Paducah

Kentucky, McCracken County,

March 25, 1864

After defeating US Brigadier General William S. Smith at Okolona, CS Major General Nathan Bedford Forrest led 3,000 cavalrymen from Columbus, Mississippi. He had two objectives: to recruit in West Tennessee and the Jackson Purchase area of Kentucky, and to prevent Union forces from reinforcing US Major General William Tecumseh Sherman at Chattanooga.

On March 25 the Confederates occupied Paducah and forced US Colonel Stephen G. Hicks and his 650 troops into Fort Anderson. Hicks had the support of two gunboats on the Ohio River and refused Forrest’s demand to surrender. The troopers raided supplies and rounded up horses and mules. Hicks repulsed their assault on Fort Anderson. After holding Paducah for ten hours and destroying all property of military value, Forrest returned to Tennessee. When newspapers bragged that the Confederates had not found the 140 horses hidden during the raid, Forrest sent CS Brigadier General Abraham Buford back to Paducah, both to get the horses and to divert Federal attention from his attack on Fort Pillow. On April 14 Buford’s men found the horses and galloped off with them to join Forrest.

Estimated Casualties: 90 US, 50 CS

Fort Pillow

Tennessee, Lauderdale County,

April 12, 1864

On April 12 CS General Forrest and about 1,500 men attacked Fort Pillow, a U.S. military outpost on the Mississippi River about fifty miles north of Memphis. It was one of the fortifications that supplied Federal gunboats patrolling the Mississippi River. The fort included sutler facilities, civilians, and soldiers. The garrison of 585–605 men included two groups of about 300 each who were anathema to Forrest: southern white men who remained loyal to the United States, whom Forrest called “traitors,” and former slaves serving as U.S. Colored Troops, whom Forrest considered to be property belonging to those who had held them in slavery.

Before Forrest arrived, CS Brigadier General James R. Chalmers had positioned sharpshooters on the high ground so their fire could cover most of the fort. When they killed US Major Lionel F. Booth, commander of the 6th U.S. Heavy Artillery (Colored), US Major William F. Bradford, commander of the 13thTennesseeCavalry (Bradford’s Battalion), took charge. Forrest arrived, and during his reconnaissance of the area, he was injured when several of his horses were shot out from under him. Bradford refused Forrest’s demand to surrender. Forrest ordered the attack but stayed four hundred yards back and did not lead it, as he often did.

The Confederates quickly scaled the thickwalls and began firing point-blank into the Federals. In the melee, while soldiers of both sides were shooting, some Federals tried to surrender while others attempted to escape, but they did not attempt to lower the U.S. flag as a symbol of surrender. Union troops ran for the protection of the gunboat New Era in the river, but it could not help them. The gunners were vulnerable to the Confederate sharpshooters and had taken the gunboat out of range.

Federal casualties were high, with 277 confirmed as dead: 32 percent of the white soldiers, the Tennessee Cavalry; and 64 percent of the black soldiers, the 6th U.S. Heavy Artillery (Colored) and the 2nd U.S. Light Artillery (Colored). The battle became known as the Fort Pillow Massacre.

The Confederates evacuated Fort Pillow that night and turned over the badly wounded prisoners of both races to the Federals the next day. Chalmers told a U.S. officer that he and Forrest “stopped the massacre as soon as they were able to do so” and that the Confederate soldiers “had such a hatred toward the armed negro that they could not be restrained from killing the negroes after they had captured them.”

Three days later Forrest described Fort Pillow: “The river was dyed with the blood of the slaughtered for 200 yards. . . . It is hoped that these facts will demonstrate to the Northern people that negro soldiers cannot cope with Southerners.” He also stated that his policy was to capture African American soldiers, not kill them. US Brigadier General James H. Wilson, the cavalry commander who defeated Forrest at Selma the following April, later wrote of Forrest: “He appears to have had a ruthless temper which impelled him upon every occasion where he had a clear advantage to push his success to a bloody end, and yet he always seemed not only to resent but to have a plausible excuse for the cruel excesses which were charged against him.” Forrest’s record in American history as a brilliant cavalry officer and unsurpassed leader of mounted infantry also includes his responsibility as commander at Fort Pillow and, after the war, as a leader of the Ku Klux Klan.

Estimated Casualties: 549 US, 100 CS