Was Nathan Bedford Forrest to blame for massacre?

I am reading a most interesting book on the Confederate General Nathan Forrest. I have just read the section on the Battle of Fort Pillow, which turned into a bloody massacre of union troops,and black americans.
This book says it is rumoured Forrest said "no prisoners,kill em all", this us hazy,as other accounts say he tried to stop the slaughter of prisoners. Was Forrest a war criminal,or is he innocent of this massacre,what are american views on this ?

as commander he has ultimate responsibilty.i dont believe he ordered a massacre and i understand killing started in earnest after he left field.he deffinatly would have to answer questions if a court of inquiry had convened.this is one subject i wish we knew for sure,it might just be the biggest controversy of the war.it never goes away.the confederate soldiers that took part dishonered thier flag that day.

Yes, the horrors of war.It happened then, and it happens now.Otherwise sane men do insane things in conflict and fury of warfare.Most of them never come to terms with it,my late father,a Lieutenant in WW2,blamed himself for combat brutality right to the end of his life,never got over it,even at ninety.

i wish no more war or killing on any scale.where did your father serve?did he talk to you about the war?people i knew who fought rarely talked about what they went through.

My Dad joined in 1939, and served the whole six years.He fought the germans and italians in Africa,and the germans in Greece and Crete.On Crete he and his mates fought Hitlers finest troops,his parachute airborne divisions.A lot of hand to hand fighting, and as he put it" thirty minutes of pure terror,running aroudnd with my pistol,trying to shoot germans stuck in trees and bushes." Very nasty it was,and then he came back in 42,married mum,and was sent up to New guinea to fight the Japanese at Milne bay and Wau,with the US marines.He basically saw all of the war,until he got malaria in the jungles. Like most vets,he rarely talked about it.But when he did,we all really listened.He told his grandchildren the horror of it all.Just before he passed,he gave me his medals,and said "I dont want them anymore,you have them,there yours now" It was pretty emotional,and I could tell this old soldier was still suffering deep down.He was very anti war,and he always said the american civil war was,like WW1,a shocking waste of young life,uselessly. He actually studied the civil war,at the artillery school he was at,after becoming an Officer.We all saluted his cortage at his funeral,a great man and father had gone,but never forgotten.

wow.i salute your father and all others who go thru that kind of struggle,a long time ago i read a book about the battle of crete,i dont remember much now but i remember at the time it was very nasty.no more wars. thank you for sharing your dads story.

I know this is old...allow me to bump...

Forrest, being the commander at the time is to hold responsiblity for what happened. However, "what happened" is the million dollar question.

I've read about 10 of his biographies. About Fort Pillow in particular, I've always found interesting. I'll put down here what I got from the accounts.

1) the battle was intensified by 2 factors. First it was pro-union Tennessians against pro-confederate Tennessians. Which made them both really want to get at eachother. Secondly the northerns were drinking in some cases drunk and were throwing empty jugs and things over the battlement walls and hitting Forrest's men and were taunting them and daring them to come get em. That was even before the battle broke.
2) During a flag of truce to negotiate surrender the northern gunboat, who were signaled to let them know of the white flag, tried anyway to resupply the fort. Forrest ordered the charge since he took that as a sign of war, which anyone would do.
3)Forrest was outside attending to the boat and the battle out there while some of his men were inside.
4)According to most accounts after surrender a drunk yankee pulled a gun which set off the "massacre". Since black men were considered property, I know that some confederates were trying to round them up to find their owners later. Other accounts say that some of Forrest's men killed them without regard. Other accounts yet say that some black men raised weapons in the fray to defend their families and friends which further enraged the confederates. Many accounts, even yankee, swore that some of the tennessians yelled out about refusing to do down without a fight and refused to surrender. In war you surrender when caught or get killed.

All in all,I'm sure that more lives were taken then needed. But mistakes on both sides cause this tremendous loss of life. Forrest, was a tough man with a harsh temper, but he didn't condone cruelty to either white or black people. I do not believe for a second that he would never order or support in any way, a massacre.

I couldn't let this thread go without fair treatment. Sorry to gank it out of the dark and bring it back up.

Thanks for that mate,yes,such is the horrors of war. I agree with you that Forrest would not condone a massacre,but in the heat of battle terrible and insane things happen,always usually by perfectly sane men,but men in a dreadful situation.

Hehehe, you called me mate. I thought I've been called everything in the book at one time or another. I like it!

I think this one battle is small compared to some of the other occurances. After all, its not like Forrest took his men on a march through the Carolinas, decimating the land and its inhabitants, with the intention of bringing hell up to earth. Then in a grand display of indecency, run civilians from their home in Georgia.

But yes, war is not pretty. People (especially in the north) tend to villianize him unfairly.

Well,one could also say that Shermans scorched earth policy in the South was pretty savage anyway,especially on innocent civilians.Firing artillery willy nilly into Atlanta and burning down countless homes is bordering on genocide. The Feds sure made sure that the South would "never rise again",thats certain.

forrest used whatever means nessasary to win.if the tide had turned and forrest could win if he pulled a march like sherman in the northern states dont bet that he wouldnt.plus csa has more evidence against them at saltville,or those killing of the german unionists in texas,or poisen springs ark in 64 more evidence at those places then at fort pillow.

I'm not sure of the occurances you mentioned so I can't really comment on those in particular. I can only say that there were inhumane things happening on both sides.

I just have to defend Forrest. You know how it is.

Helping to start the Ku Klux Klan was not his best moment,a bad error of judgement. But to be fair to him,he did denounce their extremism and violence,and disowned them didnt he.We all make mistakes,and that was his big one i suppose. Other than that,from what i have read of him,he was a very remarkable person in many ways.

He did not start the KKK. Back then he was invited in by a bitter confederate, I can't remember his name off the top of my head. It was started as a political group. Forrest left when it became a violent racial "gathering". Then as the years have gone by, its become what it is today.

forrest was to me one of the few commanders durring the war if i had the choice i would gladly serve-the teamsters of his forces were for large part his slaves and that only one ran away i read somewhere or i could be wrong and after the war most of hie slaves stayed with him and rebuilt his plantation.he is deffinatly one of the most interesting men in american history.it doesnt help when the modern kkk claim him.

Oh for pete's sake. You really bought into that "Blame the Victims" nonsense, didn't you?

If you truly want to learn anything about the Civil War, you're going to need to invest some time and probably some money into reading things written by people who have studied the war, not some self-styled expert who probably kneels in front of the throne of Di Lorenzo every morning.

If you live in a city of any size, you probably have access to a library with a broad list of titles, and don't forget that inter-library loans can get reading material that a smaller library can't afford to stock. This can cut down on the expense of studying the war, although there are some very good bookstores online that offer books at reasonable prices.

There are thousands of good books about the CW; books that will give you both sides of a story, not some inflamed, biased garbage from a Southern "expert" who has adopted the "Lost Cause" silliness.

Seriously, if you are willing to go to the trouble of hosting a Civil War forum, and want to build up your membership or guest visits, you're going to have to move past opinions and mini-diatribes from people who obviously have an axe to grind. The American Civil War was a complicated, traumatic and important part of our history. It involved brutal battles between two sections of the country that were totally dedicated to their conviction that the side they were fighting on was the right side. These were men on both sides who were willing to give their lives for what they believed and every one of them deserve the respect that the person who calls itself LiveVegan has decided to award to a highly questionable action which has not been solved by credible historians. This is a troll, picking and choosing so-called facts that fit his/her own prejudices with the false notion that if they say it loudly enough, they can change history. They can not. Keep in mind: You do not have to take sides; you can in fact remain neutral in your studies, and you will be better informed if you do.

History is what history is. It happened the way it happened, and no distortion dreamed up by some self-proclaimed scholar or "buff," can change that, no matter how they huff and puff and insist that they and only they know what really happened. To understand the war is to approach it with an open mind, accept that there were two sides, and both of them were valid in the minds and hearts of the people who fought those wars. The North won the war, but that doesn't discount the courage and dedication of the South. Nor does the foaming at the mouth of an anti-North disciple change the fact that Northern soldiers also fought and died for their country, and ultimately prevailed. Every man who fought in that war, regardless of what he was fighting for, deserves the respect of those who study their era, and not to be trashed and lied about by someone with a tiny little mind who can't get around the fact that their side lost.

Read, and read, and then read some more, and question everything you read. Read from the Northern perspective, and read from the Southern perspective, and you'll end up with a balanced understanding of what happened and why it happened. Visit other civil war forums that have been established longer than this one. You'll be amazed at what can be learned from a diverse study schedule. Read the words of respected historians, and avoid the charlatans like Di Lorenzo. Don't let someone else dump their prejudice and narrow attitude off on you. The truths about the war will be backed up by solid, valid sources. Lacking those, consider it an opinion that is probably strongly biased. The study of the Civil War is not for wimps, and those who died for what they believed was right deserve more than a cursory glance from us.

Agreed. I have always viewed the Civil War as a tragic forerunner of World War 1. The first really modern war of horrific weapons,trenches,the brutality and slaughter of young lives needlessly,the mistakes and blunders of Generals. All this was sadly repeated in WW1,the same errors of marching young men across fields directly into artillery and gunfire,useless massacres of brave young men.Sherman was spot on-"War is hell"and he proved it in his Southern campaigns.

Who is "you" here , DS?

You (that's you DS) flippantly dismiss a serious scholar here without a modicum of explanation. Is that simply because his viewpoints are not the politically correct ones?

"........opinions and mini-diatribes from people who obviously have an axe to grind."

Hmmm, Let's see here now What was it Mama said about the pot calling the kettle names?

forrest was in command he bears responsibilty

In any military operation that is ultimately true.
The commander bears responsibility for the actions of his command. "Responsibility" for a military operation though is not the same as moral or legal culpability.

Fort Pillow was exaggerated for federal propaganda purposes during the war. I think even most union troops knew this at the time. In September of 1864 (only 5 months after and 200 miles away from the so called "massacre" at Ft. Pillow) the union garrison at a fort guarding the sulfur creek trestle near Elkmont Alabama was assaulted by CS troops under Forrest. (and the feds knew full well who was in command) After a two hour bombardment 800 federal troops (more than half of which were black) surrendered. Do you think for a second they would have surrendered had they believed Forrest would have them murdered?

The US Congress investigated the Fort Pillow incident and Forrest's roll in it in 1871. Forrest was exonerated of any wrongdoing.

at sulphur branch trestle on sept 25,1864 the garrison was composed of 300 or so black troops of the 111th colored infantry,the 9th indiana cavarly[300 men]and the 3rd tennessee union cavarlry[400 plus or minus men]forrest's artillery rained fire down on the defenders so bad that some say 200 or more were killed its sounds like they had to surrender, so how many blacks survived is open to seculation,with the majority captured being white- and witnesses to anything that might happen it wouldnt have been a good idea to start killing anyone-im not saying anything would have happened and i never ever thought of this fact untill the last post.im not sure if that is a good example since the blacks were not treated as pows - they were sent under guard to work at saltworks[if i remember right]at mobile alabama while the rest of the men along with the 111th officers to cahaba prison near selma ala.

i was re-reading forrest campaigns and i now dont think he should be blamed for pillow. the day before sulhper trestle he got over 1000 us men to surrender at athens using his ruse to make them think he had more men. the only controversy i see is on the union side where the officers agreed to surrender if they were allowed back to us lines on parole leaving the men as pows[majority being black troops] forrest kept disipline and order in his ranks and was a great military soldier-he had no control over the men left behind that day at pillow-yes i know the commander has to take the blame[ive said as much]but this man played fair and i will give him the benefit of the doubt-pinning murder on him might have been a way to finnally defeat him,which didnt happen till selma and then he didnt have much to work with.