Customer Reviews

River Run Red: The Fort Pillow Massacre in the American Civil War

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

Few Civil War figures inspire as much debate and discussion as Nathan Bedford Forrest. The so-called "Wizard of the Saddle" has been anointed America's greatest natural military genius, and has been the subject of numerous books highlighting both his military achievements and his unsavory business dealings before and after the war.

The April 12, 1864, battle of Fort Pillow, Tennessee, and the events that followed it, form the crux of the debate over Forrest's place in our national consciousness. Was Fort Pillow one of the most celebrated of Forrest's victories, or was it an out-and-out massacre of blacks and whites that highlighted the war's essential racial component?

In River Run Red, author and screenwriter Andrew Ward demonstrates conclusively the latter, in what should be the final word on this topic for some time to come.

The seasoned Civil War reader should not be put off by the author's lack of formal academic qualifications. Ward brings a newspaper correspondent's eye for detail and turn of phrase to this familiar story. He makes excellent use of archival and published primary sources; of particular note is his use of the pension questionnaires of many of the Fort Pillow survivors.

One of the unique and valuable features of this book is the author's ability to flesh out the lives and backgrounds of the battle's various participants, both black and white, giving the reader a clear and detailed understanding of the war in western Tennessee.

This was a "civil war" in the truest sense, with Tennesseans, many from communities within a day's ride of the fort, on both sides in the resulting battle. In addition to Confederate cavalrymen, there were white Union officers of black artillery units, all-white Union forces, escaped slaves, and white merchants at Fort Pillow. All of these groups bring unique perspectives to the battle, and Ward tells their stories.

From the Union perspective, Fort Pillow was a blunder of the first magnitude. The fort's garrison was poorly supported and supplied, and Ward places the blame squarely on the shoulders of the district commander, Maj. Gen. Stephen A. Hurlbut.

After a lengthy approach march during which he captured or defeated other Union forces, Forrest easily surrounded Fort Pillow in the predawn darkness of April 12, and continued the battle long after all resistance had ceased.
The most compelling and disturbing portion of the narrative documents in excruciating detail the depredations of Forrest's command. Any objective reader will be convinced beyond doubt that a deliberate atrocity took place.

After the battle, Forrest's command returned to Mississippi, taking with it a column of prisoners. Some 139 white soldiers made their way to Andersonville, where 107, or 77 percent, died in captivity. Many of those who died at Andersonville were residents of west Tennessee and veterans of the Mexican War, heightening the heartbreak of this story.

Forrest retained 62 black Union soldiers as prisoners, and for the most part they fared better: even though most of them were wounded, three-quarters escaped and returned to their regiments.

News of the massacre reverberated through the North, causing Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, by this time general in chief of Union armies, to relieve Hurlbut, no small feat given the general's Republican Party connections.

West Tennessee Unionists were understandably afraid for their lives, and the massacre caused a groundswell of popular opinion, further encouraged by the Northern press. Senator Benjamin F. Wade's Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War took up the case, holding hearings in Memphis almost as soon as the smoke cleared.

Wade's findings encouraged Radical Republicans to continue to pressure Abraham Lincoln to remove all restraints on the Union war effort. Events in Virginia obscured those at Fort Pillow, however, as Grant's Overland Campaign dominated newspaper coverage and government attention for the next several months.

The book's final chapter, "Deliver Me From Bloodguiltiness," details the rest of Forrest's life. The Wizard was famously active, and unsuccessful, in politics, and had a key role in the founding of the Ku Klux Klan. Enigmatic to the last, late in life he apparently found religion, and died a penitent man in October 1877.

River Run Red is a well-researched, engaging and thoughtful book on an oft-told story.

No event in the American Civil War is so loaded with politically correct overtones as Fort Pillow. The garrison was overrun and killed by troops under command of Nathan Bedford Forrest, one of the founders of the first KKK. Add the fact that many of the dead were black and the politically correct liberal left school of history is in full cry. The worst book on the subject is Richard L. Fuchs "An Unerring Fire: The massacre at Fort Pillow". The only thing missing in that book is Forrest in formal Klan robes riding about extorting his lynch mob of an army to kill all blacks.

Mr. Ward avoids these mistakes and produces what is the most evenhanded book we are likely to see. The Union Army in west Tennessee was a series of second or third-rate units with sever leadership problems. Black marketing, speculation in cotton, a hostile population and a habit of "foraging" contributed to the poor condition of these units. Into this mix came two distinct sets of regiments raised in the area; the United Stated Colored Troops comprised of freed slaves and the white "loyalist", many of whom had deserted from the Confederate Army. Being in the USCT or a Tennessee Union regiment didn't change racial attitudes, dividing local commands even more. The isolated forts were to be abandoned but the profit in cotton was to attractive for Memphis to act quickly.

Into this mix rode General Nathan Bedford Forrest and his very able command. Forrest had made Memphis his home before the war and many of his men were from the area. The book covers this 1864 raid in detail giving us a good understanding of the conditions Forrest's men face and the stories of "foraging" they had heard. Fort Pillow was targeted, invested, refused to surrender, overrun and a massacre occurred. Forrest lost control of his men but was never charged with any crime. It was impossible to build a case against the man that would hold up even in a Reconstruction Court.

Having said all of this, why don't I like the book? "Damned with faint praise"; sums up the author's treatment of Forrest. In any question on where he was or what he was doing, the glass is always half empty. He should have been stopping the massacre not checking the gunboats on the river. However, these boats could have slaughtered his command if they had fought. "The Wizard" is used so often, in referring to Forrest, that it becomes a snide remark. Likewise, his Christian name was not "Nathan Bedford Forrest, slave trader".

The stories from the saviors of the massacre are told in stunning detail, as is the fate of the Union POWs, both white and black. This section of the book clearly illustrates how the "hard hand of war" was being applied. This is not a pleasant book to read but it is the best coverage of the subject I've found.

River Run Red The Fort Pillow Massacre in the American Civil War by Andrew Ward, 2005.

531 pages cover to cover. 100 pages of notes. 8 pages of 31 photographs. 2 maps.

I have read and own nine biographies and histories of General N. B. Forrest and his cavalry and I'm pro-Southern. Although this work is described as an examination of the Fort Pillow affair by the author in my estimation it is not. River Run Red is an attempt to reduce General N. B. Forrest popularity and blatantly smear his historic reputation as an outstanding military commander. If one word could describe River Run Red it would be the author's repeated condescending use of the nickname 'Wizard' for General Forrest. I wish now I would have starting counting his term for the General but by the time I noticed he was using it at least once per page and sometimes three times per paragraph I deemed it was not worth the effort.

Another distraction was Mr. Ward's own smug opinions frequently interjected after favorable Confederate quotes necessary for the story. They were either by whole paragraph or found between brackets. I found no such distractions after any of the Union quotes.

References: Mr. Wards includes one hundred pages of valuable notes and references at the back of the book. I had to go to these many times when I questioned something in the main body of interest. I found either mistakes or outright omissions. One famous quote from a Confederate is only half published (the favorable part in reference to Gen. Forrest omitted) and is misrepresented as from "an unknown" when this is false. Another unfavorable quote, said to be from General Forrest and referenced by Ward in Hurst book 'Nathan Bedford Forrest', I did not remember. After an extensive search this quote cannot be found in Hurst's book either at the pages specified or anywhere near them.

Research: Mr. Ward included more material on this one subject than any single work I've read but on new information on the actual fighting at Fort Pillow I find he submits little. The most valued information for me is the great detail about the people surrounding the whole story of Fort Pillow. There is no new detail on exactly how many soldiers were involved, how many were captured, how many were killed in combat, and how many were killed while trying to surrender. There are no detailed diagrams or maps showing the fort layout, the geography and positions of the combatants necessary in understanding a military event. There are no muster rolls, list of the dead, or captured. Most importantly I found his feeble attempt of the chronological order of the events at Fort Pillow contradictory and hard to follow.

Bias: This work is simply biased. Mr. Ward's buildup to April 12, 1864 is very incomplete and misleading. This book is not for the uneducated novice. Mr. Ward does not give General Forrest any credit of his victories and actions before Fort Pillow. Any new reader of this history would wonder why the Union forces were so scared of Forrest's men in the first place. Mr. Ward states that Forrest was jealous of Duckworth's 7th Tennessee's capture of the Union garrison at Union City and was totally humiliated by his defeat at Paducah, Kentucky and suggest this led him to attack Fort Pillow and massacre its garrison. He fails to mention that the 7th Tennessee, one of Forrest favorite regiments, was under his command and performing his orders. Further he does not mention Forrest's raids into Western Tennessee and Kentucky were well over a hundred miles behind enemy lines and just getting to Paducah was considered a success. He states near the beginning of the book that military reports from General Forrest and his lieutenants were not to be trusted but includes Union reports frequently and without comment. At one point in the book Mr. Ward states that the Battle of Parker's Crossroads was a great and shattering defeat for Forrest losing all of his plunder and 500 of his own men there; these details obviously came from Union reports and those of Forrest are not even mentioned. Mr. Ward either does not know or does not appreciate the difficulty Forrest was in, being surrounded by a much larger force, behind enemy lines and was still able to escaped with 1500 prisoners and over thirty wagons of captured supplies.

The Story: For both pro-Union and pro-Confederate the book has a section or chapter for you but Mr. Ward contradicts himself many times. This incompatibility of statements forced me to have to go back and reread sections of the book. I also found his notes in the back of the book, in many cases, more interesting than the main body of Mr. Ward's work.

Dumbest statement from Mr. Ward: "The men who served in the Civil War called going into battle 'meeting the elephant.' No one knows exactly why. Perhaps, from a distance, the smoke roiling up from a battle resembled an elephant, but it seems to me just as likely that they could have been referring to the old saw about the blind men and the elephant, each feeling a small portion and none able to describe the beast as a whole."

Recommendations:

I recommend this book for the serious historians of General Forrest and Fort Pillow. I also recommend this book for Civil War reenactors for the vast amount uniform, horse equipment, and weapons details mentioned. This book has a wealth of quotes and facts. Warning: his references should be verified first, I found omissions and mistakes that question Mr. Ward's accuracy.

For the new readers on who General Forrest was read Jack Hurst book 'Nathan Bedford Forrest'.

For the military operations of General Forrest read 'The Devil Forrest' by John Allan Wyeth.

I'm still reading this book, but I wanted to respond to a couple of comments made by the reader who gave the book one star. He derides the author for describing Fort Pillow as "crescent-shaped." The reviewer scornfully claims that the fort was a shallow "w" in shape.

If you google the term, "Fort Pillow" and "crescent," guess what pops up? Among other things, a reproduction of Nathan Bedford Forrest's after action report about the capture of Fort Pillow. Guess what the "Wizard of the Saddle" describes the fort as being shaped like? Here's what he said in the report:

"The fort is an earth-work, crescent shaped, is 8 feet in height and 4 feet across the top, surrounded by a ditch 6 feet deep and 12 feet in width, walls sloping to the ditch but perpendicular inside."

Personally, I would take the impression of the man who captured the place over any reviewer here. I wonder what Forrest would have to say to him? (probably something memorably profane).

Now, let's talk about the endpaper map: I've looked at it too. First, it isn't that great a map. If I had been the author, I would have found a better, clearer one. But it doesn't show barracks or anything else in the Mississippi River!

I'm not saying this book is perfect, but people need to have a sense of proportion. Does it really matter in a study on the massacre at Fort Pillow whether the author placed a statue of Andrew Jackson in the wrong city? Getting the description of the fort wrong as the "one star" reviewer so clearly did is a worse error than something like that.

The bit about the Army of Tennessee is a legitimate ding, but people ought to think about the odds that in a book that is 530 pages long, anyone could get all of the thousands of facts contained within it correct.

As far as the idea that the book is some sort of hatchet job on Nathan Bedford Forrest, that is just that reviewer's interpretation. Forrest came up the hard way. He was a slave trader, and I think one had to be pretty hard-minded to prosper at it the way he did. He was also a military genius. But he allowed the massacre at Fort Pillow to take place. Does that mean he was monster? No. It just means that there's a shadow across his reputation --just like the role he played in setting up the KKK after the Civil War.

" War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it ."
These words from General William T. Sherman should be kept in mind when reflecting on the events at Fort Pillow.
I found this book to be engaging and informative, and I especially liked the quotes from the participants from both sides. I was not aware that anyone had the foresight to interview Tennessee Civil War veterans in the twentieth century and I think their comments added a lot to the book. The events recorded here are a stark contrast with the more widely recorded war in Virginia.
Should we really be surprised ? White southerners were conditioned then from birth to see blacks as inferiors, and the vast majority of the participants in the battle on both sides grew up in a country whose Chief Justice once notified them in writing that no black person had any rights that they were bound to respect.
The Confederates who fought at Fort Pillow were desperate combatants, not philanthropists or humanitarians.By the spring of 1864 , it must have been obvious to many of them that their war was lost, and the sight of armed blacks in U.S. Army uniforms with leveled rifles and cannon provided a glimpse of a future they would have found insufferable. I do not try to excuse the murder of wounded and prisoners, but I'm not sure that Fort Pillow was worse than Fredericksburg, Franklin , and Cold Harbor.
I did find certain elements of the book awkward. The author does overuse the term " Wizard " with reference to Forrest. I also found the references to federal units as 13/E,6/E and the like a bit bewildering after a time. This is apparently a shorthand of the author's own devising as I have not encountered it elsewhere in more than forty years of reading about the Civil War.
I thought the book worth reading. The Civil War was unquestionably the most violent and brutal event in American history. This book is a chilling reminder of one of it's darkest days.

I would not describe this work as a polemic. The author is sufficiently professional to have done his research and the raw data that he presents is worth the price of the book. Fans of Forrest can read between the lines of the author's bias. The information exculpating Forrest is presented, it's just that the author puts his own spin on it in some far-fetched ways that strain credulity. 500 black people showed up for Forrest's funeral. There is no proof whatsoever that they did so for any other reason than to show their respect. The author spins this into the remarkable explanation that they came to be certain he was dead! Forrest "fathered a black child." How do we know this allegation is true? Because no black person would lie about such a thing, since they would never volunteer for the ignominy of being known as a descendant of Forrest. There is plenty of laughable drivel like that in this book. The good news is that rare historical facts are also presented and winnowing the facts from the spin yields welcome new documentation and in some cases, ammunition on behalf of Forrest, a warrior of fantastic, archetypal prowess who ended his life a sincere Christian and spokesman for racial reconciliation. His conversion should be applauded rather than sneered at, but the vitriol of the victors has not dissipated with time.

Fort Pillow still stirs emotions. Neo-Confederates claim that no massacre occurred. Due to the persistence and volume of their complaints textbooks and even Fort Pillow's official webpage state that there is "controversy over what exactly occurred on April 12, 1864." However, arround 40 survivors gave testimony to a Congressional investigation that defenders of Fort Pillow were shot down after they had laid down arms, many of them surviving wounds they received after trying to surrender. Union survivors not only gave testimony under oath to the investigation, but they also related their experiences to newspaper interviewers and family members in their own letters immediately after the battle. And yes, there were a couple of Confederates who described the massacre in letters to their families. Many others freely admitted shooting soldiers who were floundering in the Mississippi. It was official Confederate policy not to recognize blacks as soldiers.
Only after northern outrage boiled over did Forrest and the South begin to build their case that Fort Pillow was not a massacre.
Some reviewers will have you believe that Ward is hiding some of the story, but that is not the case. He uses the works of Forrest's defenders, and mentions his late in life disavow of violence. Forrest's black aids are in the book.
Ward also does a fine job of setting up the battle, showing why Fort Pillow's defenders were in no mood to surrender without a fair fight.
Yes, there are errors in the book; Ward is not a Civil War specialist. But, the case for the massacre is there.
Ex-slaves and Tennessee whites fighting for the North defended Fort Pillow. Forrest and his men reviled them as traitors to the South. Apparently, they are still hated by Neo-Confederates. Only by discounting their testimony as lies can anyone claim that there was no massacre.

Much good information, but------
When discussing the Battle of Fort Pillow, most if not all Dixie-bashers start their distortions by leaving things out of the description of the fort itself. Originally a Confederate fort, it was next used as a Yankee outpost. It came in handy for transporting cotton stolen by Yankees from Southern civilians and shipped up the river for sale. It was a base for legitimate military operations (if you believe that an offensive war, against a country that doesn't threaten your country, is in any way legitimate). Later when terrorist actions against civilian women, children and old men became a major activity, it provided a sanctuary for the terrorists, who could find safety to rest up, replenish ammo, and dispose of the articles stolen from nearby homes. Military authorities had ordered abandonment of the fort; this was not done, probably because of the profits from stolen cotton.
Confederate soldiers whose homes were subject to terror raids prayed for destruction of those who terrified their families, and often molested the girls and women, and burned the homes and barns. The most feared were slaves who had run away. Escaping is, of course, most understandable. But the ones who joined the Yankees knew the roads, knew where the females were, and whether they had protectors; where the guns were; where the cotton was, where food and horses were, and even where the men of the house were.
Another great concern was the possibility of a general slave uprising, bringing a terrible race war like Haiti suffered. The worst nightmare for Southern soldiers away from home was a mob of armed slaves attacking their families. So Fort Pillow represented a threat to their homes, a haven for war criminals, and there was a crying need for swift justice.
Forrest, however, was very intelligent, and avoided giving excuse for retaliation against Southern civilians and prisoners. He would never have arranged a massacre. The northern hue and cry about Fort Pillow was mostly trumped up to counter Southern protests against war crimes by the invaders.

This book is both well-written and exhaustively researched. The critique thus far in the reviewer notes on this Amazon site has the strong whiff of disappointed Nathan Bedford Forrest acolytes and hero worshippers. Good historians dig, sift, and organize material to fashion an honest, fair, detailed understanding of what happened. In the case of the Fort Pillow incident, Ward has done all of that and served it up in wonderful prose. The grit and cruelty of war, human weakness, political economy, and American racism are described with a careful eye and Ward comes to the reluctant conclusion that a massacre did indeed occur within a complex web of cause and responsibility. Excellent book and a very good read if entered into with an open mind.

Mr. Ward is listed on the book cover as a "contributing editor" and "columnist" for certain newspapers across the country. That is what this work represents. Mr. Ward's comments, and they can only be interpretted as such, speak of opinion with a touch of history added to support only his opinions. I will not repeat the comments already made about the half-truths and untruths of this "work". I have studied Forrest for the past 20 years and though I am a Southerner I have come to very different opinions than Mr. Ward. I just don't have the temerity to publish those opinions as facts. What bothers me most about this work, besides the historical untruths, are Mr. Ward's comments about Shelby Foote, a very recognized author and historian of the Memphis area. Were Mr. Foote alive to repute this comment, I believe his comment to Mr. Ward would be, "if you were any part of a man, I would slap your face and force you to resent it".