[The following takes place during the Battle of Fort Pillow, during the American Civil War. Context, courtesy of Wikipedia: “The Battle of Fort Pillow, which ended with 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 a massacre of African-American Union troops and their white officers attempting to surrender, by soldiers under the command of Confederate Major General Nathan Bedford Forrest. Military historian David J. Eicher concluded, "Fort Pillow marked one of the bleakest, saddest events of American military history."]
No sooner had the first wave of rebels fired and jumped into the fortification than a second wave popped up onto the parapet and opened fire.
”The charge was simultaneous and well sustained from every point,” wrote Fort, and the assault “an instantaneous success.” As the rebels leaped through the gun smoke and into the fort itself, some of them pressed the muzzles of their guns against the defenders’ blue blouses and fired, inflicting “wounds almost of necessity instantly fatal.” Almost, but a lot of their fire was wild. “I was wounded with a musket ball through the right ankle,” wrote Sergeant Gaylord of 6/B. Two hundred rebels pushed by him as he lay bleeding, “when one rebel noticed that I was alive” and shot at him again and missed. Daniel Rankin was shot in the leg at the rim of the bluff, and as his assailant reloaded he threw himself over the edge, stopping his fall by “catching hold of a little locust.” James Taylor and his brother Frank were wounded as they scrambled down the bluff. John Haskins of 6/B was shot in the arm.
”The sight was terrific,” wrote a rebel witness,
the slaughter sickening. Wearied with the slow process of shooting with guns, our troops commenced with their repeaters, and every fire brought down a foe, and so close was the fight, that the dead would frequently fall upon the soldier that killed. Still the enemy would not or knew not how to surrender. The Federal flag, that hated emblem of tyranny, was still proudly waving over the scene.
Source:
Ward, Andrew. “Bloody Work.” River Run Red: The Fort Pillow Massacre in the American Civil War. Viking, 2005. 197-98. Print.
Original Source(s) Listed:
Wyeth, That Devil Forrest, p. 325, 589.
Fort, “Journal of Dewitt Clinton Fort.”
Jordan and Pryor, The Campaigns of Nathan Bedford Forrest, pp. 326-327.
Wilbur H. Gaylord in RJSCW.
Daniel H. Rankin in RJSCW.
James N. Taylor in RJSCW.
Pension file of John Haskins.
“Memphis” pseudonyum/Report: April 18, 1864, in Cimprich and Mainfort, “Fort Pillow Revisited.”
Further Reading:
Battle of Fort Pillow / Fort Pillow Massacre
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