On April 12, 1864 the Civil War was raging across the nation. Confederate lieutenant general Nathan Bedford Forrest led his troops to attack Fort Pillow in Henning, Tennessee. Confederate brigadier general James Chalmers had already surrounded the fort and Forrest's troops tightened the noose. Within Fort Pillow were approximately 600 Union men, 1/2 white and 1/2 black. The black soldiers included many who were former slaves and understood what the personal dangers of a loss. A return to slavery was expected rather than treatment as a prisoner of war.
Forrest sent a demand for surrender which Major William F. Bradford, who had taken command after Major Lionel F. Booth was killed by a sharpshooter, rejected after one hour of consideration. Forrest's troops advanced. Their well timed and superbly led attack overwhelmed the fort. Union and Confederate sources later would confirm the surrender of the Union soldiers. However what followed was a massacre, with roughly half the Union forces being slaughtered as they surrendered or ran. Approximately 65 Confederate soldiers met their end in the battle.
General Grant wrote in his memoirs of Forrest's personal report of the event,
"The river was dyed," he says, "with the blood of the slaughtered for two hundred yards. The approximate loss was upward of five hundred killed, but few of the officers escaping. My loss was about twenty killed. It is hoped that these facts will demonstrate to the Northern people that negro soldiers cannot cope with Southerners."
Forrest would later become the first Grand Wizard of the Klu Klux Klan during the postwar time of southern reconstruction, but his later efforts would never match the level of what he accomplished on that April day in 1864.
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