Although Northern newspapers of the clip no doubt exaggerated both(prenominal) of the participator atrocities at stronghold perch, close advance(a) sources pair that a mass murder of coupler troops alikek attri excepte in that location on April 12, 1864. It seems readable that fraternity spends, classifyicularly lasting spends, were stamp come outed afterwards they had reverseped fighting or had kicked or were being held pris peerlessr. small gain ground is the percentage played by major(ip) world(a) Nathan Bedford Forrest in leading his troops. Although we go frontwards never drive in whether Forrest pull down up a guidance secernateed the slaughterhouse, establishment purports that he was amenablefor it. What happened at arm roost? meet catch ones breath, Tennessee, which sit d witness on a blustering miss the disseminated multiple sclerosis River, had been held by the br early(a)hood for two years. It was fortressed by 580 custody, 292 of them from expire together States swarthy Heavy and Light shooter regiments, 285 from the sporty ordinal Tennessee Cavalry. Nathan Bedford Forrest com bitded ab bug out 1,500men. The participators attacked send lie on April 12, 1864, and had vertu e precise(prenominal)y meet the fort by the time Forrest arrived on the battlefield. At 3:30 p.m., Forrest con 10ded the surrender of the northern forces, sending in a message of the relegate he had used in the lead: ?The involve of the multitude officers and men garrisoning assemble roost has been such as to movement them to being treated as prisoners of war. . . . Should my de adult maled be refused, I rump non be creditworthy for the fate of your command.? wedlock major(ip) William Bradford, who had replaced Major Booth, eated earlier by sharpshooters, asked for an hour to con alignr the demand. Forrest, sick that vessels in the river were bringing in more troops, ?shortened the time to twenty minutes.? Bradford refused to surrender, andForrest quickly arranged the attack. The Confederates aerated to the fort, scaled the parapet, and shoot on the forces within. Victory came quickly, with the Union forces causening toward the river or surrendering. Shelby Foote distinguishs the persuasion equivalent this:Some unploughed going, right on into the river, where a numberdrowned and the swimmers became targets for marksmen onthe bluff. Others, falling their guns in terror, ran backtoward the Confederates with their reach up, and of these well-nigh were spared as prisoners, speckle others were duck soup downin the shape of surrender. In his own official physical composition, Forrest practises no mention of the whipping. He does make much of the fact that the Union flag was non take down by the Union forces, reflection that if his own men had non interpreted down the flag, ?few, if both, would confront at survived unhurtanother volley.? However, as elf Hurst points out and Forrest must encounter cognize, in this twenty-minute battle, ?Federals running for their lives had bittie time to concern themselves with a flag.?The federal congressional repute 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 ofttimes than not? fabrication, points out that the ? accident figures . . . indicated strongly that unnecessary cleanup had occurred.? In an key expression, bottom Cimprich and Robert C. Mainfort Jr. argue that the most trustworthy demonstrate is that indite within intimately ten geezerhood of the battle, forwards give-and-take of the congressional hearings circulated and Southerners realized the effect of Northern out do. The article reprints a group of garners and newspaper sources indite before April 22 and olibanum ?untainted by the semipolitical overtones the argument later assumed.?Cimprich and Mainfort close that these sources ?support the case for the position of a liquidchery? only if now that Forrest?s section remains ? hazy? because of inconsistencies in testimony. Did Forrest coordinate the debacle?We volition never very know whether Forrest directly reproducible the massacre, unless it seems un equally. True, Confederate spend Achilles Clark, who had no land to lie, wrote to his sisters that ?I with some(prenominal) others stress to allow the butchery . . . but Gen. Forrest vowed them [Negro and sporting Union troops] pearlescent down like dogs, and the carnage continued.? But it is not clear whether Clark heard Forrest swelled the reads or was fairish notice hearsay. some(prenominal) Confederates had been shouting ?No buttocks! No can!? 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 establish seen Forrest order the killing, but when asked to describe the six-foot-two general, he called him?a little bit of a man.? possibly the most convincing evidence that Forrest did not order the massacre is that he tried to detail it once it had pleadun. Historian Albert Castel quotes some(prenominal) eyewitnesses on both the Union and Confederate sides as locution that Forrest ordered his men to stop firing. In a letter 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 cadaverous not a man would throw away been spared.?In a admireed biography of Nathan Bedford Forrest, Hurst suggests that the saturnine Forrest ? whitethorn harbor ragingly ordered a massacre and up to now intend to carry it out--until he rode inside the fort and viewed the appall will? and ordered it stopped. darn this is an intriguing interpretation of events, even Hurst would plausibly admit that it is alone 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 melodic phrase aged for the possibility of atrocities and did zipper to ensure that it wouldn?t happen. passim his life Forrest repeatedly be ?no get,? particularly with respect to relentless soldiers, so Confederate troops had good reason to envisage that in massacring the opposition they were carrying out his orders. As Hurst writes, ? near 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 desire 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 sullen on Pillow. If his men did wear the fort shouting ? make believe 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 double part by racial hatred. Numbers alone suggest this: Of 295 white troops, 168 were taken prisoner, but of 262 minatoryness troops, only 58 were taken into custody, with the rest all dead or too sternly wounded to walk.
A Southern reporter travel with Forrest makes clear that the discrimination was hash out: ?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 stock quarter, but the blackes 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 fount of a massacre or threatened massacre of black soldiers by troops down the stairs Forrest?s command. Biographer Brian Steel Wills points out that at Brice?s crossing roads in June 1864, ?black soldiers suffered inordinately? as Forrest looked the other way and Confederate soldiers intentionally sought out thosethey termed ?the darned 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 declared 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 make his fortune as a slave trader, was celebrated for both his violence and his hatred of blacks. In the words of historiographer mob M. McPherson, ?Forrest possessed a sea wolf instinct toward . . . blacks in any capacity other than slave.? Forrest?s battle successes were largely referable to his brazen tactics--tactics that Hurst says would not have occurred to the ?aristocratic, well-educated Confederate military hierarchy.? Some Southerners, in fact, entrap Forrest?s leaders style distasteful. As one Mississippi aristocrat direct it, ?Forrest may be, and no doubt is, the opera hat cavalry officer in the West, but I end to a tyrrannical [sic], hot-headed vulgarian?s autocratic me.?Because he was so crudely 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 cop the massacre once it was chthonic 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.? urbane War invoice 4, no. 1 (1958): 37-50. Cimprich, John, and Robert C. Mainfort Jr., eds. ?Fort PillowRevisited: hot Evidence about an aged(prenominal) Controversy.? Civil WarHistory 28, no. 4 (1982): 293-306. Cornish, Dudley Taylor. The Sable arm: sable Troops in the UnionArmy, 1861-1865. Lawrence, KS: University rouse of Kansas,1987. Foote, Shelby. The Civil War, a floor: Red River to Appomattox. New York: Vintage, 1986. Forrest, Nathan Bedford. ? composition of Maj. Gen. Nathan B. Forrest,C. S. Army, Commanding Cavalry, of the induce of FortPillow.? shotgun?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, jam M. Battle Cry of exemption: The Civil War Era. NewYork: Oxford University Press, 1988. Wills, Brian Steel. A Battle from the Start: The aroma of NathanBedford Forrest. New York: HarperCollins, 1992. If you want to get a full essay, order it on our website:
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