Fort Pillow 1864: A Blind-Spot Parapet, a Silent Gunboat and a Massacre

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Fort Pillow stood on a bluff above the Mississippi River in Tennessee, held in April 1864 by about 600 Union men, roughly half white West Tennessee Unionists and half United States Colored Troops. A May 1863 Confederate law meant captured Black soldiers faced state slave codes rather than prisoner of war camps. The fort's parapet was so thick that defenders could not fire down at its base without climbing on top. This episode follows Nathan Bedford Forrest's attack on April 12, 1864, when sharpshooters killed Major Lionel F. Booth and fired from barracks the garrison had failed to burn.

At about 3:30 p.m. Forrest demanded surrender within 20 minutes, and Major William F. Bradford refused, apparently counting on the gunboat USS New Era. Confederates used a human ladder to scale the wall, and the defenders fled to the riverbank, but the gunboat had sealed its ports and never fired. Union testimony and a Confederate sergeant's letter describe men shot while trying to surrender. Nearly 300 Union soldiers died. The episode covers the congressional investigation, Forrest's revised report, the split in Lincoln's cabinet over retaliation, and Lincoln's decision not to execute Confederate prisoners.

• Forrest's force is estimated at 1,500 to 2,500 cavalrymen against roughly 600 defenders.
• Bradford answered Forrest using the dead Booth's name and asked for an hour, which Forrest refused.
• About 60 percent of the white soldiers were taken prisoner, compared with about 20 percent of the Black soldiers.
• Reports from the fort's surgeon and the gunboat captain said noncombatants had been evacuated to barges before the battle.
• Lincoln told Frederick Douglass he feared retaliatory executions would start an endless cycle of bloodshed.