The Fort Pillow Massacre
At the beginning of the Civil War, the Union army refused to accept black volunteers. However, by the end of 1861, the army began employing escaped slaves as laborers. After the Emancipation Proclamation, the recruitment of black soldiers began in earnest.In the army, black soldiers faced extremely unequal treatment in almost all aspects of their lives. They were organized into segregated units, received lower pay, assigned to labor, and couldn’t be promoted until the very end of the war. Additionally, all black soldiers were treated as escaped slaves and if captured, they could become slaves. However, Confederate soldiers often didn’t even allow black soldiers to be captured and killed them instead.
On April 12, 1864, southern troops under the command of Nathan Forrest attacked Fort Pillow. Under a flag of truce that they later violated, Confederate troops took the fort and brutally killed black soldiers that tried to surrender. Many black soldiers that threw down their weapons were shot anyway, and according to one account, “On the morning after the battle the rebels went over the field, and shot the negroes who had not died from their wounds.” Out of 262 black soldiers, 200 died. Additionally, Fort Pillow was of little strategic significance and Forrest abandoned the fort the next day. Though Confederate soldiers initially bragged that they had taught “the mongrel garrison” a lesson, Forrest later denied there had been a massacre. He later became the first leader of the Ku Klux Klan. Many Southern revisionists also refused to call the what happened a massacre, though many sources now show exactly what happened.
Despite this, black soldiers were not deterred and played a crucial war in winning the war. “Remember Fort Pillow” became a rallying cry for black soldiers. The deaths and treatment of black soldiers also affected Lincoln, who demanded the Confederacy to treat black prisoners equally to white prisoners. Later on in the war, laws were made to grant equal pay to black and white soldiers.
In the aftermath of the Civil War and in the attempt to portray the war as a “Lost Cause,” many of sacrifices made by black soldiers were forgotten. However, it is important to recognize and honor the crucial role that they played in the Civil War, not only in winning the war, but defining the war’s consequences.
I really liked reading about how revolutionary of an event this was. This event was used to boost morale in the later parts of the war for the black soldiers, and seems like a turning point for all black soldiers that were in the army. For the part about the lost cause, were the black soldiers forgotten, or portrayed as the enemy? From what we learned about the lost cause, it often seems that the south would portray their enemy as the bad guy, not forget about them. It would be interesting to see how the south tried to cover up this event that rallied the black soldiers for the rest of the war.
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ReplyDeleteI really like that you wrote about this more in dept. Even though we learned this in class you gave more insight to this,
Such as the way confederates had been bragging about killing black soldiers. This gives more evidence to the way confederates felt having no remorse to killing so many black soldiers.
I enjoyed reading your blog post because the documentary vaguely covered this massacre and I didn't really understand it. You helped me understand more what it was about and the outcomes of it.
ReplyDeleteI really like how you mentioned the fact that Fort Pillow had no real strategic significance and was even abandoned the day after it was won. This really shows how slavery and anti-black prejudice was the driving force behind the Confederacy, and how they showed no mercy to black soldiers (such as killing even those who surrendered).
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