Fort Pillow: A Civil War Massacre and Public Memory, and: River Run Red: The Fort Pillow Massacre in the American Civil War (review)

The publication of two books covering the same Civil War battle in the same year is not unusual; the Battle of Gettysburg likely generates at least two a month in any given year. The Battle at Fort Pillow in western Tennessee received just such treatment last year, though not because it was a particularly important battle but because of its bloody aftermath. Ironically, Fort Pillow, located near a bend in the Mississippi River, should not have been famous at all. Union general William T. Sherman ordered this indefensible position abandoned; however, a subordinate ignored this directive and ordered black and white soldiers to defend this position. Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest recognized Fort Pillow's vulnerability; he surrounded this post and informed its commander that if he did not surrender, he refused to take responsibility for the garrison's fate. The commander rejected this demand and almost all of Fort Pillow's defenders were either killed or taken prisoner when Forrest captured the fort. Contemporary accounts claim that many of its black and white defenders were massacred—killed after surrendering to Confederate soldiers. Casualty figures support these allegations; far more Union soldiers were killed in this engagement—almost three hundred—than wounded, about sixty. In a typical Civil War battle, the wounded usually outnumbered the dead.

Even before the dead were buried, a contest over the memory of this battle began that focused on two contentious issues. First, did a massacre occur at Fort Pillow? Second, if a massacre did occur, was it directed by Forrest—a postwar member of the Ku Klux Klan and icon of Lost Cause memory? Given the titles of their studies, it is obvious that John Cimprich's Fort Pillow: A Civil War Massacre and Public Memory and Andrew Ward's River Run Red: The Fort Pillow Massacre in the American Civil War assert that some of Fort Pillow's garrison were murdered; however, they disagree on Forrest's culpability for these deaths. John Cimprich, professor of history at Thomas More College in Kentucky, provides a concise and convincing explanation for this massacre. He believes that the fate of Pillow's defenders was as much a product of the brutal war among whites in western Tennessee as it was a consequence of the rage of white Southerners against formerly enslaved African American soldiers. Cimprich makes no judgment on Forrest's involvement because he believes that "no evidence provides unquestionable proof of Forrest's guilt or innocence regarding the massacre." He suggests that "[Forrest's] offer to accept African Americans as military prisoners and his provision of protection to one group of captives support the possibility of his innocence" (83).

Cimprich's view of Forrest would have been more persuasive if not for Ward's study. Andrew Ward, who already chronicled the Cawnpore (India) Massacres of 1857, has produced a brilliantly researched and well-written account of the battle that holds Forrest accountable for its bloody aftermath. Ward describes two prior sieges in which Union garrisons received similar surrender-or-die demands. At Union City, Tennessee, a numerically superior force surrendered to Forrest's command; at Paducah, Kentucky, the Union garrison resisted and won the day. Ward contends that Forrest wanted to use the killings at Fort Pillow as an object lesson that would prompt other Union forces to surrender when faced with similar ultimatums. While there is no clear evidence that this was Forrest's motive, Ward proves, as much as any historian can decades after an atrocity, that Forrest was responsible for the massacre. When reading both studies, the reader might ponder how we would judge a commander of a foreign army if American prisoners who had refused a similar ultimatum to...