[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."]
Born in Arkansas, raised in Tennessee, Jack Shelton of 13/E was another of the men who were shot while obeying their captors’ command to march back up the hill [after having surrendered]. Shot in the leg, he asked his assailants “if they did not respect prisoners of war.”
”No,” one of them answered, “we do not,” then he raised his revolver and “popped three or four caps in my face.”
Source:
Ward, Andrew. “River Run Red.” River Run Red: The Fort Pillow Massacre in the American Civil War. Viking, 2005. 208. Print.
Further Reading:
John W. Shelton in RJSCW.
Further Reading:
No comments, yet...