Indeed. Let us do just that:
Of those engaged in the fight, the slaughter was by no means so great as it would have been had there been an order or a determination to exterminate the garrison, as is implied in the committee's report. About two-fifths of the garrison were killed, and another one-fifth wounded., It is impossible to know now how many had been killed before the mad rush away from the stormed parapet in an attempt to take up the fight from a new position, but from the testimony and reports it is apparent that there must have been heavy loss during the hours of fighting from the "unerring aim of the rebel sharpshooters," and probably still heavier loss as the assaulting waves came over the parapet, emptying 1,200 rifles into the crowded defenders at hand-to-hand range. It must be remembered too that there never was a surrender of the fort, nor an entire cessation of resistance until perhaps twenty minutes after the storming of the parapet. Had there been, the loss of life would have been less.-archy-/-
The third main charge, that the "atrocities committed at Fort Pillow" were the result of deliberate policy, does not stand up under examination of the Union record. Without doubt men were killed and wounded who should not have been, and the loss of life was greater than it would have been but for the attempt to prolong resistance beneath the bluff while the gunboat was supposed to be shelling the Confederates in the fort.
Undoubtedly, too, this was intensified by the bitter animosities, many of them personal, existing between the Tennessee white Unionist defenders of the fort and the assailants, and by the feeling of many Confederate soldiers toward those whom they looked upon as slaves in blue uniforms. In all the circumstances it would have been a strange and wonderful thing bad there been no cases of individual assault in the closing portions of a fight which came to a ragged, scattering and indefinite end.
The finding of the committee as to a deliberate policy of destruction of the garrison rests partly upon Forrest's note demanding surrender and partly upon testimony of wounded survivors that "officers," or "Chalmers" or "Forrest" had ordered a slaughter of the defenders. As to the note demanding surrender, Forrest was probably correct in saying that he could not be responsible for the consequences if the demand was refused, but this was by no means the same as saying that he was ordering a slaughter. As a matter of fact, it was no more than a repetition of the device which he had used before and was to use again with success in securing surrender of places with minimum loss of life to his own command and, for that matter, to the defenders.
The testimony of survivors on the point of the attitude of officers is mixed. The very first survivor examined-Elias, a colored soldier-said that the rebels "killed all the men after they surrendered, until orders were given to stop. . . ."
"Till who gave orders?"
"They told me his name was Forrest."
The same witness told of seeing a soldier shoot one of the wounded men in the hand, when "an officer told the secesh soldier if be did that again he would arrest him."115
Lieutenant Leaming testified that when there were shots outside the hut to which he had been carried after being wounded he heard an officer ride up and say: "Stop that firing; arrest that man," and that another officer-prisoner told him "that they had been shooting them, but the general had had it stopped."
