I've refrained from participating in this particular discussion because I've not sufficiently reviewed the subject. That being the case, anything I might offer would unduly be influenced by my personal biases and would not be worth reading.

As part of my attempt to come to grips with what happened to Gracie's old brigade during the weeks leading up to Appomattox, I happened to read an account of the capture of Fort Gregg on April 2nd. Enraged that Confederates continued to fight after any reasonable hope of success was exhausted, many Federal soldiers shot defenders after the surrender. Witnesses said that perhaps forty Confederates were killed after Fort Gregg surrendered, and that Federal officers had to restrain their men in order to prevent further slaughter.

Here's the passage that caught my attention:

. . . . The Federals who entered Fort Gregg were appalled at the vision that greeted them. "The interior of the fort was a pool of blood, a sight which can never be shut from memory," testified a New Yorker. "The rebels had recklessly fought to the last." Amidst the unspeakable horror of this sickening spectacle, the surviving Confederates dropped their rifles, raised their arms, and finally acknowledged defeat. "When we rushed over the top the sight was truly terrific," remembered a Union officer. "Dead men and the dying lay strewn all about, and it was with the greatest difficulty that we could prevent our infuriated soldiers from shooting down and braining all who survived of the stubborn foe." A Confederate participant agreed that some infuriated Yankees continued their detail of death even after the garrison had capitulated:

QUOTE: Many of our captors were under the influence of whisky, and all were exasperated that we should have made such a stubborn fight, entailing on them a bloody massacre, when resistance was useless and vain. So the cry was kill, and but for their officers, who with cocked pistols made the men desist, all of us would have been murdered, and then too the jam of men in the fort gave us some protection, for it was impossible almost to shoot a Confederate without hitting a Federal. We lost about forty men killed in the fort after its capture, and fully that many Federals were killed by their own men.

Colonel Curtis reported that Capt. William A. Smiley of the 12th West Virginia accepted the formal surrender of Fort Gregg, tendered by Colonel Duncan. Smiley asked Duncan why the garrison had continued to fight once the outcome of the uneven contest had been determined. The Mississippi officer explained that the noise inside Fort Gregg had been so intense and that his men were so excited that he could not make his wishes to surrender the fort heard until the Federals had physically subdued his troops. Another member of the 12th West Virginia offered a different if implausible explanation for the Confederates' incredible fortitude: "They had been drinking whisky and gunpowder."

It seems likely that this type of response happened on numerous occasions during the war, perhaps also at Fort Pillow.