porter/James W. Shirk: April 14, 1864, in
ORCW. “As a part . . .” Wyeth,
That Devil Forrest, p. 308.
76 Jordan and Pryor,
The Campaigns of Nathan Bedford Forrest, pp. 416-417.
77 In late April . . . The regiments were the 9th Ohio and 7th Illinois Infantry. (James Jackson/Roddey: April 25, 1864, in
ORCW.) “was about played out . . .” Forrest in Granville Moody/William J. Clark: April 24, 1864, in
ORCW. 78 Forrest in Wyeth,
That Devil Forrest, pp. 333-336.
79 Dinkins,
Furl That Banner, p. 156.
Hellholes: Andersonville and Florence: From April 13, 1864 1 “we were formed . . .” Fitch, “Monthly Report.” “had to sleep . . .” Several writers maintain that Forrest himself was kind to his prisoners. This may well have been true when he was personally escorting them. It was usually after he handed his prisoners over to his subordinates to convey them to prison that the abuse began. “I met the rebel commander, General Forrest, under a flag of truce,” Abel Streight wrote of his surrender to Forrest, “when a stipulation was entered into between him and myself, whereby it was agreed that my command should surrender as prisoners of war, on the following conditions, to wit: 1. Each regiment should be permitted to retain its colors; 2. The officers were to retain their side-arms; 3. Both officers and men were to retain their haversacks, knapsacks, and blankets; and all private property of every description was to be respected and retained by the owner. The above terms were in a measure respected while we remained with General Forrest; but no sooner were we turned over to the rebel authorities than a system of robbing commenced, which soon relieved us of every thing valuable in our possession. The blankets, haversacks, and knapsacks were taken from my men at Atlanta. They were also robbed of nearly all their money, and most of them lost their overcoats at the above-named place. Here, too, the colors and side-arms were taken from us. My men were turned into an inclosure without shelter of any kind, destitute of blankets and overcoats, as I have before stated, and kept under guard for four days, during which time a most disagreeable cold storm prevailed; after which they were sent forward and soon exchanged.” Streight’s account recalls Duckworth’s treatment of his prisoners after the fall of Union City. A. D. Streight/ F. W. Kellogg in Moore, ed.,
The Rebellion Record, vol. 8, p. 451. “pressed all the conveyances . . .” Wilbur H. Gaylord in
RJSCW. 2 John Goodwin/T. M. Mack: April 20, 1864, and S. J. Gholson/Polk: April 20, 1864, in
ORCW. 3 Peter Bischoff in pension file of John T. Young in
RJSCW. 4 Pension file of William R. Nail; Forrest’s list of prisoners.
5 Frisby, “‘Remember Fort Pillow!’”
6 Henry M. Davidson in Holley, “The Seventh Tennessee Volunteer Cavalry.”
7 The pension agent concluded that since he had been absent without leave at the time of his capture, his family did not qualify for a pension. (James H. Clement, Nancy J. Mitchener, Samuel J. Murphy, and Green Ragsdale in pension file of George W. Babb.)
8 John L. Poston and John H. Stamps in pension file of Henry Clay Carter.
9 John Copher [Cofer], John N. Green, and John T. Stamps in pension file of Andrew McKee.
10 “black scurvy . . .” Statement of Rebecca Williams; pension file of Daniel Hopper; pension file of Benjamin W. King; Forrest’s list of prisoners.
11 Private Ephraim L. Churchwell . . . Pension file of Ephraim L. Churchwell. Jim Clark . . . Pension file of James Clark; Barnett Cobb, J. M. Fields, G. J. Giles, Julia Anne Jenkins, T. M. Pierce, A. S. Russell in claim of John G. Fields. The date of Clark’s death proved a major issue for the family, since he may have succumbed after his wife’s death in September, which complicated their orphaned children’s claim to his pension. Though Fields had a brother in the CSA, he was an avowed Unionist, and was allowed by the Federals to carry a gun to protect himself from rebel harassment.
12 Martin V. Day and Alfred Middleton in pension file of George L. Ellis.
13 Pension file of James M. Christenberg.
14 “If I cant liv by the help of man,” he declared, “I will by the help of god as I have allways doon.” (Sidney Kirk and James H. Welch in pension file of Doc Z. Alexander. Alexander was apparently no relation to Paton Alexander of the same regiment.)
15 Tom McMurry
. . . Pension file of Thomas McMurry. Anderson Bailey . . . J. H. Copher and William A. Winn in pension file of Anderson Bailey. Paroled at Goldsboro, South Carolina, he was transferred along with the rest of the survivors of the 13th to the 6th Tennessee Cavalry (USA) and mustered out in July 1865. Bailey married after the war and fathered three children. But he never recovered from the privations of imprisonment and died of consumption in 1876.
16 George Dunn, Thomas Diggs, and George H. Dunn in pension file of Miles M. Deason. The rebel officers were Thomas Diggs of the 7th Cavalry CSA and Benjamin M. Turberville of the 9th Cavalry CSA.
17 Abner Long and Jesse M. Huffaker in pension file of John W. Long;
St. Louis Globe-Democrat, May 6, 1888.
18 Ration compensation file of Martin V. Day.
19 At that time, Smith was trying to collect two deserters from the military prison at Columbus, one of whom, a man named Kelso, Jones had helped the local authorities to capture. But it took Smith a month to cut through all the red tape to get them released into his custody. In late October Jones accompanied a Captain Berry of the Kentucky State Guards on a scout. While chasing rebel guerrillas across a bridge, Jones was thrown from his horse and injured further when his mount stepped on his hand as it righted itself. “Tell me what you think
‘honestly’ of this claim,” Jones begged the pension office after his applications were repeatedly returned as incomplete. “Don’t flatter me but tell me the plain truth. I think the Govt. has treated me badly, as I furnished my own horse, bridle & saddle & when we were consolidated, we were dismounted & I was deprived of horse &c., for which I have never been paid a cent & then again when I reported back for duty after 7 mos imprisonment I was beat out of 7 mos service by enlisting me. But,” he closed, as if with a sigh, “that is gone & I can’t help it.” (Pension file of Anderson Jones.)
20 “damned traitors . . .” Holley, “The Seventh Tennessee Volunteer Cavalry.” Humphrey Jones . . . Pension files of James Antwine, Michael Cleek, and Turner A. Lunceford; Forrest’s list of prisoners; military records of John Burrus, Allen Carr, and Humphrey S. Jones.
21 First Lieutenant Nicholas Logan . . . Isaac Hawkins and Mack J. Leaming in pension file of Nicholas Logan. G. W. Kirk . . . Pension file of George W. Kirk.
22 Holley, “The Seventh Tennessee Volunteer Cavalry.”
Slaves Again: Black Prisoners: April 12, 1864-January 1865 1 Frank Smith and William Cleary in
RJSCW. 2 Chalmers Papers: RG109/Entry 117/Box 2 in NARA.
3 “no negroes . . .” Anderson/Chalmers: April 13, 1864, in
ORCW. Though Sandy Addison . . . Sandy Addison in
RJSCW. Of Forrest’s . . . These figures are based on my review of pension and ration commutation records.
4 Wyeth,
That Devil Forrest, p. 337.
5 Badly wounded . . . Statement of Phillip Young in
RJSCW. Colonel Barteau . . . Clarke R. Barteau in
Detroit Free Press, December 1, 1884.
6 As their battle rage . . . Pension file of Henry Parker. Shot in the groin . . . In May 1865, Parker finally received a medical discharge and moved to Memphis, where he lived in part on a pension of four dollars a month. Two years later, he was married at Beale Street Church to an apparently irresistible former slave named Frances Ferguson, by whom he sired two children. But his wound never healed, and one fall day in 1877, a piece of bone emerged from his wound, along with a lot of decayed matter. “It turned black around the wound,” recalled Marshall Lane, who nursed him in his final illness, “and smelt bad.” Lane sent for a doctor, who, “without making an examination, looked at him and said that he was dying, as mortification had set in.” He died on December 7. Left to her own devices, Frances fell victim to a “powerful wild” black con man named Hank Farrel who turned up one day claiming to be her late husband’s old friend and lodge brother. She threw him out after he thrice forced himself upon her, but not before he had impregnated her. After she gave birth to his illegitimate child, she confessed her “sin” before her church and received its forgiveness. But her confession apparently excited the cupidity of a black lawyer named Slacker who offered to pursue her pension claim in exchange for her favors. (Samuel Green and Henry Parker in pension file of Henry Dix; John W. Brown, Marshall Lane, Frances Ferguson Parker in pension file of Henry Parker; Alexander Nason and Thomas Roy in pension file of John Cowan; John W. Brown and Marshall Lane in pension file of Henry Parker.)
7 By one account . . . John H. Baker: History of Company B, 7th USC Artillery (Heavy) during March and April 1864: undated in RG94/E112-115/P1-17/v.5 in NARA. On the night . . . Brayman/T.H. Harris: April 17, 1864, in
ORCW. 8 Alfred Coleman in
RJSCW. 10 Phillip Young in
RJSCW. 11 Henry Gill and Joseph Waldrup in pension file of Armstrong Burgess.
12 Pension file of Joseph Boyd.
13 Aaron Fentis, Samuel Green, Henry Parker in pension file of Henry Dix.
14 Pension file of Thomas Grier; Thomas Grier in ration compensation file of Charles Fox; Isaac Griffin and Alexander Nason in pension file of Thomas Grier.
15 Pension and ration commutation files of Elias Irwin.
16 He eagerly requisitioned . . . L. Polk/Jefferson Davis: April 27, 1864, in
ORCW. “Put them to work . . .” Dabney H. Maury/S. Cooper: May 20, 1864, in
ORCW. 17 Around Christmas 1864, Flowers was put on a train bound for Richmond but somehow managed to escape his guards, jump from his boxcar, and take to the woods. After traveling a circuitous route through Alabama and Mississippi, sleeping by day and traveling by night, he reached Memphis on February 19, 1865. Despite his wounds, Anthony Flowers remained with his company until it was mustered out in July 1865. He married a Fanny Simms in 1880, when he was in his midforties, and worked first in Memphis and then as a field hand in De Soto County, Mississippi, where a pension examiner found him living with his wife and deemed him “perfectly childish.” (James Murrel, Alexander Nason, and Henry T. Weaver in pension file of Anthony Flowers.)
18 When he got to Memphis, Ligon was discharged for the wound to his head and his by now almost total deafness. After the war he moved from Memphis to Bolivar County, Mississippi, where in 1896 a local insurance agent reported that he was “unable to make a living on account of [his] disabilities.” A pension examiner described this brave, resourceful, and resilient veteran as not having the intelligence of a ten-year-old, but he had the intelligence to collect not only a pension but compensation for the Union rations he did not receive while a prisoner of the Confederates. J. Altshul, Andrew Clopton, Abraham Huggins, Abner W. Ligon, David and Nelson Mooring, Alexander Nason, Monroe Wilson, Phillip Young, in pension file of Willis Ligon.
19 Ann Jennings Turner [Mrs. Green Patton] in pension file of Roach Turner; Phillip Robertson in ration commutation file of Roach Turner. After the war, Turner married twice and lived and worked in Hardiman County, Tennessee.
20 The brother was Private George M. Dallas Peevey of Company C.
21 Robert Jones in pension file of Allen James [Walker]. Among the veterans of Fort Pillow who greeted him were James Murrel, Robert Jones, and Sherry Blain.
22 Pension and ration compensation files of Charles Fox; Thomas Grier, Alexander Nason, and Charles Williams in ration compensation file of Charles Fox.
23 Military, pension, and ration commutation files of Samuel Green; Reason Barker, Thomas Brown, Morning Clay, Felix Davis, Steven Davis, Wilbur H. Gaylord, Henry Gillespie, Benjamin Jones, Pearson Lee, Henry Meeks, J. C. Shearer in pension file of Samuel Green; Samuel Green in pension files of Henry Dix and Jacob Jones.
Alarms and Flight: The North: From April 13, 1864 1 Hurlbut/James B. McPherson: April 13, 1864, in RG393/Box 1 in NARA.
3 “Fort Pillow has no . . .” Sherman/Brayman: April 14, 1864, in
ORCW. Sherman groaned that Hurlbut had “plenty of force” if only he would “use it” to capture “some of Forrest’s men that are now scattered from Paducah down to Memphis.” Fort Pillow was taken . . . Brayman/Sherman: April 14, 1864, in
ORCW. 4 “We have lost . . .” Hurlbut/Sherman: April 15, 1864, in RG393/Box 1 in NARA. “the enemy will not . . .” Hurlbut/Pattison: April 14, 1864, in
ORCW. 5 “sacked Paducah . . .” Stanton/Grant: April 15, 1864, in ibid. “The Sioux Indians . . .” Washburn/Sherman: April 21, 1864, in ibid. “I don’t understand . . .” Sherman/McPherson: April 15, 1864, in ibid. “I don’t know . . .” Sherman/ Grant: April 15, 1864, in ibid. “first fruits . . .” Sherman/Grant: April 14, 1864, in ibid. “has our men . . .” Sherman/John A. Rawlins: April 19, 1864, in ibid.
6 Realizing the full . . . Lash, “Stephen Augustus Hurlbut,” pp. 116-161, 107-200. “marked timidity . . .”
CWAL vol. 7, p. 327n.
7 Hurlbut demanded . . .
CWAL vol. 7, p. 328n. Sherman detailed his frustration with Hurlbut and Grierson to Grant’s chief of staff. “Grierson had 7,000 horses when I made up the Meridian count, and Smith and he reported the capture of some 4,000 animals, and yet now the excuse for not attacking Forrest is that he can mount only 2,400 men. . . . At Memphis are Buckland’s full brigade of splendid troops, 2,000. Three other white regiments, one of black artillery, in Fort Pickering. 1,200 strong, about 1,000 men floating, who are camped in the fort, near 4,000 black troops; 3,000 enrolled and armed militia, and all of Grierson’s cavalry, 10,983, according to my last returns, of which surely not over 3,000 are on furlough. Out of this a splendid force of about 2,500 well-mounted cavalry and 4,000 infantry could have been made up, and by moving to Bolivar - could have made Forrest come there to fight or get out.” (Sherman/John A. Rawlins: April 19, 1864, in
ORCW.)
8 Hurlbut swung wildly. He accused one of his accusers of abandoning his family, seducing his sister-in-law, and living with her “in adultery in New York,” and the other of lying for the first in exchange for a bribe; their names were Hirsch and Beman. “For about 18 months I have had nearly arbitrary power at the city of Memphis,” Hurlbut wrote, “and thereby more or less on the Mississippi River. Many millions of dollars have depended on my action, many speculations depended for their success or failure on my Official Conduct,” and yet he claimed to be “as poor a man as when I entered the service, with nothing made except the savings from the liberal compensation belonging to my Office,” which savings must have been rather paltry considering how much of his pay he gambled and drank. Ever since he had taken command in November 1862, permits had been “given daily to all persons who proved themselves loyal, under ‘General Orders’ for reasonable amounts of family supplies.” The job of inspecting the wagons and saddlebags that came and went fell to the Provost Guard. (Hurlbut/Stanton: April 29, 1864, and E. D. Townsend/Major General Canby: June 22, 1865, RG94/159/Box 27 in NARA.)
9 Sherman in Chalmers, “Lieutenant General Nathan Bedford Forrest and His Campaigns”;
CWD. 10 “I have sent . . .” W. T. Sherman, Major General Commanding. Sherman in Chalmers, “Lieutenant General Nathan Bedford Forrest and His Campaigns.” “Paducah, Cairo . . .” McPherson/Washburn: April 20, 1864, in 16th Army Corps (Letters Received) RG98, Part 2, Entry 391, Box 7 in NARA. “All troops . . .” James B. McPherson/Brayman: April 19, 1864, in NARA. Many of the Union forts were in feeble condition. (Dickson: Report: April 20, 1864, in RG98/Box 93/4720 in NARA.)
11 “a deplorable affair . . .” James B. McPherson/Sherman: April 19, 1864, in
ORCW. “This is the most infernal . . .” Chetlain/E. B. Washburne: April 14, 1864, in ibid. Chetlain’s great concern was that Forrest might attack the Union garrison at Columbus, Kentucky. He urged Brayman to reinforce Columbus and Paducah if necessary, but otherwise to keep his men in readiness for a campaign up the Tennessee to frustrate Forrest’s attempts “to induce us to make these detachments and prevent our concentrating in this quarter.” (Sherman/ Brayman: April 14, 1864, in
RJSCW.)
12 “Slaveholding chivalry . . .” Bennett in Louisiana,
Constitutional Convention 1864. “insatiate as fiends . . .” The
Herald did not let Hurlbut off the hook, however. The capture of Fort Pillow, the
Herald editorialized, “could not occur without the most culpable negligence on the part of the government. Why is a place occupied at all if it is not occupied by men enough to hold it? The force in this fort was too small to hold it, and too large to be lost in the attempt, and the same is probably true of every position in Forrest’s way.” (
New York Herald, April 16, 1864.) “The whole civilized . . .”
Chicago Tribune, April 16, 1864, in Frisby, “‘Remember Fort Pillow!’”
13 “Mr. Daniel” in State of Maryland,
The Debates of the Constitutional Convention of the State of Maryland (Annapolis, 1864), pp. 435, 635.
14 D. McCall in Post, ed.,
Soldiers’ letters, from camps, battlefield, and prison, p. 365.
16 Hurlbut/McPherson: April 17, 1864, in 16th Army Corps (Letters Received) RG98, Part 2, Entry 391, Box 7 in NARA; Hurlbut/Sherman: April 17, 1864, in 16th Army Corps (Letters Sent) RG393, 1864, Box 1.
17 “scared to death . . .” Alice Williamson,
Diary. “The Yankees have . . .”
Columbus Times in
Charleston Mercury, June 11, 1864.
18 “contrary to the expectations . . .” Fredrick Douglass, “Address at Twelfth Baptist Church, New York City, April 14, 1864,”
Liberator, April 29, 1864, in Frisby, “‘Remember Fort Pillow!’” “I ask you . . .” Kelley,
Replies of the Hon. William D. Kelley. 19 “J.H.B.P.” in
Christian Recorder, June 11, 1864.
20 Christian Recorder, April 30, 1864. “Friendly soldiers, a word to you,” wrote one of the
Recorder’s female correspondents, “When and wherever hereafter you may be attacked by the enemy, remember Fort Pillow, and at the same time remember that you are fighting men who are enemies to you—those who are trying to destroy your manhood, and rob you of your God-given rights. Then fight with your whole soul, mind and strength, and die rather than surrender—for I would rather die the death of the brave, than to live the life of a coward.” (“Lizzie H.” in
Christian Recorder, May 28, 1864.)
21 Despite such hopes . . . H. J. Maxwell/R. D. Mussey: March 1, 1864, in Records of Colonel Robert D. Mussey, 1863-1864, RG393/Box 2 in NARA. “out of the service . . .”
New York Herald, April 19, 1864. “prevailing to an alarming . . .” Chetlain: General Orders: June 23, 1864, in RG393/2911/Volume 36/66: General and Special Orders: Organization of Colored Troops in NARA. By October . . . George L. Paddock/ Charles P. Brown: October 11, 1864, RG94/Box 8: Records of the 2nd USCCWAL in NARA.
22 Thomas Webster/Stanton: April 27, 1864, in
ORCW. 23 Chetlain/Thomas: May 10, 1864, in RG393/2/2907 Letters Sent/Organization of Colored Troops in NARA.
24 Anglo African, April 23, 1864.
25 New York Independent in the
Liberator, May 13, 1864.
26 Smith, “Gerritt Smith on the Fort Pillow and Plymouth Massacres,” RG107: Records of the Office of the Secretary of War, Letters Received/File S- 1146(130) in NARA. A quartermaster’s clerk in Port Hudson, Louisiana, was tried for his remarks about Fort Pillow. “I would hang every damned Yankee and all their niggers,” he was reported to have said. “The Rebels have no niggers in their army.” (Court Martial Records, nn2155 in NARA.)
Wade and Gooch: The Joint Subcommittee on the Conduct of the War: April 15-May 5, 1864 1 “direct a competent officer . . .” Stanton/Sherman: April 16, 1864, in
ORCW. Sherman promptly . . . Sherman/Brayman: April 16, 1864, in ibid. But no doubt . . . In his memoirs, Sherman would recall that at first he discredited the reports of a massacre at Fort Pillow because while preparing for the Meridian campaign he had ordered the post evacuated. “But it transpired afterward that General Hurlbut had retained a small garrison at Fort Pillow to encourage the enlistment of the blacks as soldiers, which,” a disapproving Sherman observed, “was a favorite political policy at that day.” Sherman never blamed Forrest for what he had “no doubt” was a massacre, because Forrest did not personally command the assault and “stopped the firing as soon as he could.” Sherman had been assured by “hundreds of our men, who were at various times prisoners in Forrest’s possession, that he was usually very kind to them.” But Sherman conceded that Forrest had “a desperate set of fellows under him, and at that very time there is no doubt the feeling of the Southern people was fearfully savage on this very point of our making soldiers out of their late slaves, and Forrest may have shared the feeling.” His friend Grant, however, blamed Forrest for the massacre. Sherman,
Memoirs, pp. 12-13.
2 Sherman/Stanton: April 23, 1864, in
ORCW. 3 Malden (MA)
Independent, November 21, 1957. Courtesy of Rauner Special Collections Library, Dartmouth College.
4 “He declared that . . .”
New York Herald, April 19, 1864. “I am glad . . .” Hal Wade in Tap,
Over Lincoln’s Shoulder, p. 195.
6 Supplied with Stanton’s letters . . . Stanton’s note read: “This will introduce to you the Hon. Benjamin F. Wade and the Hon. Daniel W. Gooch, members of the Joint Committee of Congress on the Conduct of the War, who have been designated to inquire into and report upon the attack, surrender, and massacre at Fort Pillow. You will provide them while within the limits of your command with quarters, subsistence, and transportation as may be required, and afford them such courtesy, assistance, and protection as may be within your power or required to facilitate the performance of their duties.” Note that Stanton had already judged the battle a massacre. (Stanton/“Commanding Officers at Cairo” et al.: April 18, 1864, in
ORCW; Frisby, “‘Remember Fort Pillow!’”) At 8:00 a.m. . . . Henry,
“First with the Most” Forrest, p. 267.
7 “some of them pieced . . .”
New York Herald, May 3, 1864. Some were too weak . . . A. M. Pennock: General report: April 28, 1864, in
NFWW; Gooch/ Stanton: April 22, 1864, in
ORCW. 8 Charles Hicks, A. H. Hook, and George Mantell in
RJSCW. 9 James Marshall in ibid.
10 S. A. Hurlbut and Benjamin Wade in ibid.
11 Sherman/Hurlbut: March 29, 1864, in RG93/4720 in NARA; Hurlbut and Benjamin Wade in
RJSCW. 13 Hurlbut’s interview . . . “That matters have been dreadfully mismanaged in this military Department I have already written you. You are also well posted as to the author of the mismanagement. The change in corps commanders will probably produce a change for the better.”
Chicago Tribune, April 27, 1864, in RG94/ E729A/Box 7 in NARA.
14 On May 2 . . . Stephen Augustus Hurlbut/C. C. Washburn: May 2, 1864, in RG94/159/Box 27 in NARA.
15 Though he claimed . . . Lash, “Stephen A. Hurlbut”; Fuchs,
An Unerring Fire, p. 50.
16 Daniel Gooch and Benjamin Wade in
RJSCW; Davis, “What about Fort Pillow?” Some examples of bad grammar: Private Duncan Harding is quoted as saying, “when night come I came back to the river bank.” Private Nathan Hunter: “I was down under the hill next the river.” Private John Haskins: “They did all in the same way.”
RJSCW. 17 Edward Benton in
RJSCW. 18 Atlanta Confederacy in
Charleston Mercury, May 6, 1864.
19 Southern papers . . . Cimprich and Mainfort, “Fort Pillow Revisited.” On May 13 . . . Forrest/S. D. Lee: May 16, 1864, in
ORCW. 20 Confederate Congress: Joint Resolution: April 22, 1864, in
ORCW. The British press also waded in. Quoth the pro-Confederate London
Times, “The European reader will know what estimate” to place upon Wade and Gooch’s “extravagant” accounts of Fort Pillow. “They remind one of the fables so extensively circulated [by Wade] just after the first battle of Manassas.” But the stories might also have reminded the
Times of the hysterical and inaccurate accounts it had printed of rebel atrocities in the Indian Mutiny seven years earlier.
Times (London) in
Cairo (IL)
Daily Journal, June 19, 1864, in Frisby, “‘Remember Fort Pillow!’” The Newcastle
Chronicle took the opposite view, condemning the rebel press for failing to censure its army’s atrocities. Reading their papers, and the copperhead press in the North, wrote a correspondent, a reader would think that “Quantrel is an energetic officer; Forrest is an able commander”; and warden John Henry Winder of the Confederacy’s notorious Richmond prison “is the mildest of jailers. Such is the way in which contemporary events are chronicled in England!” (Newcastle [England]
Chronicle in
Christian Recorder, July 30, 1864.)
“A Choice of Evils”: Retaliation: May 1-25, 1864 1 New York Herald, May 3, 1864.
2 On May 5 . . . United States Congress,
Journal of the House of Representatives of the United States, 1789-1873 and
Journal of the Senate of the United States of America, 1789-1873: May 5, 1864. “One of the most expert . . .” Williams, “Benjamin F. Wade and the Atrocity Propaganda of the Civil War.” One Northerner suggested . . . Frisby, “‘Remember Fort Pillow!’”
3 William H. Seward/Abraham Lincoln, May 4, 1864, in
CWAL. 4 Secretary of War . . . Stanton/Lincoln: May 5, 1864, in
CWAL. “arrest him . . .” Stanton/G. W. Berry and G. W. Berry/Stanton: May 7, 1864, in
ORCW. 5 Gideon Welles/Abraham Lincoln, May 5, 1864, in
CWAL. 6 Edward Bates/Lincoln: May 6, 1864, in ibid.
7 John P. Usher/Lincoln: May 6, 1864, in ibid.
8 Browne,
The Every-Day Life of Abraham Lincoln, p. 584. After congratulating Lincoln for his “honesty, kindness, patience and intelligence,” Thomas Worcester of Boston urged Lincoln to see to it that “until the Confederate Government requires its army to conform to the laws of civilized warfare in relation to our negro soldiers, our government ought not to be very strict in requiring our negro soldiers to conform to those laws in relation to the Confederate Army.” (Thomas Worcester/Abraham Lincoln: May 16, 1864, in
CWAL.)
9 Thomas H. C. Hinton in
Christian Recorder, May 14, 1864.
10 Lincoln/Stanton: May 17, 1864, in
CWAL. 11 “crowded out . . .” Nicolay and Hay,
Abraham Lincoln: A History, vol. 6, p. 483. On September 5 . . . Lincoln/Marshal of the District of West Tennessee: September 5, 1864, in Robert Selph Henry Papers (VT).
12 Woodward,
The Burden of Southern History, pp. 60-61.
13 Every major . . .
New York Herald and
Daily Tribune, May 7, 1864;
Franklin (VA)
Repository, May 11, 1864. Wade’s wife received a letter from her aunt who found in the pages of the report “sufficient to convince one of the awful depravity of the slave holding system.” She had read the report “with horror,” and asked, “How long, O Lord, how long, shall the wicked rule?” (E. Hubbard/Caroline Wade, June 17, 1864, in Frisby, “‘Remember Fort Pillow!’”) “We have but one . . .”
Philadelphia Press, undated. “The annals . . .”
Harper’s Weekly, April 30, 1864.
14 “Will our . . .” E. G. Conke/Henry Wilson: April 23, 1864, in
CWAL. “Rebel Savagery . . .”
Franklin (VA)
Repository, April 27, 1864.
15 Washburn/Rawlins: April 23, 1864, in
ORCW; Ward,
Our Bones Are Scattered; Greeley,
The American Conflict, vol. 2, pp. 619-620.
16 Benjamin Wade in Tap,
Over Lincoln’s Shoulder, p. 207.
18 Hurst,
Nathan Bedford Forrest, p. 414n.
19 Unidentified transcript in Mainfort Collection.
20 Samuel Johnson: Affidavit: July 11, 1864 in
ORCW; New York Herald, April 26, 1864.
21 Edward O. Guerrant in Davis and Swentor, eds.,
Bluegrass Confederate, pp. 542, 545, 547 and nn, 551.
22 L. Johnson/R. D. Mussey: October 17, 1864, in
ORCW. 23 C. P. Lyman/Celia Lyman: August 29, 1864, in private collection.
24 “low diet . . .” Lieutenant C. D. Covington of the 45th Tennessee Infantry agreed that their black guards “were very brutal in their treatment.” W. B. Allen, George Albright, C. D. Covington in
CV, July 1899. “were actually . . .” Reverend J. W. Harding in
Christian Recorder, November 26, 1864. “And then you should see these black troopers escorting their wives and little ones and sweethearts, each loaded on the head and in both hands with the spoils of the Egyptians, and the little smiling darkies who cannot march, nestling in the left arms of their protectors.”
25 J. Holt/Stanton: July 3, 1865, in
ORCW. 26 Stearns urged the Union army “to hang every one that claims to belong to that gang of outlaws.” (Ezra Stearns/Ellen [Stearns] Brewer: April 30, 1864, in Ezra Stearns Papers, Schoff Civil War Collection: Letters 51, William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan.) The injustice of reprisals would be cruelly played out at Gratiot Prison in St. Louis by General William Starke Rosecrans. After guerrillas killed seven of his men, he ordered an equal number of rebel prisoners shot. “Never, so long as I live,” wrote a fellow prisoner, “will I be able to forget or cease to hear the cries and pleadings . . . after the death warrant had been read.” Because it was found that one of the men—a major—was a Mason, a local lodge persuaded prison authorities to delay his execution, and eventually drop it entirely. But the other men, including a member of McCulloch’s 2nd Missouri Cavalry, were not so lucky. On October 29, 1864, they were taken out and tied to a post. After their sentence was read, Charles Minniken of Crabtree’s Arkansas Cavalry was allowed to make one last address that would echo Lincoln’s forebodings. “Soldiers, and all of you who hear me, take warning from me,” he declared. “I have been a Confederate soldier four years and have served my country faithfully. I am now to be shot for what other men have done, that I had no hand in, and know nothing about. I never was a guerilla, and I am sorry to be shot for what I had nothing to do with, and what I am not guilty of. When I took a prisoner I always treated him kindly and never harmed a man after he surrendered. I hope God will take me to His bosom when I am dead. Oh Lord, be with me.” Another man wrote the following to his wife: “I take my pen with trembling hand to inform you that I have to be shot between 2 & 4 o’clock this evening. I have but few hours to remain in this unfriendly world. There is 6 of us sentenced to die in [retaliation] of 6 union soldiers that was shot by Reeves men. My dear wife don’t grieve after me. I want you to meet me in Heaven. I want you to teach the children piety, so that they may meet me at the right hand of God. I can’t tell you my feelings but YOU can form some idea of my feeling when you hear of my fate. . . . Good-by Amy. Asey Ladd.” “Confederate POWs and Prisons in St. Louis” at
www.sterlingprice145.org/prison.htm.
“Remember Fort Pillow”: Black Federals and White Confederates: From June 10, 1864 1 William Witherspoon in Henry,
As They Saw Forrest, p. 126.
2 “we kept on . . .” Solomon Norman Brantley (
TCWVQ).
3 Hancock,
Hancock’s Diary, pp. 390, 399. “It was understood in this battle,” wrote Tully Brown of Morton’s Battery, “and correspondence having taken place between generals Johnston and Forrest, that there was not going to be any quarter [at Brice’s Crossroads]: the black flag was raised. The regiments came out there under their battle flags, and ‘Remember Fort Pillow’” on their lips. (Brown, “Nathan Bedford Forrest.”)
4 Solomon Norman Brantley (
TCWVQ).
5 “Here are the damn negroes!” Lovett, “The West Tennessee Colored Troops in Civil War Combat.” “one of the hardest . . .” John A. Crutchfield/Mrs. L. M. Crutchfield: June 13, 1864, Gordon Browning Museum of the Carroll County Historical Society.
6 Wounded stragglers hid . . . William Witherspoon in Henry,
As They Saw Forrest, p. 126. “as far as could . . .” Agnew, “Battle of Tishomingo Creek.” “most of the negroes . . .” Agnew, “Diary.”
7 “buried shallow . . .” Agnew, “Battle of Tishomingo Creek.” But not all . . . Agnew, “Diary.”
8 Sherman in Chalmers, “Lieutenant General Nathan Bedford Forrest and His Campaigns.”
9 Forrest’s horses . . . Agnew, “Diary.” “After moving . . .” Cox, “Forrest’s Men Captured at Parker’s Crossroads,”
CV, August 1908.
10 Forrest/Washburn: June 14, 1864, in
ORCW. 11 “In the expectation that the Confederate Government would disavow the action of the commanding general at the Fort Pillow massacre, I have forborne to issue any instructions to the colored troops as to the course they should pursue toward Confederate soldiers that might fall into their hands; but seeing no disavowal on the part of the Confederate Government, but on the contrary laudations from the entire Southern press of the perpetrators of the massacre, I may safely presume that indiscriminate slaughter is to be the fate of colored troops that fall into your hands.” (Washburn/S. D. Lee: June 17, 1864, in ibid.)
12 “If you intend to treat such of them as fall into your hands as prisoners of war, please so state. If you do not so intend, but contemplate either their slaughter or their return to slavery, please state that, so that we may have no misunderstanding hereafter . . . If the latter is the case, then let the oath stand, and upon those who have aroused this spirit by their atrocities, and upon the Government and the people who sanction it, be the consequences.” (Washburn/Forrest: June 19, 1864, in ibid.)
13 Forrest/Washburn: June 23, 1864, in ibid.
14 Forrest/S. D. Lee: June 24, 1864, in ibid.
15 S. D. Lee/Washburn: June 28, 1864, in ibid.
16 “If this remark . . .” Washburn/S. D. Lee: July 3, 1864, in ibid. “lenient and forbearing . . .” Washburn/Forrest: July 2, 1864, in ibid.
17 J. A. Seddons/Jefferson Davis: July 28, 1864, in ibid.
18 Jefferson Davis/J. A. Seddons: July 30, 1864, in ibid.
19 George W. Reed in
Christian Recorder, May 21, 1864.
20 Coatsworth,
The Loyal People of the North-west, p. 560.
21 Tap,
Over Lincoln’s Shoulder, pp. 204-205.
22 “You heard . . .” Charles Boardman/“Family”: May 1864, in letter for sale on eBay by
www.mikebrackin.com. “They stood us . . .” Allen E. Holcomb/James K. Bell: May 15, 1864, in RMC. (I have substituted “murderers” for “murders.”)
23 Anderson/“Soldiers”: June 28, 1864, in
ORCW. 24 H. M. Turner in
Christian Recorder, July 9, 1864.
25 McPherson,
The Negro’s Civil War, p. 222.
26 Cothern,
History of Ancient Woodbury, Connecticut, pp. 1226-1227.
27 “The Colored Troops . . .” C. P. Lyman/Family: June 21, 1864 (private collection). One of their captains . . . Wiley Choate/Solon A. Carter: June 22, 1864, RG94/Box 8: Records of the 2nd USCLA in NARA. “To give orders . . .” L. Paddock /Charles P. Brown: July 19, 1864, RG94/Box 8: Records of the 2nd USCCWAL in NARA.
28 Perhaps the army’s . . . William D. Turner/Editors,
Chicago Tribune: July 6, 1864, in RG94/E112-115/P1-17/v.2 in NARA. But the survivors were not forgotten. Colonel William Turner was touched that the Sanitary Commission had provided his men with a Fourth of July supper. “Their enjoyment was much enhanced by the thought that our Country sympathized with the Colored Soldiers who fell at Fort Pillow,” he wrote to the editors of the
Chicago Tribune, “and encourages the Survivors, who were not forgotten on this day: the first anniversary to the Black Man of his real portion in the land of Washington.” Despite . . . W. D. Turner: General Order 11: July 5, 1864, in RG94/E112-115/P1-17/ v.2 in NARA. “When the United States . . .” Brayman in Compiled Service Records, Records of the Adjutant General’s Office, 1780s-1917, RG 94, in NARA.
29 In mid-November . . . R. D. Mussey/Charles P. Brown: November 14, 1864, in
ORCW. It was their officers who disgraced them. On November 24, Lieutenant John Clancy of 2/B was dismissed from the service for riding around Norfolk and Portsmouth, Virginia, in a “beastly” state of intoxication. (But “this is evidently a mistake,” wrote the sentencing officer, “as beasts do not get drunk.”) Second Lieutenant William B. Gray of the 1st U.S. Colored Cavalry was also dismissed for riding to the rescue of Lieutenant Clancy and “drawing his saber and threatening to murder the Corporal of the Provost Guard.” (Edward W. Smith: General Orders 147: November 20, 1864, in RG94/Box 8: Records of the 2nd USCCWAL in NARA.) “outside the pale . . .” Main,
The Third United States Cavalry, pp. 304-307. In December 1864, officers of black troops would be urged to inform their men “that the Executive, Judicial and Legislative departments of the Government have manifested and continually manifest in their welfare the greatest interest, that they are disposed to afford them every facility in their progress from chattledom to an honorable manhood, and that with all the favor and assistance shown them, it is their own fault if they do not deserve the confidence of their friends, and prove themselves men.” (R. D. Mussey/Memorandum: December 9, 1864, in Records of Colonel Robert D. Mussey, 1863-1864, RG393/Box 2 in NARA.)
30 Henry Pyles (OK) in
AS.
Icons: Fort Pillow Myths: April 25, 1864-January 1865 1 “with a great many . . .” Horace Wardner in
RJSCW. “I knew . . .” Daniel Tyler in ibid.
2 “With his one good hand . . .” Horace Wardner in ibid. Sergeant Ben Robinson testified to seeing a black man’s hand working its way through the surface of the earth. Benjamin Robinson in ibid. Before dawn . . . Daniel Tyler in ibid.
3 “his quarters . . .”
Cairo News, April 16, 1864. “My name . . .”
Harper’s Weekly, May 7, 1864.
4 He was not the only man to suffer harsh punishment at Fort Pickering. The commandant, Colonel A. G. Kappner, was repeatedly accused of unilaterally and capriciously arresting and imprisoning both black and white soldiers “without giving them the benefit of a court martial, or hearing of any kind whatever,” despite the “repeated protests” of their officers.” (J. M. Irvin/ George Mason: April 11, 1864, in
ORCW; Charles Turner/E. D. Townsend: April 18, 1864, in 16th Army Corps (Letters Received) RG98, Part 2, Entry 391, Box 7 in NARA.)
5 Jonathan B. Simmons: “Prison Report of Inspection of ‘Irving Block’ Prison: May 21, 1863, in RG94/E729A/Box 2 in NARA.
6 Testimony and military record of Daniel Tyler; Register of Courts-Martial: Records and Sentences Received: January 1865 to January 1866, RG393/2/ 2898 in NARA;
Cairo News, April 16, 1864; “Daniel Tyler,”
Liberator, July 22, 1864. I prefer the Daniel Tyler who testified with such clarity before the committee and joked with the reporter from the
Cairo News. 7 There must have been at least four flags flying from the parapets that morning: a Union flag and the standards of the garrison’s three regiments. Chalmers’s adjutant general, Captain Walter A. Goodman, reported capturing four flags at Fort Pillow, including a large flag credited to Bell and his men, but he did not specify which ones they were, and though the flags were duly relayed to Richmond, they have since been lost. John Goodwin [Goodman]/Lieutenant Colonel Jack: April 21, 1864, in
ORCW. Apparently Bell’s brigade captured the Union flag. (John Goodman: “List of Prisoners Cap’d by Major General Forrest at Fort Pillow, & in Tennessee—Deserters, Men of Bad Characters, Flags &c. &c. Apl 12/64 (Copied in Dept. 198-Dec 21, 1886)” in RG249/107/896 in NARA.) In addition to the flags, Chalmers captured eight regimental pennants. (S. D. Lee/S. Cooper: May 27, 1864, in
ORCW.)
8 In his testimony . . . Eli Cothel in
RJSCW. It is curious . . . W. D. Turner/ Memorandum: September 29, 1863, RG94/E112-115/P1-17/v.2 in NARA.
9 Thomas J. Jackson/George B. Halstead: April 19, 1864, in RMC.
10 Elizabeth Wayt Booth/Washburn: August 25, 1864, RG109/Microcopy M345/ Union Provost Marshal’s File of Papers Relating to Individual Civilians in NARA.
11 An account of this ceremony was included in a number of postwar books. Moore,
Women of the War, pp. 311-312; Kirkland,
The Pictorial Book of Anecdotes and Incidents of the War of the Rebellion, pp. 570-571; Brockett and Vaughan,
Women’s Work in the Civil War, p. 769. See also Brigadier General [Chetlain?]/Hurlbut: April 28, 1864, in RG393/2/2907 Letters Sent/Organization of Colored Troops in NARA.
12 Lincoln/Sumner: May 19, 1864, in
CWAL. 13 “to provide suitable . . .” U.S. Congress,
Journal of the Senate of the United States of America, 1789-1873, June 2, 1864. “according to the customs . . .” Quarles,
The Negro in the Civil War, p. 202.
14 RG 393, Part 2, Entry 2872, 1 of 2, in vol. 10, District of West Tennessee in NARA; Michael Musick/Author: January 28, 2002.
15 Jonathan Phillips/Supt Prison: September 8, 1864, RG109/Microcopy M345/ Union Provost Marshal’s File of Papers Relating to Individual Civilians in NARA. Emphasis mine.
16 A back room . . . George A. Williams/Judge Advocate General: June 24, 1864, in RG94/E729A/Box 2 in NARA. In June . . . James A. Hardie/Washburn: June 20, 1864, in
ORCW. 17 Mary Elizabeth Wayt Booth/Washburn: August 25, 1864, RG109/Microcopy M345/Union Provost Marshal’s File of Papers Relating to Individual Civilians in NARA.
18 “an immediate thorough . . .” Elizabeth Wayt Booth/Washburn: August 14, 1864, RG109/Microcopy M345, Union Provost Marshal’s File of Papers Relating to Individual Civilians in NARA. She did not go on to give the other reasons. The military reluctantly . . . General Order 45, Hdqrs. Dist. of West Tennessee, Memphis (RG 393, Part 2, Entry 2872, 1 of 2, in vol. 10, District of West Tennessee in NARA.)
19 While languishing . . . Judge Advocate R. W. Pike/Major W. H. Morgan: September 27, 1864, RG109/Microcopy M345/Union Provost Marshal’s File of Papers Relating to Individual Civilians in NARA. John L. Wilson/Major W. H. Morgan: September 9, 1864, RG109/Microcopy M345/Union Provost Marshal’s File of Papers Relating to Individual Civilians in NARA. Hurlbut/Washburne: April 24, 1864, RG94/Regimental Papers, 11th USCI (New) in NARA.
20 Weary of her protests . . . RG 393, Part 2, Entry 2872, 1 of 2, in vol. 10, District of West Tennessee in NARA; Michael Musick in NARA/Author: January 28, 2002. “In consequence . . .” Deposition of Mrs. Lizzie Booth: January 12, 1865, RG109/Microcopy M345/Union Provost Marshal’s File of Papers Relating to Individual Civilians in NARA. But Lizzie . . . Note by Robert Mainfort in RMC.
21 F. Hastings/Lieut. Col. T. H. Harris: April 30, 1864, in RMC. “The affair at Fort Pillow . . .” L. M. Methudy/J. G. Kappner, and J. A. Copeland/J. G. Kappner: April 28, 1864, in RMC; I. M. Irwin/Col. Kappner: April 29, 1864, in RMC.
22 Kappner brought the matter . . . T. H. Harris/T. J. Jackson: April 28, 1864, in RMC. “It is currently reported that you have asserted in the presence of Officers of this command that the late Major L. F. Booth of your regiment, while commanding Fort Pillow, reported to Major General Hurlbut the necessity for additional troops at Fort Pillow, and that Major Booth made three applications to Genl. Hurlbut for reinforcements. You will at once report in writing whether you have ever made such or similar statements, and your authority for the same. By order of Major General S. A. Hurlbut.” “I have never . . .” T. J. Jackson /T. H. Harris: April 28, 1864, in RMC. “Entertain any other . . .” Mrs. Mary Booth/Col. Harris: April 28, 1864, in RMC. “unfitted for the position . . .” A. L. Chetlain: Report: July 15, 1865, in RMC.
23 John Walker in
Christian Recorder, June 9, 1866.
24 Thomas J. Jackson/Adj. Gen. Thomas: April 26, 1863, in RMC.
25 That, in any case . . . Hubbard,
Sketches of Ex-Soldiers. “a silver jawbone . . .” A. G. Stacey,
Directory of the Kansas State Senate 1889 (Topeka, 1889) in RMC. “In the particular bunch . . .”
Hutchinson (KS)
News in
Kansas City (KS)
Journal, November 1, 1905, in RMC.
26 “I love . . .” Pension file of Thomas J. Jackson.“His right arm . . .”
Kansas City (KS)
Journal, November 1, 1905, in RMC. See also P. H. Coney/“Comrades”: November 3, 1905, in RMC.
“Brave to Recklessness”: The Memphis Raid: August 20-December 3, 1864 1 Hurst,
Nathan Bedford Forrest, pp. 207-210.
2 Carroll, “Autobiography and Reminiscences,” p. 31.
3 “too deeply interested . . .” Porter/Welles: May 31, 1864, in U.S. Navy Records, M89/Box 132 in NARA.
4 The cracks . . . White, “Stirring Up the Yankees”; Carroll, “Autobiography and Reminiscences,” pp. 32-34.
5 James Dinkins in Henry,
As They Saw Forrest, p. 257.
6 “considerable stream . . .” Carroll, “Autobiography and Reminiscences,” pp. 32-34. Forrest and his troopers . . . McIlwaine,
Memphis Down in Dixie, p. 138.
7 Arriving within sight . . . John Milton Hubbard in Henry,
As They Saw Forrest, pp, 184-188. The expedition . . . Agnew, “Diary”; John Milton Hubbard in Henry,
As They Saw Forrest, pp. 184-188.
8 “While we believed . . .” John Milton Hubbard in Henry,
As They Saw Forrest, pp. 184-188. “A shot . . .” Carroll, “Autobiography and Reminiscences,” pp. 32-34.
9 “like a scythe . . .” James Dinkins in Henry,
As They Saw Forrest, pp. 263-265. “At one point . . .” John Milton Hubbard in ibid., pp. 184-188. Sergeant Benjamin Thacker . . . Lovett, “The West Tennessee Colored Troops in Civil War Combat.”
10 “charged into the city . . .” Captain J. C. Jackson (Forrest’s Escort)/General - Thomas Jordan: June 4, 1867, Papers of Leroy Nutt/2285/Folder 8 (SHC/ UNCCH).
11 Hurlbut in McIlwaine,
Memphis Down in Dixie, p. 141; Carroll, “Autobiography and Reminiscences,” pp. 34-35.
12 Among Forrest’s prisoners were contrabands as well as soldiers. “During the war many federal soldiers took wives of the negro women where they were quartered,” wrote Carroll. “Among our prisoners on this raid was a real fat Dutchman,” a German who had “a negro wife, whom he carried along with him. The weather being very warm; water, scarce; both captors and captured became very thirsty. On coming to a bold running stream of clear water, our Dutchman rushed in and fell down to drink. A mule (on which some of our soldiers were mounted), standing in the water, happened to notice the Dutchman lying behind him.” Raising one hoof, the mule kicked him in the head, “killing him instantly, at which the negro lamented very much. But the procession moved on.” (Hurst,
Nathan Bedford Forrest, pp. 218-220.)
13 Carroll, “Autobiography and Reminiscences,” p. 30
14 Hancock,
Hancock’s Diary, p. 474.
15 Hurst,
Nathan Bedford Forrest, pp. 221, 224.
16 At Pam Landing . . . After Forrest’s quartermaster, Major A. Warren, refused to turn over to Brigadier General Alexander all the slaves he had captured on the Union transport
Maguffin, Buford, in violation of Forrest’s order, had some of them “issued to his command.” When Forrest’s staff confronted him, Buford, “in an angry & excited manner & in the presence of [diverse] officers & soldiers,” apparently accused Chalmers of ungentlemanly conduct and claimed that he had insulted Chalmers to his face and gotten away with it. (Undated note in Chalmers Papers in NARA.) On October 16 . . . Neely and a lieutenant were cashiered, “conscribed & placed in the ranks of the C.S. Army,” and the others were suspended from rank and pay for six months, which effectively put them out of action for the rest of the war. The court ascribed its “extreme leniency” to the fact that the accused had all acted “under a misapprehension of their legal right.” (R. Taylor: General Order No. 132: October 16, 1864, in RG94/ Chapter 2/v.299 [Chalmers] in NARA.)
17 Hurst,
Nathan Bedford Forrest, p. 227. Washburn began to worry . . . C. C. Washburn/E. R. S. Canby: November 7, 1864, in
ORCW. Forrest’s reputation . . . Cleveland,
A Discourse, p. 11.
18 Forrest and “Recorder” in
Macon (GA)
Southern Confederacy, January 19, 1865.
19 Brownlow, “John Brownlow’s First Published Memoirs.”
20 Though the Yankees . . . Hurst,
Nathan Bedford Forrest, pp. 236-238. Though Confederate chaplain and later bishop Charles Todd Quintard believed that “in the grave all earthly distinctions cease,” he could not “content my mind with the resting place which had been chosen by the sexton for our gallant dead,” including Major General Cleburne and Brigadiers Strahl and Granbury. Quintard was distressed that they had been buried “in close proximity to the graves of soldiers—both white and black—of the Federal Army. I, therefore, made arrangements to have the bodies disinterred and moved to the Church yard at St. John’s, Ashwood.” (Quintard,
Diary, Robert Selph Henry Papers [VT].) See also C. P. Lyman/Parents: December 17, 1864, in private collection.
21 Willoughby, “Gunboats and Gumbo.”
22 Hurst,
Nathan Bedford Forrest, pp. 240-241.
23 “The so-called Confederates . . .” Thomas B. Webster in
Christian Recorder, January 7, 1865. “The ‘bill’ . . .” George Walthall/Mrs. B. W. Walthall: April 1, 1865, at University of Mississippi.
24 “allured by the siren . . .” Forrest/“Soldiers”: [January 1, 1865] in
ORCW. By now his hair . . . Hurst,
Nathan Bedford Forrest, p. 247.
25 As he marched . . . Willoughby, “Gunboats and Gumbo.” Forrest threatened . . . Hurst,
Nathan Bedford Forrest, p. 245.
26 “Their hats . . .” John Milton Hubbard in Henry,
As They Saw Forrest, pp. 212-213. “It was said at the time that this was intended as a deterrent to desertion. It may have had the effect intended. It would be passing over it most kindly to state that the affair caused a profound sensation. It would be nearer the truth to say that, with the rank and file, it met with pronounced condemnation.” “Everybody in low spirits . . .”, Benjamin T. Bondurant in Chester, “The Diary of Sergeant Benjamin T. Bondurant,”
WTHSP, 1985.
27 On March 6 . . . President/Marshal of the District of West Tennessee: September 5, 1864, Robert Selph Henry Papers (VT). Overwhelmed . . . Hurst,
Nathan Bedford Forrest, pp. 250-251.
28 Hurst,
Nathan Bedford Forrest, pp. 252-253.
30 Hurst,
Nathan Bedford Forrest, p. 255.
31 The last . . . Willoughby, “Gunboats and Gumbo.”
32 “We have made . . .” Forrest in Hurst,
Nathan Bedford Forrest, pp. 255-258. This quotation is a modification of “where he lives, there are plenty of fish; and that he is going to take a tent along, and don’t want to see any one for twelve months.” (Bryan McAllister in Moore, ed.,
Anecdotes, Poetry, and Incidents of the War, p. 451.)
Going Home: Confederate Veterans: 1865-1902 1 Robert W. Harrison in Silver, ed.,
Mississippi in the Confederacy, pp. 216-217.
2 In May . . . W. H. Harris in
TCWVQ. “as I captured . . .” Isaiah Woody Johnson in ibid.
3 “My horse . . .” Brownlow, “John Brownlow’s First Published Memoirs.” Some of the men . . . Alexander Washington McKay in
TCWVQ. Others of Forrest’s . . . Timothy Walton Leigon in ibid.
4 Hearing rumors . . . Joseph Burch Weems [Philip Van Horn Weems] in ibid. “a fight with free Negroes . . .” Victor Murat Locke in ibid.
5 Manlove was undoubtedly not his real name. Though Manloves served in various Mississippi infantry regiments, and a Pat H. Manlove served in the 1st Tennessee Infantry, for what it is worth, there is no record of a James Manlove in Forrest’s service. But it is unlikely he would have lied about fighting at Fort Pillow in the course of a discussion with an American ambassador. (Washburn,
The History of Paraguay, vol. 2, pp. 215-221.) See also S. P. Driver and Joe Wright in
TCWVQ. 6 Those few troopers . . . William and Henry Witherspoon (7th) in
TCWVQ. “was so near starved . . .” Edward Morris in ibid. “the lonesomest . . .” Jesse Ransom Shelton in ibid. “It was no pleasure trip,” agreed John Bittick of the 9th, “except at its end.” (John Holland Bittick in ibid.)
7 “On the trip . . .” William E. Hazelwood in ibid. “You have made . . .” James - Thomas Lasley in ibid. Having heard that their son, Billy Lillard of the 4th, had been shot through a lung at Fayetteville, North Carolina, his parents had given him up for dead. Lillard would never forget the day he arrived home, nor the face of his “angel Mother” as she ran to meet him. “The news of my arrival went like wildfire, and the next day there [were] sixty-five that took dinner and spent the day. Will never forget the first meal taken at home. Oh, that Rio coffee!” When his father caught sight of him, “he jumped over the dash board of his buggy” and embraced him. His father bought him a suit of clothes that was several sizes too big, declaring that now that Billy was a veteran, he should wear “men’s clothing.” (William F. Lillard in ibid.)
8 “everything was tore up . . .” J. W. Williams in ibid. “so I confess . . .” Thomas Edward Bradley in ibid. “fine crop . . .” L. W. Travis in ibid. “the fences all burned . . .” L. S. Howell in entry for John S. Howell in ibid. “When news came that Lee had surrendered in Virginia and Forrest men were disbanding in Ala., we were allowed to go to our homes,” recalled Ed Williams of the 6th Mississippi, who had watched the smoke and flames rising from his father’s house in a battle at Harrisburg a year before. “My father put what little we had left in an ox wagon and with the negroes we had with us, we traveled the thirty or forty miles to our home, two miles west of Tupelo on the old Harrisburg battlefield and took temporary possession of an old house inside the Federal breast-works as our house was burned.” (Edwin Maximilian Gardner in ibid.)
9 M. B. Dinwiddie in ibid.
10 “seven horses . . .” William R. H. Matthews in ibid. Some men . . . Robert Milton McCalister [McAllister] in ibid. “my best Negro . . .” Joseph Monroe McCorkle in ibid.
11 Lemuel Hiram Tyree in ibid.
12 “did not want . . .” John Russell Dance in ibid. “I didn’t go home . . .” Jasper Washington Eldridge in ibid. “had the honor . . .” William S. Nolen in ibid.
13 “Eskimo cloak . . .” “He was the father of Jim and Calvin McLeary and an uncle of the well-known Henry McLeary, of Humboldt.” McLeary,
Humorous Incidents of the Civil War, p. 15. “On arriving home . . .” James Lindsy Cochran in
TCWVQ. 14 James W. Hendricks in ibid.
15 John R. Reagan in ibid.
16 New York Herald, May 23, 1865.
17 “much better labor . . .” M. B. Dinwiddie in
TCWVQ. When asked . . . Andrew Jackson Grantham in “Aged Civil War Vet Says He Still Hasn’t Overcome Animosity Toward Yankees.”
18 “and went through . . .” Robert Theodore Mockbee in
TCWVQ. “the truth is . . .” “I came home and wrote the homemade yankees a nice little [letter] saying I was at home, and we could not breathe the same air together. They left, and I am still in Tennessee. In them days, I feared no living man, and I’ve always stood [for] law and order and have had some tussels with the few dirty whelps that [invaded] our country: horsewhipped some and drove some out of the country.”
19 “yet a lover . . .” B. P. Hooker in
TCWVQ. “Though vanquished . . .” Lee Franklin Yancey in ibid. “The world will never . . .” William R. H. Matthews in ibid.
20 Alley, “Memoirs.” “I don’t trust the negroes now,” Kate Carney of Murfreesboro confided to her diary. “They have too much of the Yankees about them to suit me.” (Carney,
Diary.)
21 Montgomery,
Reminiscences of a Mississippian in Peace and War, p. 21. Some of Forrest’s men moved north, where even the erudite Dr. John Allan Wyeth had difficulty adjusting to Yankee mores in a New York hospital. “I determined to have two small, neat wards set apart for colored men and women, where they - could be exclusive and away from the possibility of wounded sensibilities by reason of color and race prejudice. The very first patient admitted to the new hospital was a negro lad, who came accompanied by his father, who took the boy back home, refusing to let him go into a colored ward. I wrote the father, saying how sorry I was; that I was from the South and was naturally desirous of helping any member of his race. He wrote in reply that he might have known I was a Southerner, for nobody else but a man from that country would come up North building ‘Jim Crow’ wards in a hospital!” (Wyeth,
With Sabre and Scalpel, p. 451.)
22 “As I look back . . .” William Waller Carson in
TCWVQ. “I was too young . . .” Edwin Maximilian Gardner in ibid.
“Jealousy, Falsehood and Fanaticism”: Forrest’s Generals: 1865-1905 1 McCulloch and Neely . . . W. A. Gorman/McCulloch and Neely: June 5, 1864, in RG94/Chapter 2/v.289 (Chalmers) in NARA. “Horse stealing . . .” Another man, J. Boone of the 9th Texas Cavalry, confessed to robbing a widow but insisted that he “only got ten dollars in counterfeit money,” and besides, he was acting on orders. Thomas Henderson/Chalmers: March 15, 1865, in Chalmers Papers.
2 “the memory . . .” Levens and Drake,
A History of Cooper County, p. 153. “As a neighbor . . .” National Historical Company,
History of Howard and Cooper Counties; Boonville (MO)
Daily News, January 7, 1976.
3 Charged by Chalmers . . . Lawrence L. Hewitt in Davis, ed.,
The Confederate General, vol. 1, pp. 145-146; Henry,
“First with the Most” Forrest, p. 235; Wyeth,
That Devil Forrest, p. 299; Evans,
Confederate Military History, vol. 11, p. 228. “His mind . . .” Otey, “The Story of Our Great War.”
4 “the narrow partisan . . .” Hancock, pp. 578-581.
5 CV, October 1902; Anne Bailey in Davis, ed.,
The Confederate General, vol. 1, p. 98-99; Lewis Publishing Company,
Memorial and Biographical History of the Counties of Fresno, Tulare, and Kern, California, p. 315; Evans,
Confederate Military History, vol. 8.
6 James Ronald Chalmers in United States Congress,
A Personal Explanatio by Hon. J. R. Chalmers of Mississippi, Delivered in the House of Representatives of the United States, May 7, 1879. Washington, 1879. In his own tribute . . . Chalmers, “Lieutenant General Nathan Bedford Forrest and His Campaigns.”
7 Greenville (MS)
Times, August 15, 1874.
8 Harry Abernathy, “County’s First Black Sheriff Served in 1874-75.” Undated clipping from unidentified contemporary newspaper.
9 Jackson (MS)
Clarion Ledger, September 21, 1952;
Jackson (MS)
Daily News, January 17, 1965.
10 S. G. French, editorials,
CV, May and September 1896.
11 In 1907 . . . Henry,
“First with the Most” Forrest, p. 267. “malignant partisan falsehood” . . .
New York Times, November 1, 1877.
12 “Gen. N. B. Forrest,” Lee continued, “was not only the most distinguished cavalry leader of the Confederacy, but his memory and that of his heroic followers have the respect and love of every true Southern man and woman, and no slander of that great American soldier can hold in any true American heart in our reunited country, now beloved by all of its citizens.” (Stephen D. Lee, “Tribute to Gen. Bedford Forrest,”
CV, June 1903.)
13 Jordan and Pryor,
The Campaigns of Nathan Bedford Forrest, p. 453.
14 Wyeth,
That Devil Forrest, p. 341.
15 He conceded . . . Robert Selph Henry Papers (VT). And Andrew Nelson Lytle’s . . . Carney, “The Contested Image of Nathan Bedford Forrest.”
16 Bryan McAllister in Moore, ed.
Anecdotes, Poetry, and Incidents of the War, pp. 450-451.
Full Circle: Black Troops: 1865-1900 1 “We have . . .” George Kryder/Elizabeth Sweetland Kryder: May 29, 1865. Sherman ordered . . . Sherman/Slocum et al.: May 28, 1865, RG393/Entry 2498, Letters Sent in the Field; April-May 1864, in NARA. On January 20, 1865, General George Thomas appointed Augustus Louis Chetlain commander of the District of Memphis. Chetlain suspected he was being kicked upstairs, and that his removal as commander of black troops in the department was intended to sabotage the black regiments he had recruited. “I do not wish to be placed in command of the Port of Memphis,” he protested, “if that will relieve me from my present command. I have long been in command of Colored Troops and I desire to continue with them. I hope by next spring that enough Colored Troops will be ordered here to give me a command in the field.” But Chetlain’s protests were unavailing. (Chetlain/Thomas: January 7, 1865, in Generals Papers: Chetlain: RG94/Box 9/159 in NARA.)
2 Court-martial of Sergeants J. Hall and Anderson Tolliver; Corporal Jim Jones; Privates Bob Jones, George Bryant, William Cannon, and Cate McDowell; and Bugler Isaac Reeves, RG94/Box 8: Records of the 2nd USCLA in NARA.
3 “By the bleached . . .” “It seems strange, after all, that colored men can get along with their wives,” wrote the
Christian Recorder, “and colored parents with their children without much trouble, but white men, and especially Legislators, are so suspicious of their wives and daughters for fear of their admiring a black man instead of a white, that they have to be exposing their jealousy to the civilized world, by enactment with penalties, for a white man or woman marrying whom they prefer.” (
Christian Recorder, June 15 and 24, 1865.) “until the harvest . . .” Willoughby, “Gunboats and Gumbo.”
4 Later, at Cairo, and “for the first and only time on the trip, save while we were under the Spanish flag, slaves waited on us at dinner. They were the last any of us were ever to see on American soil.” Reid,
After the War, pp. 292-294.
5 History repeated itself during the 1960 presidential election when black sharecroppers in Fayette and Haywood counties were forced out of their homes, blacklisted by local merchants, and corraled into a tent city by local merchants for having tried to register to vote. After Kennedy’s election, the case resulted in the first federal lawsuit brought under the 1957 Civil Rights Act.
www.jacksonsun.com . John L. Poston: Report: May 1, 1867, in BRFAL (Brownsville, Tennessee, 1867) RG105/52 in NARA; James Kendrick/John L. Poston: September 7, 1867, in BRFAL (Brownsville, Tennessee, 1867) RG105/52 in NARA.
6 William J. Stephens in pension file of John H. Porter; John L. Poston in pension files of Henry Clay Carter, Neal Clark, Isaac J. Ledbetter, and Robert Medlin. John L. Poston/Jonathan C. Poston: December 3, 1868, in pension file of Wiley Poston.
7 “When, with a wild hurrah, on the ‘double-quick,’ they rushed upon the enemy’s guns, and bore your flag where men fell fastest and war made its wildest havoc, where explosion after explosion sent their mangled bodies and severed limbs flying through the air, and they fell on glacis, ditch, and scarp and counterscarp, did you caution them against such bravery, and remind them that this was the white man’s Government? . . . No, no, sir; you beckoned them on by the guerdon [reward] of freedom, the blessings of an equal and just Government, and a ‘good time coming.’” (Representative Daniel Clark of New Hampshire in Barnes,
History of the Thirty-ninth Congress, p. 390.) Republicans brandished Fort Pillow in their attacks on the Democratic Party. Not every Democrat was a Southern racist and bushwhacker, James A. Garfield conceded, but “every Rebel guerrilla and jayhawker, every man who ran to Canada to avoid the draft, every bounty-hunter, every deserter, every cowardly sneak that ran from danger and disgraced his flag, every man who loves slavery and hates liberty, every man who helped massacre loyal negroes at Fort Pillow, or loyal whites at New Orleans, every Knight of the Golden Circle, every incendiary who helped burn Northern steamboats and Northern hotels, and every villain, of whatever name or crime, who loves power more than justice, slavery more than freedom, is a Democrat.” (James A. Garfield [1866] in
Weekly Standard, December 4, 2000.)
8 “Mr. Willard” in State of Michigan,
The Debates and Proceedings of the Constitutional Convention of the State of Michigan, p. 651.
9 “Visit to Historic Ground” in
Memphis Argus, September 10, 1865.
10 Perhaps it was . . . Stanton/“MC”: December 11, 1865, in RG 92, Quartermaster’s Consolidated File: Fort Pillow in NARA. Two days before . . . W. J. Colburn /A. R. Eddy: December 23, 1865, RG92/Box 818/225 in NARA. On December 12 . . . Montgomery Cunningham Meigs/James Lowry Donaldson: December 12, 1865, RG92/225/5337 in NARA. Assistant Quartermaster . . . W. J. Colburn/A. R. Eddy: December 23, 1865, in Quartermaster’s Consolidated File (Fort Pillow) RG 92 in NARA. An agent . . . W. J. Colburn/J. S. Donaldson: December 26, 1865 (two letters), NA/RG92/Box 818/225. A Mr. Lea . . . W. J. Colburn/J. S. Donaldson: December 26, 1865, in Quartermaster’s Consolidated File (Fort Pillow) RG 92 in NARA.
11 In January . . . Meyers/Darling: January 31, 1866, in ibid. But Mrs. Booth . . . W. J. Colburn/A. R. Eddy: February 12, 1866, and W. J. Coburn/J. L. Donaldson: February 12, 1866, in Entry 576, RG 92, General Correspondence and Reports Relating to National and Post Cemeteries 1865-1890 in Records of the Office of Quarter Master General in NARA; “Quarter Master Gen”/Stanton: March 10, 1866, in Quartermaster’s Consolidated File (Fort Pillow) RG92 in NARA.
12 Each grave . . . W. J. Colburn/M. C. Meigs: April 9, 1866, in Quartermaster’s Consolidated File (Fort Pillow), RG 92 in NARA. “Little can be said . . .” Capt. E. B. Whitman: Report No. 237: Undated in Records of the Office of Quartermaster General; E. B. Whitman/J. L. Donaldson: April 29, 1866, in RMC; Register of Cemeterial Reports Received and Remarks made on the Reports by the Quartermaster General: January-August 1866, RG 92/Entry 640 in NARA.
13 Ike K. Revelle/L. C. Houk: January 24, 1883, and Robert Lincoln/L. C. Houk: February 6, 1883, in Records of Office of Quartermaster General/Cemeterial/ 1828-1929/RG92/Box 56/NM81/576 in NARA.
14 The old cannon . . .
Covington Leader, August 20, 1889. Not to be outdone . . . Interview with Fred Montgomery (Henning, Tennessee); Peters,
Lauderdale County. Working with a metal detector in the 1960s, a buff named Beverly M. DuBose Jr. of Atlanta was disappointed to find very few artifacts from the old fort, only “three minie balls, a few odd bits of tin, and I think one eagle button.” He did find “a major piece of what appeared to be an exploded cannon ball” but it was too big to dig up and cart back to his car. (Beverly M. DuBose Jr./Robert C. Mainfort Jr.: September 15, 1978, in RMC.)
15 “The rending . . .”
Bolivar (TN)
Bulletin in
CV, December 1908. By 1930 . . . Mills, “Fort Pillow.”
16 In 1970 . . . Tennessee Department of Conservation,
Master Plan Report: Fort Pillow: State Historic Area (Nashville, 1975). Under the supervision . . . Robert Henry in
Memphis Commercial Appeal, June 19, 1979.
“Deliver Me from Bloodguiltiness”: Forrest: From 1865 1 On May 16 . . .
Memphis News-Scimitar, May 17, 1905; Carney, “The Contested Image of Nathan Bedford Forrest.” “one of the proudest . . .”
Memphis Commercial Appeal, May 17, 1905.
2 Memphis Commercial Appeal in Carney, “The Contested Image of Nathan Bedford Forrest.”
3 In the summer . . .
Memphis Commercial Appeal, July 13, 1940. But a year later . . . Frisby, “‘Remember Fort Pillow!’” Under the glare . . . Carney, “The Contested Image of Nathan Bedford Forrest.”
4 Carney, “The Contested Image of Nathan Bedford Forrest.”
5 Most prominent . . . The author’s brother, Geoffrey C. Ward, was cowriter of the documentary. Shelby Foote in Carney, “The Contested Image of Nathan Bedford Forrest”; Matthew Sandel, “Tilting at Statues.”
6 Nashville Tennesseean, July 14, 1998.
7 A seventy-one-year-old South Carolina man who attended the unveiling was quoted by the paper as claiming that his experience of living in an integrated community for seventeen years had convinced him that “the mixing of the races doesn’t work.” He went on to attribute hate and crime to blacks, who, the South Carolina man was quoted as saying, “are primarily criminal as a group.” (
www.blueshoenashville.com/history.html.)
8 Horwitz,
Confederates in the Attic. 9 Forrest in Hurst,
Nathan Bedford Forrest, pp. 271, 293. On March 13 . . . U.S. District of West Tennessee: March 13, 1866, in Robert Selph Henry Papers (VT). “This is my country . . .” Maury,
Recollections of a Virginian, pp. 222-223; Wills,
A Battle from the Start, 342-349; Hurst,
Nathan Bedford Forrest, p. 308.
10 Hurst,
Nathan Bedford Forrest, p. 273-275. If Forrest was open to any criticism from his neighbors, it was that his overindulgence toward his former slaves had demoralized them.
12 Basil W. Duke in Hurst,
Nathan Bedford Forrest, p. 300.
13 Hurst,
Nathan Bedford Forrest, p. 302.
14 Joe Curtis (
Memphis Commercial Appeal)/Robert S. Henry: November 7, 1930, Robert Selph Henry Papers (VT).
15 Harper’s Weekly, September 5 and 26, and October 3, 1868.
16 Forrest/Andrew Johnson in Hurst,
Nathan Bedford Forrest, pp. 283-284.
17 Memphis Avalanche in B. P. Runkle/C. B. Fisk, May 23, 1866 in BRFAL.
18 On Saturday, a Northern schoolteacher named Tade went out “among the hills, where my flock was scattered, [and] called them by their names. They knew the voice & followed.” E. O. Tade/ M. E. Stricky: May 21, 1866 (AMA); Taylor,
The Negro in Tennessee, pp. 85-87; Chalfant, “Persecution in the South,”
American Missionary, October 1866. “This nation . . .” B. P. Runkle/C. B. Fisk: May 23, 1866, in BRFAL.
19 That fall . . . According to one account he later asked his former artillery commander John Morton if he could join, and after Morton drove him into the countryside to administer the oath, Forrest slapped him on the back and exclaimed, “Why, you damned little fool, don’t you know I’m the head of the whole damned thing?” “damned good thing . . .” Hurst,
Nathan Bedford Forrest, pp. 285, 287-288. “He had done . . .” Brown, “Nathan Bedford Forrest.”
20 In the spring . . . Hurst,
Nathan Bedford Forrest, pp. 290-291.
21 “Of this order . . .” Carroll, “Autobiography and Reminiscences,” p. 44.
22 During the election . . . Hurst,
Nathan Bedford Forrest, pp. 294, 297, 304, 306, 322-323, 325. “squads of the K.K.K. . . .” Joe Curtis (
Memphis Commercial Appeal )/Robert S. Henry: November 7, 1930, Robert Selph Henry Papers (VT).
23 Hurst,
Nathan Bedford Forrest, pp. 341-342.
24 Robert A. Wardlaw in the pension file of Charles Mullins.
25 “exterminate the white marauders . . .” Hurst,
Nathan Bedford Forrest, pp. 325, 341-342, 353, 369. But the outrages . . . Julia Spence Chase/Spence: August 29, 1875, in Papers of Adam Knight Spence (FU). “reign of terror . . .” Richardson,
Christian Reconstruction, p. 137. By commencement in 1874, the Nashville papers were so hostile to Fisk that usually friendly rags like the
Bulletin and the
Banner refused to publish the school’s notices. (Julia Spence Chase/Spence: August 29, 1875, in Papers of Adam Knight Spence [FU].)
26 Carney, “The Contested Image of Nathan Bedford Forrest.”
27 Hurst,
Nathan Bedford Forrest, pp. 366-367.
28 Ibid., pp. 311-13, 327-331, 360-362, 370, 373, 376.
29 In these . . . McIlwaine,
Memphis Down in Dixie, p. 153. “Just here . . .” Hurst,
Nathan Bedford Forrest, pp. 378-379, 386. “I have led . . .” Maury,
Recollections of a Virginian, pp. 223-224. John Milton Hubbard in Henry,
As They Saw Forrest, p. 179.
30 Lafcadio Hearn in McIlwaine,
Memphis Down in Dixie, p. 154.