Originally aired on April 03, 1998 - In part 188 of our Civil War series, Virginia Tech history professor James Robertson discusses the Battle of Fort Pillow, Tennessee, a massacre of Union soldiers that became a blot on the career of Confederate Major General Nathan Bedford Forrest.
#188 – Fort Pillow
Civil Wars are especially vicious because the two sides know one another. In that atmosphere hatred has no limits. Atrocities become commonplace. The worst of those instances in the Civil War occurred in the spring of 1864 at a place called Fort Pillow, Tennessee.
Confederates built the installation in 1861. It stood on a high bluff, forty miles up the Mississippi River from Memphis. Its purpose was to guard Northern approaches to the city. Union forces seized Fort Pillow the following year and made it part of a chain of garrisons used to protect communication and supply lines along the Mississippi.
By early 1864, the Fort Pillow garrison consisted of newly trained black soldiers and part of the 13th U. S. Tennessee Cavalry. For the Confederates, the defenders at Fort Pillow were “runaway slaves and renegade Tennesseans”. The leading Confederate cavalryman in the area, General Nathan Bedford Forrest, determined to attack the isolated post.
On the morning of April 12th some 1,500 Southern horsemen arrived on the scene. Forrest himself reached the fort in mid-morning. Confederates outnumbered the Union garrison by three to one. Southern skirmishers opened fire from high ground near the fort.
One of the first Union fatalities was the garrison commander, Major Lionel Booth. His successor was Major William Bradford who possessed little military knowledge or experience. By early afternoon, Forrest’s men had surrounded Fort Pillow and driven through the first line of defense.
Forrest sent Bradford a demand for unconditional surrender. Should it be refused, Forrest said, “I cannot be responsible for the fate of your command”. Bradford announced his determination to fight. Whereupon Forrest gave a signal and Confederate cavalry galloped toward the fort.
The troopers swarmed over the parapets and fired point-blank into the defenders. Union soldiers, black and white, began fleeing. Fighting now became chaotic. Many Federals sought to surrender. Others ran for their lives. Some turned and fired as they scampered for safety.
Forrest remained a quarter mile away. He therefore was out of touch with and out of control of events taking place inside Fort Pillow. There deep anger among Confederates at meeting neighbors fighting for the enemy plus racial animosity at seeing former slaves shooting at them converted the battle into something else.
Later Forrest would claim that panic-stricken Federals kept firing while comrades sought to surrender. Union soldiers insisted that when they laid down their arms many were shot or bayoneted in cold blood. Casualty figures point strongly to a massacre. Confederate losses were but fourteen killed and eighty-seven wounded.
In a Civil War battle the wounded were normally two to three times the number of killed. Yet Union losses at Fort Pillow were two hundred and thirty-one killed; a hundred and twenty wounded; two hundred and thirty captured. The killed were double the number injured. Worst of all, of two hundred and sixty-two black soldiers at Fort Pillow, only fifty-eight were alive when the fighting ended.
The most damning testimony of all came from Sergeant Achilles Clark, a member of Forrest’s command. To his sisters a week after the engagement Clark wrote, “Our men were so exasperated by the Yankee threats of no quarter that we gave but little. The fort turned out to be a great slaughter pen. I with others tried to stop the butchery, but General Forrest ordered them shot down like dogs and the carnage continued.”
Fort Pillow became a blot on Bedford Forrest’s stellar career. It also affected the Union side. Thereafter black units charged into combat with a determination inherent in their battle cry, “Remember Fort Pillow, Remember Fort Pillow”.