Interpreting the Fort Pillow Massacre of U.S. Colored Troops, 1864

The grant

• Recipient: Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation (Lauderdale County, Tennessee)
• Amount: $50,000
• Program: a Battlefield Interpretation Grant from the National Park Service

The United States Colored Troops

After the Emancipation Proclamation, the U.S. War Department's General Order No. 143 created the United States Colored Troops (USCT) on May 22, 1863.

• How many: by the end of the Civil War, more than 170,000 men had fought in USCT regiments — about 7% of the Union Army.
• How many died: some 38–40,000 died from combat, disease and other causes — a death rate 35% higher than in white regiments, even though the USCT did not fight in the war's first 18 months.

There were several reasons for the higher toll, but the main one was racism. In answer to General Order No. 143, the Confederacy passed a law that Black soldiers and white officers captured from USCT regiments would be tried as slave insurrectionists, not held as prisoners of war — a capital offense in Confederate courts, which made capture a death sentence. Yet few USCT soldiers were captured. Instead, they were often massacred, at battles such as the Crater, Saltville and Fort Pillow.

Fort Pillow

On a bluff above the Mississippi River, Fort Pillow was mainly a supply depot for the Union and Confederate armies, changing hands without bloodshed in the war's early years.

In 1864 it was attacked by Confederate raiders under Major General Nathan Bedford Forrest, whose men needed fresh horses. Quickly overwhelmed by Forrest's larger force, the garrison — USCT soldiers and Tennessee Unionists — tried to retreat, but was massacred in large numbers with no option to surrender.

Historians still debate the exact casualties. But of about 300 USCT soldiers at the fort, only 58 are believed to have been captured alive. The rest were killed or listed as missing — most likely drowned trying to escape across the river.

The new interpretation

At Fort Pillow State Historic Park, the department will install new interpretive panels, museum exhibits and augmented reality features, for a deeper understanding of the massacre's complexities. They will tell the stories of the USCT soldiers stationed at the fort, and highlight its use earlier in the war as a contraband camp.

About the grants

Battlefield Interpretation Grants, from the Park Service's American Battlefield Protection Program, help preservation partners modernize how battlefields are interpreted — creating places that inspire diverse audiences to visit, understand and empathize with the soldiers and civilians who lived through some of the nation's hardest events. The program also offers Battlefield Land Acquisition Grants, Battlefield Restoration Grants and Preservation Planning Grants, supporting community-driven stewardship of historic places at the state, tribal and local levels.

Sources

Based on "The Hard Reality of Fort Pillow: Interpreting the Massacre of US Colored Troops in 1864," American Battlefield Protection Program, National Park Service; a work of the United States government in the public domain. A photograph by the state park's staff is not reproduced.