Nathan Bedford Forrest

There were almost 300 black Union soldiers at Fort Pillow, Mississippi, on the morning of April 12, 1864, but by the end of the day, 80% of them had been killed and only 20% remained alive. Some of them were killed in battle, but most were slaughtered after they surrendered. It's called the Fort Pillow Massacre, mostly in the North. Some in the South still call it the Battle of Fort Pillow, and that says a lot. The Confederate troops were led by Major General Nathan Bedford Forrest.

Fort Pillow had been built by the Confederates at the First Chickasaw Bluff of the Mississippi River, forty miles north of Memphis in 1861. The fort had passed into Union hands in 1862, and Union soldiers had added an inner fortification. On that spring day, the fort was occupied by Union soldiers, the 300 black artillery men and 300 white southern members of the Union's Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry, all under the command of Union Major Lionel F. Booth.

Confederate Major General Nathan Bedford Forrest attacked with a cavalry division of 2,500 men around 10 a.m. Forrest captured the outer walls of the fort. Confederate sharpshooters had easy pickings, and Major Booth was killed. Major William F. Bradford assumed command of the Union forces. The Union gun boat on the river was rendered useless to help. Forrest demanded unconditional surrender; Bradford asked for an hour to consider. Forrest gave him twenty minutes.

The Battle at Fort Pillow

Bradford refused to surrender. A savage assault followed, and the fort was soon back in Confederate hands. Men surrendered on their own. Unarmed Union men fled toward the river and were shot as they ran. Black Union troops were shot, hanged, bayoneted as they tried to surrender individually. In contrast to the 20% survival rate of the black Union troops stands the 60% survival rate of the white Union troops. Race clearly got them killed.  Reports came from the battlefield of men on their knees, begging for mercy, and still being killed. A Confederate soldier said in a letter home that "the poor, deluded negroes would run up to our men, fall upon their knees, and with uplifted hand scream for mercy, but were ordered to their feet and then shot down." It was a true atrocity, a war crime. Under the command of Nathan Bedford Forrest.

After everything was over, Forrest casually headed for Jackson, Mississippi, but decided to stay over and rest due to bruises he had received when his horse was shot out from under him. He went on the next day. There was a United States investigation of the massacre, in which Forrest was accused of war crimes for slaughtering the black Union troops. The Confederates never responded.

After the war Nathan Bedford Forrest, who had been a slave owner and a slave trader before the war,  went on to become one of the founding fathers of the Ku Klux Klan and its first Grand Wizard.

Maj. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest

This is the man the Mississippi Sons of the Confederacy want to honor with a vanity license plate for Mississippi cars. This is the man Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour refuses to denounce. Well, I don't. I don't even refuse to denounce Haley Barbour. Over the last six months he has shown a pattern of gross insensitivity, if not racism - I cannot read his mind - on issues of race. From claiming that the Sixties Civil Rights Movement was easy to misremembering going to an integrated college, he just doesn't get it. And he won't get the presidency, either. Not that he had a chance.

ADDENDUM: Today, Tuesday, February 22,  Gov. Barbour announced that he would not sign a bill creating a license plate to honor Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest should such a bill come before him.