[499] and that against Texas,--had resulted in extreme disaster. They were followed by some expeditions and episodes on the Confederate side, which must be briefly mentioned here, as their results, although successful, threw but little weight into the scales of the war. Such was the expedition by which Forrest, in the month of April, spread terrour along the banks of the Mississippi, stormed Fort Pillow, 1 and cut a swath across the State of Kentucky; Such, too, was the expedition of Hoke, which captured in North Carolina the strong position of Plymouth, that protected the whole Roanoke Valley, taking in the place sixteen hundred prisoners and twenty-five pieces of artillery. The latter success was thought, indeed, to be of permanent value, as it left the enemy only two places, Washington and Newbern, on the coast of North Carolina; but the force that had moved to Plymouth had to be recalled to the great campaign about to take place in Virginia, and the line of operations it had drawn was soon obliterated from the general map of the war. In a general history there is but little space for detached events. We have briefly treated those which preceded the large and active campaigns of 1864. But we must make an exception to this rule in case of an expedition of Federal cavalry, directed against Richmond, in the month of March, which, although a very small incident in military view, is to be taken among the most interesting events of the war, as containing one of the most distinct and deliberate evidences of the enemy's atrocity that had yet been given to a shocked and surprised world.
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[499] and that against Texas,--had resulted in extreme disaster. They were followed by some expeditions and episodes on the Confederate side, which must be briefly mentioned here, as their results, although successful, threw but little weight into the scales of the war. Such was the expedition by which Forrest, in the month of April, spread terrour along the banks of the Mississippi, stormed Fort Pillow, 1 and cut a swath across the State of Kentucky; Such, too, was the expedition of Hoke, which captured in North Carolina the strong position of Plymouth, that protected the whole Roanoke Valley, taking in the place sixteen hundred prisoners and twenty-five pieces of artillery. The latter success was thought, indeed, to be of permanent value, as it left the enemy only two places, Washington and Newbern, on the coast of North Carolina; but the force that had moved to Plymouth had to be recalled to the great campaign about to take place in Virginia, and the line of operations it had drawn was soon obliterated from the general map of the war. In a general history there is but little space for detached events. We have briefly treated those which preceded the large and active campaigns of 1864. But we must make an exception to this rule in case of an expedition of Federal cavalry, directed against Richmond, in the month of March, which, although a very small incident in military view, is to be taken among the most interesting events of the war, as containing one of the most distinct and deliberate evidences of the enemy's atrocity that had yet been given to a shocked and surprised world.
1 In the capture of Fort Pillow the list of casualties embraced five hundred out of a garrison of seven hundred; and the enemy entitled the affair “The Fort Pillow massacre,” and Northern newspapers and Congressional committees circulated absurd stories about negro troops being buried alive. The explanation of the unusual proportion of carnage is simple. After the Confederates got into the fort, the Federal flag was not hauled down; there was no surrender; relying upon his gunboats in the river, the enemy evidently expected to annihilate Forrest's forces after they had entered the works; and so the fighting went on to the last extremity. Some of the negro troops, in their cowardice, feigned death, falling to the ground, and were either pricked up by the bayonet, or rolled into the trenches to excite their alarm — to which circumstance is reduced the whole story of “burying negroes alive.” Forrest was a hard fighter; he had an immense brain; but he knew but little about grammar and dictionaries. In describing the alarm and bewilderment in Fort Pillow to a superiour officer-who, by the way, has frequently expressed the opinion that Forrest, notwithstanding his defects in literary education, stood second only to Stonewall Jackson as the most remarkable man of the war,--Forrest said: “General, the d-d Yankees kept firing horizontally right — up into the air.”
1866.
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