Charles - Feel free to post madly and widely. The crimes of the Slave owners and their modern variants must never be forgotten or forgiven! - Howard
Subject: REMEMBER FORT PILLOW!REMEMBER FORT PILLOW!
On April 12 1864 1500 Confederate cavalry under the Command of General Nathan Bedford Forrest overran the Union garrison at Fort Pillow, Tennessee on the Mississippi River. The Union fort was garrisoned by 200 mostly Black soldiers. The Black soldiers were in two Black artillery units. The white soldiers were from the Union 13th Tennessee cavalry and were composed of former Confederate soldiers from Tennessee who had gone over to the Union. The Union troops suffered 200 killed, mostly Black soldiers who after surrendering had been shot or bayoneted. Nathan Bedford Forrest had been a prominent Tennessee slave trader who prior to his excursion into Tennessee had publicly announced that the Union soldiers were outlaws "Not entitled to be treated as prisoners of war" and "will be shot down".
After the Fort Pillow massacre Black Union soldiers went into battle shouting "Remember Fort Pillow" and took no prisoners. "The darkies fought ferociously" wrote Captain Charles Francis Adams Jr, of an attack by a black division against the Petersburg defenses on June 15, 1864. "If they murder prisoners, as I hear they did...they can hardly be blamed"
The South refused to treat freedmen soldiers as prisoners of war. "The enlistment of our slaves is a barbarity" declared the Confederate Bureau of War. "No people could tolerate the use of savages against them...We cannot on any principle allow that our property can acquire adverse rights by the theft of it." The Confederate Exchange Commission stated that the South would "die in the last ditch before giving up the right to send slaves back to slavery as property recaptured". Confederate Secretary of War Seddon issued an early directive that "we ought never to be inconvenienced with such prisoners...summary execution must therefore be inflicted on those taken". Hundreds were massacred at Port Pillow, the Crater, Poison Spring, Plymouth and elsewhere. An affidavit by a Union sergeant described what happened after Confederates recaptured Plymouth on the North Carolina coast in April 1864.
"All the negroes found in blue uniform or with any outward marks of a Union soldiers upon him was killed--I saw some taken into the woods and hung--Others I saw stripped of all their clothing, and they stood upon the banks of the river with their faces riverwards and then they were shot--Still others were killed by having their brains beaten out by the butt end of the muskets in the hands of the Rebels--All were not killed the day of the capture--Those that were not, were placed in a room with their officers, they (the Officers) having previously been dragged through the town with ropes around their necks, where they were kept confined until the following morning when the remainder of the black soldiers were killed."
Many captured Black Union soldiers were sold into slavery. The lucky ones were used as slave labor.
This practice ended the extensive prisoner exchanges which had benefited the officers especially. General Simon Bolivar Butler, grandfather of the infamous general of the same name who commanded the 10th Army in the battle of Okinawa was exchanged.
Nathan Bedford Forrest was never punished after the Confederate surrender as was none of the officers or Rebel soldiers involved. Forrest went on to organize the Ku Klux Klan.
Howard
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REMEMBER FORT PILLOW!
REMEMBER FORT PILLOW!
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Checked by AVG - www.avg.com
Version: 10.0.1191 / Virus Database: 1435/3391 - Release Date: 01/19/11
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