{"id":1510,"date":"2010-06-01T14:54:22","date_gmt":"2010-06-01T19:54:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/?p=1510"},"modified":"2010-07-21T21:02:06","modified_gmt":"2010-07-22T02:02:06","slug":"fort-pillow-massacre-april-121864","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/2010\/06\/01\/fort-pillow-massacre-april-121864\/","title":{"rendered":"Fort Pillow Massacre- April 12, 1864"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The Confederate Army attacked Fort Pillow in Lauderdale County, Tennessee on April 12, 1864 in a fight that later became known as the Fort Pillow Massacre\u00a0since the lives of few Union soldiers were spared.\u00a0 The National Park Service\u2019s <\/a>website gives a valuable overview of the fight and its commanding figures in its battle summaries section as well as a map that outlines the territory covered under the website\u2019s Civil War Sites Advisory Commission Report Update and Resurvey<\/a>.\u00a0 There is also a concise overview of African American Participation in the Civil War<\/a> located on the website.\u00a0\u00a0 Led by Major General Nathan Bedford Forrest,<\/a> Confederate forces attacked Fort Pillow which was protected by 295 white Tennessee troops and 262 United States Colored Troops.\u00a0 Union Army Major Lionel F. Booth was killed during the battle and command was subsequently\u00a0taken over by Major William F. Bradford.\u00a0 The atrocities committed by the Confederates were best described by The Rebellion Record<\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u201cThen followed a scene of cruelty and murder without parallel in civilized warfare, which needed but the tomahawk and scalping- knife to exceed the worst atrocities over committed by savages.\u00a0 The rebels commenced an indiscriminate slaughter, neither sparing age nor sex, white nor black, civilian or soldier.\u00a0 The officers and men seemed to vie with each other in the devilish work; men, women, and even children, wherever found, were deliberately shot down, beaten, and hacked with sabres; some of the children not more than ten years old were forced to stand up and face their murderers while being shot; the sick and the wounded were butchered without mercy, the rebels even entering the hospital building and dragging them out to be shot or killing them as they lay there unable to offer the least resistance.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some other sources that may be valuable to further research on Fort Pillow and can be accessed through Google Books are The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of Union and Confederate Armies<\/a><\/em> as it gives mention of activity at the fort prior to the attack and <\/a>A History of the Negro Troops in the War of the Rebellion, 1861-1865: Preceded by a Review of the Military Services of Negroes in Ancient and Modern Times<\/a><\/em> which gives an interesting account of the scene at Fort Pillow through the eyes of an African-American soldier.\u00a0 In terms of modern scholarship, John Cimprich\u2019s Fort Pillow, a Civil War Massacre and Public\u00a0 Memory<\/em> <\/a>provides valuable maps which could help gain a better understanding of the area surrounding the fort.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Confederate Army attacked Fort Pillow in Lauderdale County, Tennessee on April 12, 1864 in a fight that later became known as the Fort Pillow Massacre\u00a0since the lives of few Union soldiers were spared.\u00a0 The National Park Service\u2019s website gives a valuable overview of the fight and its commanding figures in its battle summaries section […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[80,12,173,174],"tags":[161],"class_list":["post-1510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-civil-war-1861-1865","category-maps","category-rare-books","category-recent-scholarship","tag-battles-soldiers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1510"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1510\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1515,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1510\/revisions\/1515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}