previous next


The capture of Fort Pillow.

The following official dispatch with reference to the capture of Fort Pillow, sixty miles above Memphis, was received at the General's office last night:


Demopolis Ala., April 19.
To Gen. S. Cooper:
The following dispatch has just been received from Gen. Forrest, dated Jackson, Tenn., April 15th.

L. Polk,
Lieutenant General.

"I attacked Fort Pillow on the morning of the 12th inst., with a part of Bell's and McCulloch's brigades, numbering--, under Brig. Gen. J. R. Chalmers. After a short fight we drove the enemy, seven hundred strong, into the for, under cover of their gunboats, and demanded a surrender, which was declined by Major L. W. Booth, commanding U. S. Forces. I stormed the fort, and after a contest of thirty minutes captured the entire garrison, killing five hundred and taking one hundred prisoners, and a large and just of quartermaster stores. --The officers in the fort were killed, including Major Booth. I sustained a loss of twenty killed and sixty wounded. Amongst the wounded is the gallant Lieut. Col. Wm. M. Reid, whilst leading the 5th Mississippi.--Over one hundred citizens, who had fled to the fort from conscription, ran into the river and were drowned. The Confederate flag now floats ever the fort.

(Signed) "N. B. Forrest,
"Major General."

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

hide Places (automatically extracted)

View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.

Sort places alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a place to search for it in this document.
Fort Pillow (Tennessee, United States) (3)
Jackson (Tennessee, United States) (1)
Demopolis (Alabama, United States) (1)

Download Pleiades ancient places geospacial dataset for this text.

hide People (automatically extracted)
Sort people alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a person to search for him/her in this document.
N. B. Forrest (2)
L. W. Booth (2)
William M. Reid (1)
L. Polk (1)
McCulloch (1)
S. Cooper (1)
J. R. Chalmers (1)
Bell (1)
hide Dates (automatically extracted)
Sort dates alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a date to search for it in this document.
April 19th (1)
April 15th (1)
12th (1)
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: