ARMY OPERATIONS. 



Cl 



that he would not surrender. Immediately 



after the second flag of truce retired, the rebels 

 made a rusli from the positions they had treach- 

 erously gained, while the flags of truce were 

 sent in, and obtained possession of the fort, 

 raising the cry of no quarter. But little oppor- 

 tunity was allowed for resistance. The Fed- 

 eral troops, black and white, threw down their 

 arms, and sought to escape by running down 

 the steep blutf near the fort, and secreting 

 themselves behind trees and logs, in the bushes, 

 and under the brush, some even jumping into 

 the river, leaving only their heads above the 

 water as they crouched down under the bank. 



The scenes which now followed became a 

 subject of investigation by a Committee of Con- 

 gress, who state in their report as follows : 



The rebels commenced an indiscriminate slaughter, 

 sparing neither age nor sex, white or black, soldier 

 or civilian. The officers and men seemed to vie with 

 each other in the devilish work. Men, women, and 

 even children, wherever found, were deliberately 

 shot down, beaten, and hacked with sabres. Some 

 of the children not more than ten years old, were 

 forced to stand up and face their mothers while being 

 shot. The sick and woupded were butchered with- 

 out mercy, the rebels even entering the hospital 

 buildings," and dragging them out to be shot, or killing 

 them as they lay there unable to offer the least resist- 

 ance. All over the hillside the work of murder was 

 going on. Numbers of our men were gathered 

 together in lines or groups and deliberately shot. 

 Some were shot while in the river, while others on 

 the bank were shot and their bodies kicked into the 

 water, many of them still living but unable to make 

 any exertion to save themselves from drowning. 

 Some of the rebels stood upon the top of the hill, or 

 a short distance down its side, and called to our sol- 

 diers to come up to them, and as they approached 

 shot them down in cold blood ; if their guns or pis- 

 tols missed fire, forcing them to stand there until 

 they were again prepared to fire. All around were 

 heard cries of "Xo quarter, no quarter;" "Kill the 

 d n niggers ;" " Shoot them down." All who asked 

 for mercy were answered by the most cruel taunts 

 and sneers. Some were spared for a time only to be 

 murdered under circumstances of greater crueltv. 

 Xo cruelty which the most fiendish malignity could 

 devise was omitted by these murderers. One white 

 soldier, who was wounded in the leg so as to be un- 

 able to walk, was made to stand up wnile his torment- 

 ors shot him. Others who were wounded and unable 

 to stand up were held up and again shot. One negro 

 who had been ordered by a rebel officer to hold his 

 horse was killed by him when he remonstrated. 

 Another, a mere child, whom an officer had taken up 

 behind him on his horse, was seen by Chalmers, who 

 at once ordered the officer to put" him down, and 

 shoot him, which was done. The huts and tents in 

 which many of the wounded had sought shelter were 

 set on fire both that night and the next morning, 

 while the wounded were still in them, those only 

 escaping who were able to get themselves out, or who 

 could prevail on others less injured than themselves 

 to help them out; and even some of them thus seek- 

 ing to escape the flames were met by these ruffians 

 and brutally shot down, or had their brains beaten 

 out. One man was deliberately fastened down to the 

 floor of a tent, face upwards, by means of nails driven 

 through his clothing and into the boards under him 

 so that he could not possibly escape, and then the 

 tent set on fire. Another was nailed to the side of a 

 building, outside of the fort, and then the building 

 set on fire and burned. The charred remains of five 

 or six bodies were afterwards found, all but one so 

 much disfigured and consumed by the flumes that 



they could not be identified, and the identification of 

 that one is not absolntely certain, although there can 

 hardly be a doubt that it was the body of Lieut. 

 Akerstrom, quartermaster of the 13th Virginia caval- 

 ry, and a native Tennessean. Several witnesses who 

 saw the remains, and who were personally acquainted 

 with him while living here, testified that it is their 

 firm belief that it was his body that was thus treated. 

 These deeds of murder and cruelty closed when night 

 came on, only to be renewed the next morning, when 

 the demons carefully sought among the dead lying 

 about in all directions for any other wounded yet a'live, 

 and those they killed. Scores of the dead and wounded 

 were found there the day of the massacre by the men 

 from some of our gunboats, who were permitted to 

 go on shore and collect the wounded and bury the 

 dead. The rebels themselves had made a pretence 

 of burying a great many of their victims, but they 

 had merely thrown them, without the least regard to 

 care or decency, into the trenches and ditches about 

 the fort, or the little hollows and ravines on the 

 hillside, covering them but partially with earth. 

 Portions of heads and faces, hands and feet, were 

 found protruding through the earth in every direc- 

 tion even when your committee visited the spot 

 two weeks afterward, although parties of men had 

 been sent on shore from time to time to bury the 

 bodies unburied, and re-bury the others, and "were 

 even then engaged in the same work. We found 

 evidences of this murder and cruelty still most pain- 

 ful. We saw bodies still unburied, "at some distance 

 from the fort, of some sick men, who had been flee- 

 ing from the hospital, and beaten down and brutally 

 murdered, and their bodies left where they had fallen. 

 We could still see the faces, and hands,"and feet of 

 men, white and black, protruding out of the ground, 

 whose graves had not been reached by those engaged in 

 reinterring the victims of the massacre; and although 

 a great deal of rain had fallen within the preceding two 

 weeks, the ground, more especially on the side at the 

 foot of the bluff where the most of the murders had 

 been committed, was still discolored by the blood 

 of our brave but unfortunate men, and the logs and 

 trees showed but too plainly the evidences of the 

 atrocities perpetrated there. " Many other instances 

 of equally atrocious cruelty might be enumerated, but 

 your committee feel compelled to refrain from giving 

 here more of the heart-sickening details, and refer to 

 the statements contained in the voluminous testi- 

 mony herewith submitted. Those statements were 

 obtained by them from eye-witnesses and sufferers. 

 Many of them, as they were examined by your com- 

 mittee, were lying upon beds of pain an'd suffering; 

 some so feeble that their lips could with difficulty 

 frame the words by which they endeavored to con- 

 vey some idea of the cruelty which had been inflicted 

 on them, and which they had seen inflicted on others. 

 In reference to the fate of Major Bradford, who 

 was in command of the fort when it was cap- 

 tured, and who had, up to that tune, received no 

 injury, there seems to be no doubt. The general un- 

 derstanding everywhere seemed to be that he had 

 been brutally murdered the day after he was taken 

 prisoner. How many of our troops thus fell victims 

 to the malignity and barbarity of Forrest and his 

 followers cannot yet be definitely ascertained. Two 

 officers belonging to the garrison were absent at the 

 time of the capture and massacre. Of the remaining 

 officers but two are known to be living, and they are 

 wounded, and now in the hospital at Mound "City. 

 One of them (Capt. Porter) may even now be dead, 

 as the surgeons, when your committee were there, 

 expressed no hope of his recovery. Of the men, 

 from three hundred to four hundred are known to 

 have been killed at Fort Pillow, of whom at least 

 three hundred were murdered in cold blood, after the 

 fort was in possession of the rebels, and our men 

 had thrown down their arms and ceased to offer re 

 sistance. Of the survivors, except the wounded in 

 the hospital at Mound City, and the few who sue- 



