Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest and about…

Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest and about fifteen hundred of his men capture Fort Pillow in Jackson, Tennessee on April 12, 1864.

The fort contains two hundred and sixty-two African American troops from the Sixth U. S. Colored Heavy and Light Cavalry, and two hundred and ninety-five soldiers from the white Thirteenth Cavalry. (It will afterward be claimed that most of these soldiers had been killed after they surrendered.)

Of the white soldiers, one hundred and sixty-eight are marched to prison camps, but of the black troops, only fifty-eight are taken into custody, with the rest either dead or too badly wounded to walk.

Lincoln condemns the atrocity but refuses to agree to the demands of Secretary of State William Seward, Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase, Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles, and Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, that an equal number of Confederate prisoners should be executed in an act of revenge. (After the war, an official investigation will discover evidence that the “Confederates were guilty of atrocities, which included murdering most of the garrison after it surrendered, burying Negro soldiers alive, and setting fire to tents containing Federal wounded” However, Forrest—who in fact had ordered his men to stop firing, placing himself between his men and the Yankees—will never be prosecuted for the offense, and will go on to become the first Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.)