I am not calling Dr. Steiner a liar. He says there are 3,000 negroes among the 64,000 rebel troops. But other reports say there were closer to 45,000 rebels. Should we rachet down Dr. Steiner's estimate on that basis?
Up to 1/4 of Lee's army on this campaign was straggling.
But consider this, from an account of Fort Pillow:
"However, another Confederate soldier, Samuel H. Caldwell, wrote to his wife a few days after the massacre "If General Forrest had not run between our men & the Yanks with his pistol and sabre drawn not a man would have been spared." To support this, Brigadier General James R. Chalmers, CSA, who was Forrest's second-in-command "similarly claimed to a Federal officer on April 13 that he and Forrest had `stopped the massacre as soon as [we] were able to do so'. He further explained that their men `had such a hatred toward the armed negro that they could not be restrained from killing the negroes after they had captured them.'"
So it was okay for the rebels to use slaves in arms, but wrong for the Union to do so?
There is no credible evidence of more than a handful of black rebel soldiers.
Walt
I don't think so, they very obviously stood out in his mind and the numbers for them are very likely accurate as a result.
So it was okay for the rebels to use slaves in arms, but wrong for the Union to do so?
From their point of view, absolutely. The union "slaves in arms", were Southern runaways that had taken up arms against them. To them, they were not "troops" but traitorous armed runaways still subject to the slave laws of their original states. They were seen in a completely different light than the regular Northerners who were invading their States.
But consider this, from an account of Fort Pillow:
Strange quote you have there, as Chalmers always maintained there was no massacre. The officers stopped the firing that was being done on the deserting union troops once it became obvious they were simply fleeing and not an organized threat attempting to reposition themselves. Have you ever read the letters written by one of the Union officers that was taken prisoner, a Lt. Young, I believe (I may have the name wrong, it's been many years since I studied this one). Most fascinating. He clearly admitted there was no massacre and wrote statements attesting to that fact in detail. After he was exchanged, he was in great trouble with his superiors for having written those letters, since the Northern press and Government had already been busy using the "massacre" for PR purposes. To save his career he recanted, but the original letters speak with more truthfulness than the one his superiors forced him to write. I think it very obvious that the soldiers shot escaping the fort were not "surrendering", they were deserting their position. What they didn't know is that they were retreating into a cross-fire. The fort, and those troops, never surrendered, and repeatedly refused to do so. If I remember right, they had repulsed four or five Confederate charges before the Eighteenth Mississippi Cavalry succeeded in breaching their breastwork. After heavy fighting like that it would be normal for firing to continue on a retreating enemy. It was commonly done by both sides in the war. When I first studied Civil War history, I too, thought Ft. Pillow had been a massacre. A thorough look at the record (independent of the interpretations of "historians") gave me a different opinion.