With fear of treading on certain egos, I was disappointed in George Burkhardt's cover article No Quarter etc..in the latest issue of North & South.

He started out Ok with a general description of the horrible depradations against black Union soldiers captured during the war from 1863 on, kind of using Fort Pillow as a starting point. I was struck however that in the last portion of the article he seemed to stray from the subject matter and became a poor apologist using a weak and what appears to be a not well informed short listing of similar Union activities while continuing to berat the confederacy for a "take no prisoners" position.

Paul your refernce to Order Number 11 reminded me of the topic. No where in the article does Burkhardt discuss Missouri, where clearly Fisk, Blunt, and others on the Union side started a ruthless no quarter, kill or be killed hard war as early as late 1861. Nor does he discuss that many of the CSA units at Fort Pillow had been exposed to that Federal position prior to Fort Pillow.

I'm not sure why, but for whatever reason today we seem not to like the idea that war by its nature devolves into a very personal event and when it gets down to the basics through out time the object is to kill more of the enemy than you lose yourself by whatever means. Think Patton "don't die for your country, make the other guy die for his... " (parapharesed for decorum reasons)

John R.