Civil War book explores another view of the fighting at Fort Pillow

SIKESTON, Mo. -- A Sikeston history teacher's second book will offer a different view of a controversial Civil War battle.

Rick Justice has been Civil War enthusiast for decades.

The book, which Justice plans to name "Conspiracy on the Mississippi," is the result of research conducted for a graduate school project.

"About three years ago I had to do a capstone paper for my second master's degree and I chose the Battle of Fort Pillow to do my paper on," Justice said.

"Fort Pillow was a fort on the Mississippi River that was attacked on April 12, 1864, by Confederate Maj. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest. There was a high loss of life on the Union side for the two Union units there. One was a black unit and the other was the 13th Tennessee, which was a Union unit made up of ex-Confederate soldiers."

Losses were so high among black soldiers it is often called the Fort Pillow Massacre.

Some modern scholars maintain "the only reason the fort was attacked was because the black soldiers were there and they were singled out," Justice said. "For the last 150 years, that's been the standard belief about Fort Pillow."

Justice noted in his research that reports of the battle from Northerns and Southerns don't match up.

Some claim defenders dropped their weapons and surrendered when Confederate forces entered the fort. Others maintain fleeing soldiers kept their rifles and occasionally turned to fire.

"The truth has to be somewhere in the middle," he said. "My focus of this book was to find out who was really to blame for the high loss of life at Fort Pillow."

One conclusion he reached is that whatever happened during the battle, Forrest did not attack the fort so he could slaughter black soldiers. Official records show that Forrest had planned on attacking Fort Pillow earlier -- before it was occupied by black soldiers, Justice said.

That does not leave Forrest blameless, however, Justice said.

"Once they got in the fort, the chain of command did break down. There was mass confusion within the fort, basically there was chaos," Justice said. "Gen. Forrest is to blame for losing control of his men in the heat of battle. Anybody in the military will tell you the commanding officer is responsible for the actions of his men."

By that same logic, however, blame goes to Union Gen. Stephen A. Hurlbut, commander of the XVI Corps headquartered at Memphis, Tenn.

"One of the first things I found was that Gen. Hurlbut had disobeyed a direct order from Gen. Sherman to dismantle Fort Pillow," Justice said.

Hurlbut ordered the fort to be reoccupied, he said.

Whatever Hurlbut's reasons, "the overall blame is on the shoulders of the Union officer that disobeyed direct orders," Justice said.

Some historians reduce the battle to an event in which Confederates "deliberately murdered surrendering black soldiers," Justice said.

"There were over 200 men taken prisoners," he said. "One of the arguments I make is if the plan was to kill all the Union soldiers there, then why did the Confederates allow men to live? The day after the battle there were several wounded soldiers that were turned over to Union authorities under a flag of truce."

Justice said he will take a draft to a publisher in Dallas once he has finished gathering images for the book and should have a tentative release date for the book later this month.

Justice said he is also working on a third book that will identify the locations of small Civil War battle and skirmish sites in Scott, New Madrid and Mississippi counties.

Research was temporarily put on hold, however, because of the recent flooding.

"A lot of the areas are not accessible right now," he said.

Justice's first book, "The Struggle for Sikeston" published in 2010, is available at the Sikeston Depot.