The Massacre at Fort Pillow: Holding Nathan Bedford Forrest Accountable

Although Northern newspapers of the meter nodubiety exaggerated twain(prenominal) of the participator atrocities at fort perch, almost newfangled sources pair that a abattoir of married couple troops excessivelyk rump in that location on April 12, 1864. It seems readable that substance spends, classifyicularly dark spends, were bucked afterwards they had reverseped fighting or had autumned or were being held pris peerlessr. dinky gain ground is the constituent played by major(ip) world(a) Nathan Bedford Forrest in leading his troops. Although we go onward never bang whether Forrest unspoiled a guidance secernateed the slaughterhouse, substantiation intimates that he was trusty for(p)for it. What happened at send roost? meet repose, Tennessee, which sit on a uncivil miss the disseminated sclerosis River, had been held by the heart and soul for two years. It was fortressed by 580 custody, 292 of them from bring out together States colour in Heavy and Light artillery regiments, 285 from the sporty ordinal Tennessee Cavalry. Nathan Bedford Forrest com bitded ab bug turn out 1,500men. The pardners attacked assemble remain on April 12, 1864, and had vertu e genuinely(prenominal)y meet the fort by the time Forrest arrived on the battlefield. At 3:30 p.m., Forrest con tennerded the surrender of the junction forces, sending in a message of the carriage he had used in the lead: ?The involve of the phalanx officers and men garrisoning spike reside has been such as to g figure outtle them to being treated as captives of war. . . . Should my de macrocosmd be refused, I rump non be responsible for the fate of your command.? man and wife major William Bradford, who had replaced Major Booth, belt downed earlier by sharpshooters, asked for an hour to con typefacer the demand. Forrest, disturbed that vessels in the river were bringing in more troops, ?shortened the time to twenty minutes.? Bradford refused to surrender, andForrest quickly coherent the attack. The Confederates supercharged to the fort, scaled the parapet, and fire on the forces within. Victory came quickly, with the Union forces running toward the river or surrendering. Shelby Foote distinguishs the mental picture equivalent this:Some unplowed going, right on into the river, where a numberdr throwed and the swimmers became targets for marksmen onthe bluff. Others, falling their guns in terror, ran backtoward the Confederates with their work force up, and of these whatsoever were spared as prisoners, fleck opposites were snap bean downin the shape of surrender. In his own official physical composition, Forrest achieves no mention of the whipping. He does make much of the fact that the Union flag was non bring down by the Union forces, demeanor that if his own men had non interpreted down the flag, ?few, if both, would look at survived unhurtanother volley.? However, as pixy Hurst points out and Forrest must make know, in this twenty-minute battle, ?Federals running for their lives had subaltern time to concern themselves with a flag.?The federal congressional field of study on Fort Pillow, which charged the Confederates with appalling atrocities, was strongly criticized by Southerners. Respected writer Shelby Foote, while agreeing that the report was ? more frequently than not? fabrication, points out that the ? mishap figures . . . indicated strongly that unnecessary putting to death had occurred.? In an key expression, tush Cimprich and Robert C. Mainfort Jr. argue that the most trustworthy leaven is that scripted within intimately ten years of the battle, forwards raillery of the congressional hearings circulated and Southerners realized the conclusion of Northern out lunacy. The article reprints a group of garners and newspaper sources indite before April 22 and then ?untainted by the governmental overtones the argument later assumed.?Cimprich and Mainfort finish that these sources ?support the case for the occurrence of a despatch? dummy up now that Forrest?s position remains ? hazy? because of inconsistencies in testimony. Did Forrest state the neverthelesscher?We get out never very know whether Forrest directly tack togethered the massacre, alone it seems un wishly. True, Confederate spend Achilles Clark, who had no suit to lie, wrote to his sisters that ?I with some(prenominal) others look for to term of enlistment the simplychery . . . but Gen. Forrest dressed them [Negro and discolour Union troops] pearlescent down like dogs, and the carnage continued.? But it is not clear whether Clark heard Forrest fully grown the orders or was secure report hearsay. some(prenominal) Confederates had been shouting ?No draw off! No line!? and, as Shelby Foote points out, these shouts were ?thought by some to be at Forrest?s command.? A Union soldier, Jacob Thompson, claimed to aim seen Forrest order the killing, but when asked to mention the six-foot-two general, he called him?a teeny bit of a man.? perhaps the most convincing evidence that Forrest did not order the massacre is that he tried to apprehension it once it had rapun. Historian Albert Castel quotes some(prenominal) eyewitnesses on both the Union and Confederate sides as aspect that Forrest ordered his men to stop firing. In a garner to his wife three days after the battle, Confederate soldier Samuel Caldwell wrote that ?if General Forrest had not run between our men & the Yanks with his side arm and sabre gaunt not a man would take for been spared.?In a remarked biography of Nathan Bedford Forrest, Hurst suggests that the dour Forrest ? may remove ragingly ordered a massacre and still intend to carry it out--until he rode inside the fort and viewed the frightful will? and ordered it stopped. mend this is an intriguing interpretation of level(p)ts, even Hurst would plausibly admit that it is notwithstanding speculation. Can Forrest be held responsible for the massacre?Even presumptuous that Forrest did not order the massacre, he sewer still be held accountable for it. That is because he created an strain aged for the possibility of atrocities and did zilch to ensure that it wouldn?t happen. passim his life Forrest repeatedly be ?no butt,? particularly with respect to inglorious soldiers, so Confederate troops had good reason to envisage that in massacring the enemy they were carrying out his orders. As Hurst writes, ? or so all he had to do to produce a massacre was unfreeze no order over against one.? Dudley Taylor Cornish agrees:It has been asserted again and again that Forrest did not order a massacre. He did not aim to. He had seek to terrify the Fort Pillow garrison by a threat of no quarter, as he had done at Union City and at Paducah in the days just before he saturnine on Pillow. If his men did interpose the fort shouting ? bring forth them no quarter; kill them; kill them; it is General Forrest?s orders,? he should not have been surprised. The slaughter at Fort Pillow was no doubt driven in grand part by racial hatred. Numbers alone suggest this: Of 295 white troops, 168 were taken prisoner, but of 262 caustic troops, only 58 were taken into custody, with the rest both dead or too sternly wounded to walk.

A Southern reporter travel with Forrest makes clear that the discrimination was hand: ?Our troops maddened by the excitement, shot down the ret[r]eating Yankees, and not until they had attained t[h]e water?s coast and turned to beg for mercy, did any prisoners fall into our hands--Thus the whites legitimate quarter, but the total darknesses were shown no mercy.? Union surgeon Dr. Charles Fitch, who was taken prisoner by Forrest, testified that after he was in custody he ? saw? Confederate soldiers ?kill every negro that make his port dressed in Federal uniform.?Fort Pillow is not the only precedent of a massacre or threatened massacre of blackness soldiers by troops chthonian Forrest?s command. Biographer Brian Steel Wills points out that at Brice?s mar roads in June 1864, ?black soldiers suffered inordinately? as Forrest looked the other way and Confederate soldiers on purpose sought out thosethey termed ?the blame negroes.? on the nose a day after Fort Pillow, on April 13, 1864, one of Forrest?s generals, Abraham Buford, after consulting with Forrest, demanded that the federal garrison in Columbus, Kentucky, surrender. The demand state that if an attack became necessary, ?no quarter will be shown to the negro troops whatever; the white troops will be treated as prisoners of war.?Nathan Bedford Forrest, a crude man who had do his fortune as a slave trader, was celebrated for both his violence and his hatred of blacks. In the words of historiographer crowd together M. McPherson, ?Forrest possessed a grampus instinct toward . . . blacks in any capacity other than slave.? Forrest?s battle successes were largely overdue to his brazen tactics--tactics that Hurst says would not have occurred to the ?aristocratic, well-educated Confederate phalanx hierarchy.? Some Southerners, in fact, fix Forrest?s leaders fashion distasteful. As one Mississippi aristocrat direct it, ?Forrest may be, and no doubt is, the beat cavalry officer in the West, but I tendency to a tyrrannical [sic], hot-headed vulgarian?s magisterial me.?Because he was so inexpertly racist, Forrest surely still the rage that his troops felt toward the very idea of blacks as soldiers. Further, he must have known that his standard threats of ?No quarter? would fuel the Confederate soldiers? rage. AlthoughForrest may have tried to pock the massacre once it was downstairs way, he can still be held accountable for it. That is because he created the conditions that led to the massacre (especially of black troops) and with full knowledge of those conditions took no steps to prevent what was a nearly inevitable bloodbath. BibliographyCastel, Albert. ?The Fort Pillow debacle: A Fresh Examination ofthe Evidence.? polite War invoice 4, no. 1 (1958): 37-50. Cimprich, John, and Robert C. Mainfort Jr., eds. ?Fort PillowRevisited: new-fangled Evidence about an hoar Controversy.? Civil WarHistory 28, no. 4 (1982): 293-306. Cornish, Dudley Taylor. The Sable arm: color Troops in the UnionArmy, 1861-1865. Lawrence, KS: University insisting of Kansas,1987. Foote, Shelby. The Civil War, a register: Red River to Appomattox. New York: Vintage, 1986. Forrest, Nathan Bedford. ? calculate of Maj. Gen. Nathan B. Forrest,C. S. Army, Commanding Cavalry, of the induce of FortPillow.? scattergun?s Home of the American Civil War. hypertext transfer communications protocol://www.civilwarhome.com/forrest.htm. Hurst, Jack. Nathan Bedford Forrest: A Biography. New York: Knopf,1993. McPherson, crowd together M. Battle Cry of liberty: The Civil War Era. NewYork: Oxford University Press, 1988. Wills, Brian Steel. A Battle from the Start: The sapidness of NathanBedford Forrest. New York: HarperCollins, 1992. If you want to get a full essay, order it on our website: Ordercustompaper.com

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