First: Not even the UNITED STATES CONGRESS in its official investigation found reason to charge Forrest for any crime involved with Fort Pillow.
Second: blacks in Union Uniform were NOT reconized as legitmate soldiers by the Confederacy. Jefferson Davis issue a proclamination to this effect. They were viewed as runaway slaves in accordance with the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 under United States Federal Law, not as freed men or soldiers. And as slave under arms, were deamed to be themselves in rebellion against the southern States.
Not being citizens of the United States at the time, until the passage of the 13th amendment after the war, they had no right to bear arms under the second amendment to the United States Constitution. They were the same as foriegn mercenary soldiers, like the Hessians of the Revolutionary war. They were as subject to being shot on sight as any traitor. The same as any white southerners who deserted and joined the Union Army. That is equal rights isn't it?
Incidently many galvanized southerners, who when caught in Union Uniform were shot as deserters and traitors. This was true in the northern armies as well, of northerners caught in Confederate Uniform. There was no such thing as being able to choose your sides, contrary to "modern" popular beliefs. You were either a loyal Southerner, or loyal Northerner, or a traitor. Those were the only three choices.
Third: knowing this, it was the United States government and Abraham Lincoln who, I feel, was most at fault for placing the Blacks in to such situations. What did they expect southerners to do, bend down and roll over, when the federals made a point of making the blacks the enemy of the Confederacy and pitting them against the southern people? This is one of the primary reasons why the Confederacy did not form Black Confederate Regiments at the first of the War. It started out as a "white man's" war of "Preserving the Union" and "Secession", not slavery. It was Lincoln who changed the dynamics of the War and introduced the Blacks into the fight as a seperate force.
While Blacks most certainly fought in the Confederate army, the difference between them and their northern counterparts is the the southern blacks fought in "White" regiments. They were not seperated out into their own regiments. And they usually fought beside of their masters and in the case of their masters death, they often fought in the masters place.
I wonder if that is something that would have happened in the Union Army? Blacks and Whites fighting side by side in the same regiment and companies?
People who honestly do not understand to this day why there was deep hatred and racism in the south because of the war, and the radical republican reconstruction which again used the blacks politically against the southern whites. And why these feeling carried over afterwards? DUH!
It doesn't make it right, but there are very few people in this world who can be slapped in the face and love the person who slapped them. To do that has something to do with Christianity, not enforced morality at the point of a bayonet. That type of enforced morality is only good as long as the threat of the bayonet is present.