Guess my initial responce to the hearsay of Gen Chalmers started another Fort Pillow debate.
Quite honestly, I heretofor had only passing knowledge of the particulars of the Ft. Pillow incident, and was frankly tired of seeing this if it was not at least Alabama-related. Hoyt was good to point this error of mine, in that the Colored Artillery was indeed made up of Alabamians.
In reading the profusion of OR extractions (full or partial) I have indeed learned a great deal on this, and certainly that is a principle purpose of this message board. Everybody's passionate participation certainly ensures this end is met.
What I take away from this are these points:
1.While Ft. Pillow was not the Alamo, 40,000 copies of the Northern reports of the inquires, for public distribution, certainly suggests that a political end was to be made of it. It is apparent to even an unbiased observer with all the facts that the event was in fact politicized and treated as propaganda for Lincoln's re-election.
2. The battle was seriously miss-managed by the Federal officers. The place should have been surrendered when Forrest first demanded it. I suppose that the garrison's expectation to be either supported or extracted by their Navy caused them to refuse the surrender demand. When one is surrounded by an overwhelming force (even one without artillery) it only seems reasonable to give up rather than be slaughtered, which is basically what Forrest promised in his surrender demand.
3. The Confederate forces held the garrison in considerable contempt, prior to the assault. The "mongrel" garrison, negroes and Tennessee Unionists, along with the civilians who had fled there to avoid Confederate conscription, were obviously the recipiants of a lession in being Union Loyalists in a Confederate state. Of course, Tories had received similar treatment "four score and seven years" before.
4. Confederate forces by 1864 were very upset at Negroes being armed in the uniform of their ememies, being used against them. Apparently the feeling was that all such colored troops were to a man emancipated/escaped slaves (judging from the Confederate policy of captured Colored Troops), and the Nat Turner/John Brown hatred was heated up again, I'm sure. And the 11th Alabama's response to encoutering black troops at the Petersburg Crater serves to emphasize this.
5. Attacking forces, Union or Confederate, did not like defenders continuing to fight even after further resistance was evidently futile. Or maybe the futility of continued resistence was not apparent to the said defenders. At any rate, attackers got pretty mad at defenders who chose to fight to the death, and obliged them of their decision to do so. While at Ft Pillow no clear indication from the Federal leaders was apparently made of capitulation at any time, most firing did cease when the U.S. garrison flag was torn down by assaulting Confederate troops. Nevertheless, exactly when fighting was to cease was evidently not clear to a majority of those on either side for a short while, and one might reasonably fire upon an enemy whose decision to continue to fight or surrender was not clearly evident. Undoubtably there were many who wished to surrender but were met with the shock of the assaulting force, which might not immediately stop assaulting in the heat of the melee. Troops reqardless of race who were running to the river and not stopping to surrender, and thus were escaping, invited the use of deadly force to bring them to a halt, and prevent their escape to fight again.
This is not to say that some, particularly Colored Troops but possibly white (Tennessee Unionist) soldiers as well, were shot in cold blood when it was evident that they wished to survive as a prisoner of war. I will not deny that this happened to some extent, and was checked by Confederate officers. Nevertheless, the fact that any number of Colored Troops were counted prisoners indicates that this fate was not visited upon the entire number of black soldiers present. The Colored Troops at the Petersburg Crater attributing "no quarter" to the Ft Pillow incident makes it clearly evident that the facts of Forrest's "victory" had been exaggerated to them. All Colored Troops at Ft Pillow were not uniformly annihiliated, in the Little Big Horn sense, anyway. But that is the impression that seems to be had by most, and was the certainly intent of the publicity which lent notariety to the battle.
6. My own disqualifications and biases need to be explored. I have not been shot at, nor have I returned fire (with live rounds, at any rate, but I don't think blanks count here, whether from an M-14, M-16, or Armysport Enfield). That remains an experience which, for the forseeable future, I will likely never feel, with no regrets. My serious reading on the Late Unpleasantness began with the works of Clifford Dowdy, whose perspective cannot be questioned, followed by those of his mentor Douglas Southall Freeman. Then Burke Davis. It should be clear where such a path would lead. Now I am more facinated with first hand accounts and individual soldier histories, which I am learning to research. To date, every ancestor of age in the 1860's which I have investigated wore the gray (or some variation thereof), including officers and NCOs. (OK, so there was that GGGuncle from Florida who in his 1876 pension application for his disabling injuries in the line of duty in the 1840's Seminole war, declared that he "never was a secesh man" in the War of the Rebellion). My focus now is the local history of my childhood community, which in 1860 was a village of about 50 rather substantial planters. Guess which side they took. I am likewise coming to terms with the prejudices of my upbringing. I have learned that the negitive attributes which the attitudes of racism I inherited taught me to assign to African Americans are, in fact, to be found abundantly in human beings of any ethnicity, rendering said racial prejudices completely unfounded. Having grown up through the Kennedy and King assinations, Viet Nam, Watergate, and the Iran Hostage crisis, I have a strong distrust of strong central government and absolute conviction of the inheritant corruption thereof.
There, I said it all, or at least most of it. Being of no reputation, nothing is lost. While I may be biased, that has not stopped me from looking hard at the facts, and desiring to know the truth. I really believe that one would have to reach maturity somewhere in the Himalayas, preferrably Tibet, to approach any substantial degree of freedom from bias concerning the subject of this message board.
Ft Pillow will remain a touchstone of controversy until the American people stop being interested in the events of the 1860's.
On another note, might there be more documented outrage by
Confederate troops toward the use of Colored Troops in battle, and what documented reasons for this attitude might be found? What about Union forces mowing down Confederates in the heat of battle? Any Confederate "last stands?" Do we really want to get into this?