[The following takes place during the Battle of Fort Pillow which, after the Confederate attackers had successfully swarmed the Union garrison, quickly turned into perhaps the most infamous massacre of the American Civil War. A little more 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."]
South of the ravine, Anderson’s [Confederate] sharpshooters swung their sights from the closed portholes of the New Era [a Union gunboat stationed nearby which was later charged with failing to adequately support the garrison] up the riverfront to the Federals fleeing down the bluff, becoming, in effect, an execution squad. “Upon them,” wrote Anderson, “we opened a destructive fire.”
”Thus being exposed to a fire from both flanks, as well as rear,” wrote Hancock, “their ranks were fearfully thinned as they fled down that bluff toward the river.”
”The bigger portion of the darkeys [African-American Union soldiers],” Benton testified, “jumped down the bank towards the Mississippi river, without any arms at all.”
[…]
Anderson boasted that his command “did the most destructive as well as the very last firing done at Fort Pillow,” but excused his men’s excesses because from their position they could not see which flag was flying over the parapet. However, they could see the white makeshift flags of truce – from torn white shirts to handkerchiefs – that the garrison desperately waved along the riverbank, and the red hospital flags tied all around Fitch’s field hospital, which should have protected the morning’s wounded from further harm.
”Hundreds were killed in the water endeavoring to escape,” wrote a rebel witness. “Others rushed to the passage between the fort and the river for the purpose of passing down the river towards Memphis.” But Anderson’s men “opened fire upon them, and the enemy rushed upon a coal barge and endeavored to push it off; but a concentrated fire from our whole column, soon put an end to this experiment.” After running down the bluff, Sergeant Henry Weaver of 6/C jumped into the water “and hid myself between the bank and the coal barge. They were shooting the negroes over my head all the time, and they were falling off into the water.” One rebel estimated that “several hundred were shot in this boat” and along Coal Creek “while endeavoring to escape.” The number of Federals in the water “was so great,” he wrote, “that they resembled a drove of hogs swimming across the stream. But not a man escaped in this way. The head above the water was a beautiful mark for the trusty rifle of our unerring marksmen,” and “the Mississippi River was crimsoned with the red blood of the flying foe.”
Anderson’s “furious and fatal” volleys sent the panic-stricken garrison rushing “wildly along the face of the bluff up the river, thinking that way was open for escape.” But as they reached “the upper limit of the fort, the detachment from Barteau’s regiment stationed opposite the mouth of Cold Creek ravine opened upon the fugitives another volley which stopped their flight in this direction, and turned them like frightened sheep once more back in the direction they had first taken when they sought safety beneath the bank.” Together Anderson and Barteau “cut off all effective retreat.” Anderson’s men “employed themselves,” wrote two Union lieutenants, “in shooting down the negro troops as fast as they made their appearance.”
Source:
Ward, Andrew. “Bloody Work.” River Run Red: The Fort Pillow Massacre in the American Civil War. Viking, 2005. 204-5. Print.
Original Source(s) Listed:
Anderson, “The True Story of Fort Pillow,”
Hancock, Hancock’s Diary, pp. 360-361.
Charles Anderson in Wyeth, That Devil Forrest, pp. 594-595.
“Memphis” pseudonym/Report: April 18, 1864, in Cimprich and Mainfort, “Fort Pillow Revisited.”
Henry Weaver in RJSCW.
Charles Anderson in Jordan and Pryor, The Campaigns of Nathan Bedford Forrest, p. 328.
F. A. Smith and William Cleary in RJSCW.
Further Reading:
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