Fort Pillow, a Civil War Massacre, and Public Memory

Chapter 1. The Fort’s Beginnings

Chapter One The Fort’s Beginnings B EFORE the Civil War, Gideon Pillow ranked as Tennessee’s best known war veteran. Pompously, he often reminded listeners about his extensive combat experience in the Mexican War as a major general, a position gained solely through political connections. After that war he earned great wealth as a lawyer, planter, and entrepreneur. By 1861 and the age of fifty-four, the hair and beard of this short, stout leader had gone partly gray. The presidential election of Abraham Lincoln, an antislavery Republican, had convinced him that the South must secede and fight to preserve its way of life, especially white supremacy and slavery. Consequently, he helped Governor Isham G. Harris activate militia units in West Tennessee during a long and contentious referendum campaign on separation from the United States and alliance with the new Southern Confederacy.1 Fearing a swift Federal invasion down the broad highway of the Mississippi , the governor authorized militiamen to construct two large earthen forts along the river. The poorly located Fort Harris sat in bottomlands a little north of Memphis. Upriver, another structure, called both Fort Randolph after a nearby village and Fort Wright after a militia commander, occupied a strong position on the Second Chickasaw Bluff. After the Civil War started in April, the issuance by Kentucky’s governor of a proclamation of neutrality encouraged Harris to continue concentrating his efforts on West Tennessee, rather than on the long border with that neighboring state. The self-promoting and excessively ambitious Pillow used his military reputation and political ties first to secure responsibility from Governor Harris for river fortifications and then to win command of the Provisional Army of Tennessee. Sharing Harris’s fear of an invasion, he entered into his new duties with great energy and organizational skill.2 Lacking military training, Pillow in some ways remained an amateur general. He had only begun to learn from his Mexican War experiences when that conflict ended, and a quick return to civilian life had left what- Fort Pillow, a Civil War Massacre, and Public Memory 4 ever knowledge he had acquired to rust during the years before secession. But that was still better than most of the 3 million men who served in the Civil War with no military background whatsoever. The majority were twenty-five years old or younger when they enlisted.3 So, to a large degree the war began as a conflict of amateurs. On June 6, 1861, Colonel Patrick Cleburne, an immigrant with experience in the British army, led a small force of Arkansans upstream from Fort Randolph to build a battery at an advanced “post of honor,” according to a Memphis newspaper. After Arkansas’s secession, its governor had loaned these troops to Pillow, who owned much land in that state. Fort Randolph’s commander had encouraged Cleburne to move upriver because the post suffered from unhealthy overcrowding and false alarms of surprise attacks.4 Cleburne chose a site on the high First Chickasaw Bluff two miles above Fulton. Local secessionists warmly welcomed the troops, and grateful Memphis women sent up an embroidered flag for one unit. The troops began digging what they called Fort Cleburne on forested land owned by two sawyers from the North and a businessman from Missouri. A lightly populated agricultural area surrounded the new fort. Although the farmers concentrated on cotton and tobacco, the area contained much unimproved land.5 On June 8, Tennessee officially left the Union, and on July 4 Pillow and his forces in West Tennessee entered the Confederate army as part of Major General Leonidas Polk’s Western Department. Polk, an Episcopal bishop from Louisiana, had much zeal and a West Point education but practically no military experience. His first general order exhorted his troops “to resist the invasion at all hazards and to the last extremity.” By then Cleburne, who would later win fame for his combat skills, had returned home with his force.6 Pillow decided to expand Cleburne’s battery into a huge fortification. Captain Montgomery Lynch, a Memphis sappers and miners unit (specialists in earthwork construction), a small group of hired slave laborers, and several Tennessee regiments moved upriver for the project after having worked on Fort Randolph. During the next nine months, Lynch, a former civil engineer with a military school education, would design and direct construction of what he called Fort Pillow.7 The garrison would undergo frequent changes of commanders and size (see Tables 1 and 2...