The Battle of Fort Pillow, also known as the Fort Pillow Massacre, was fought on April 12, 1864, at Fort Pillow on the Mississippi River in Henning, Tennessee, during the American Civil War. The battle ended with Confederate soldiers commanded by Major General Nathan Bedford Forrest massacring Union soldiers (many of them U.S. Colored Troops) attempting to surrender. Military historian David J. Eicher concluded: "Fort Pillow marked one of the bleakest, saddest events of American military history."
Background
The United States's deployment of the United States Colored Troops combined with Abraham Lincoln's issuing of the Emancipation Proclamation profoundly angered the Confederacy, who called it "uncivilized". In response, the Confederacy in May 1863, passed a law stating that black U.S. soldiers captured while fighting against the Confederacy would be turned over to the state, where the captured would be tried, according to state laws.
Fort Pillow was built in early 1862 by Gideon Johnson Pillow, a Confederate Brigadier General, on the Mississippi River 40 miles (64 km) north of Memphis and was used by both sides during the war. With the fall of New Madrid and Island No. 10 to U.S. Army forces, Confederate troops evacuated Fort Pillow on June 4 to avoid being cut off from the rest of the Confederate army. U.S. Army forces occupied Fort Pillow on June 6 and used it to protect the river approach to Memphis.
The fort stood on a high bluff and was protected by three lines of entrenchments arranged in a semicircle, with a protective parapet 4 ft (1.2 m) thick and 6 to 8 ft (1.8 to 2.4 m) high surrounded by a ditch. (During the battle, this design was a disadvantage to the defenders because they could not fire upon approaching troops without mounting the top of the parapet, which subjected them to enemy fire. Because of the width of the parapet, operators of the six artillery pieces of the fort found it difficult to depress their barrels enough to fire on the attackers once they got close.) A U.S. Navy gunboat, the USS New Era, commanded by Captain James Marshall, was also available for the defense.
On March 16, 1864, Confederate Major General Nathan Bedford Forrest launched a month-long cavalry raid with 7,000 troopers into West Tennessee and Kentucky. Their objectives were to capture U.S. prisoners and supplies and to demolish posts and fortifications from Paducah, Kentucky, south to Memphis. Forrest's Cavalry Corps, which he called "the Cavalry Department of West Tennessee and North Mississippi", consisted of the divisions led by Brig. Gens. James R. Chalmers (brigades of Brig. Gen. Robert V. Richardson and Colonel Robert M. McCulloch) and General Abe Buford (brigades of Cols. Tyree H. Bell and A. P. Thompson).
The first of the two significant engagements in the expedition was the Battle of Paducah on March 25, where Forrest's men did considerable damage to the town and its military supplies. Forrest had tried to bluff U.S. Col. Stephen G. Hicks into surrender, warning, "If I have to storm your works, you may expect no quarter". Hicks rejected the demand, as he knew that the fort could not be easily taken.
Numerous skirmishes occurred throughout the region in late March and early April. Needing supplies, Forrest planned to move on Fort Pillow with about 1,500 to 2,500 men. (He had detached part of his command under Buford to strike Paducah again.) He wrote on April 4, "There is a Federal force of 500 or 600 at Fort Pillow, which I shall attend to in a day or two, as they have horses and supplies which we need."
The U.S. Army garrison at Fort Pillow consisted of about 600 men, divided almost evenly between black and white troops. The black soldiers belonged to the 6th U.S. Regiment Colored Heavy Artillery and a section of the 2nd Colored Light Artillery (previously known as the Memphis Battery Light Artillery (African Descent)), under the overall command of Major Lionel F. Booth, who had been in the fort for only two weeks. Booth had been ordered to move his regiment from Memphis to Fort Pillow on March 28 to augment the cavalry, who had occupied the fort several weeks earlier.
Many of the regiment were formerly enslaved people who understood the personal cost of a loss to the Confederates—at best, an immediate return to slavery rather than being treated as a prisoner of war. They had heard that some Confederates threatened to kill any black U.S. Army troops they encountered. The white soldiers were predominantly recruits from Bradford's Battalion, a U.S. Army unit from west Tennessee commanded by Maj. William F. Bradford.
Opposing forces
Confederate
Forrest's Cavalry Corps, Major General Nathan Bedford Forrest.
Approximately 1,500 troops.
Battle
Forrest arrived at Fort Pillow at 10:00 on April 12. By this time, Chalmers had already surrounded the fort. A stray bullet struck Forrest's horse, felling the general and bruising him. This was the first of three horses he lost that day. He deployed sharpshooters around the higher ground that overlooked the fort, bringing many occupants into their direct line of fire. A sharpshooter's bullet to the chest killed Major Booth, and Bradford assumed command. By 11:00, the Confederates had captured two rows of barracks about 150 yd (140 m) from the southern end of the fort. The U.S. Army soldiers had failed to destroy these buildings before the Confederates occupied them, and they subjected the garrison to a murderous fire.
Rifle and artillery fire continued until 3:30 when Forrest sent a note demanding surrender: "The conduct of the officers and men garrisoning Fort Pillow has been such as to entitle them to being treated as prisoners of war. I demand the unconditional surrender of the entire garrison, promising that you shall be treated as prisoners of war. My men have just received a fresh supply of ammunition, and from their present position can easily assault and capture the fort. Should my demand be refused, I cannot be responsible for the fate of your command."
Bradford replied, concealing his identity as he did not wish the Confederates to realize that Booth had been killed, requesting an hour for consideration. Forrest, who believed that reinforcing troops would soon arrive by a river, replied that he would only allow 20 minutes, and that "If at the expiration of that time the fort is not surrendered, I shall assault it." Bradford refused this opportunity with a final reply: "I will not surrender." Forrest then ordered his bugler to sound the charge.
The Confederate assault was furious. While the sharpshooters maintained their fire into the fort, the first wave entered the ditch and stood while the second wave used their backs as stepping stones. These men then reached down and helped the first wave scramble up a ledge on the embankment. This proceeded flawlessly and with very little firing, except for the sharpshooters and around the flanks. Their fire against the New Era caused the sailors to button up their gun ports and hold their fire. As the sharpshooters were signaled to hold their fire, the men on the ledge went up and over the embankment, firing now for the first time into the massed defenders.
The garrison fought briefly but then broke and ran to the landing at the foot of the bluff, where they had been told that the U.S. Navy gunboat would cover their withdrawal by firing grapeshot and canister rounds. Because its gun ports remained sealed, the gunboat did not fire a single shot. The fleeing soldiers were subjected to fire from the rear and flank. Many were shot down. Others reached the river only to drown or be picked off in the water by sharpshooters on the bluff.
Massacre
Although Confederate sources say that Forrest's forces kept firing in self-defense, official U.S. reports emphasize that a deliberate massacre occurred. U.S. Army survivors said that even though all their troops surrendered, Forrest's men massacred some in cold blood. Surviving members of the garrison said that most of their men surrendered and threw down their arms, only to be shot or bayoneted by the attackers, who repeatedly shouted, "No quarter! No quarter!"
It was reported that women and children were killed, but this was disputed by Dr. C. Fitch, who was a surgeon of the Fort Pillow garrison: "Early in the morning all of the women and all of the noncombatants were ordered on to some barges, and were towed by a gunboat up the river to an island before any one was hurt." The testimony of Captain Marshall supports this. He stated that all the women, children, and sick soldiers were removed to an island before the battle started. The strongest evidence that the Confederates did not kill the women and children is that no one reported seeing the bodies of women and children among the slain.
The Joint Committee On the Conduct of the War immediately investigated the incident, which was widely publicized in the U.S. press. Stories appeared April 16 in The New York Times, New York Herald, New-York Tribune, Chicago Tribune, Cincinnati Gazette, and St. Louis Missouri Democrat, based on telegraph reports from Cairo, Illinois, where the steamer Platte Valley, carrying survivors, had called so that they could be taken to a hospital at nearby Mound City, Illinois, and those that had expired on the ship could be buried. In their report, from which the previous quotes were taken, they concluded that the Confederates shot most of the garrison after it had surrendered.
A letter from one of Forrest's sergeants, Achilles V. Clark, writing to his sisters on April 14, reads in part:
Our men were so exasperated by the Yankee's threats of no quarter that they gave but little. The slaughter was awful. Words cannot describe the scene. The poor deluded negros would run up to our men fall on their knees and with uplifted hands scream for mercy but they were ordered to their feet and then shot down. The whitte [sic] men fared but little better. The fort turned out to be a great slaughter pen. Blood, human blood stood about in pools and brains could have been gathered up in any quantity. I with several others tried to stop the butchery and at one time had partially succeeded but Gen. Forrest ordered them shot down like dogs and the carnage continued. Finally our men became sick of blood and the firing ceased.
A 2002 study by Albert Castel concluded that Forrest's troops had killed a large number of the garrison "after they had either ceased resisting or were incapable of resistance". Historian Andrew Ward in 2005 concluded that an atrocity in the modern sense occurred at Fort Pillow, but that the event was not premeditated nor officially sanctioned by Confederate commanders.
Recent histories concur that a massacre occurred. Historian Richard Fuchs, the author of An Unerring Fire, concludes, "The affair at Fort Pillow was simply an orgy of death, a mass lynching to satisfy the basest of conduct—intentional murder—for the vilest of reasons—racism and personal enmity." Ward states, "Whether the massacre was premeditated or spontaneous does not address the more fundamental question of whether a massacre took place ... it certainly did, in every dictionary sense of the word." John Cimprich states, "The new paradigm in social attitudes and the fuller use of available evidence has favored a massacre interpretation. ... Debate over the memory of this incident formed a part of sectional and racial conflicts for many years after the war, but the reinterpretation of the event during the last thirty years offers some hope that society can move beyond past intolerance."
Lieutenant Daniel Van Horn of the 6th U.S. Heavy Artillery (Colored) stated in his official report, "There never was a surrender of the fort, both officers and men declaring they never would surrender or ask for quarter." Another unit officer, however, and the only surviving officers of Bradford's Battalion, attested to the characterization that unarmed soldiers were killed in the act of surrendering.