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BenKenobi,

Some Freepers might be intersted in these two brief accounts below. Not at all unLike today, “the left” back then and Forrest’s enemy, “the Yankee Command”, largely blew Ft. Pillow into a web of lies to “propagandize” and help their cause at the beginning of the war. Many a dollar was raised and many a recruit recruited based upon reports from Ft. Pillow in New York Newspapers.

Like all wars, beginning with the Revoloutionary War, that the U.S. has EVER been involved in “the left” has ALWAYS opposed them and done everything they could to oppose them. One wonders whether or not “the left” would have fought on the beaches of Long Island had the Nazi’s landed there. Doubtless the N.Y. Times Exec’s would immediately flee to the West Coast in such an event to commence their criticism of “the war”.

Destruction and Reconstruction: Personal Experiences of the Late War; Richard Taylor, Lieutenant-General in the Confederate Army. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 549 and 551 Broadway,1879, pp.200
I doubt if any commander since the days of lion-hearted Richard has killed as many enemies with his own hand as Forrest. His word of command as he led the charge was unique: “Forward, men, and mix with ‘em!” But, while cutting down many a foe with long-reaching, nervous arm, his keen eye watched the whole fight and guided him to the weak spot. Yet he was a tender-hearted, kindly man. The accusations of his enemies that he murdered prisoners at Fort Pillow and elsewhere are absolutely false. The prisoners captured on his expedition into Tennessee, of which I have just written, were negroes, and he carefully looked after their wants himself, though in rapid movement and fighting much of the time. These negroes told me of Mass Forrest’s kindness to them.

“Was There a Massacre at Ft. Pillow?” John L. Jordan, Tennessee History Quarterly VI (June 1947), pp 99-133:
“...burial details were composed of Union troops under Union officers, a fact which clears Forrest’s men of the charges that they buried Negro wounded alive...Union casualties may have amounted to less two hundred killed, wounded, and missing.”