Reports of the Committee on the Conduct of the War: Fort Pillow Massacre. Returned Prisoners.United States. Congress. Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War
History
Reports of the Committee on the Conduct of the War: Fort Pillow Massacre. Returned Prisoners.
United States. Congress. Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War
Fort Pillow, Battle of, Tenn., 1864; United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865
Question. How many do you suppose from the information you have
received?
Answer. I suppose there were about four hundred massacred--murdered
there.
Question. What proportion white, and what proportion colored, as near as
you could ascertain?
Answer. The impression I have, from what I can learn, is, that all the
negroes were massacred except about eighty, and all the white soldiers
were killed except about one hundred or one hundred and ten.
Question. We have heard rumors that some of these persons were buried
alive; did you hear anything about that?
Answer. I have two in the hospital here who were buried alive.
Question. Both colored men?
Answer. Yes, sir.
Question. How did they escape?
Answer. One of them I have not conversed with personally, the other I
have. He was thrown into a pit, as he states, with a great many others,
white and black, several of whom were alive; they were all buried up
together. He lay on the outer edge, but his head was nearer the surface;
he had one well hand, and with that hand he was able to work a place
through which he could breathe, and in that way he got his head out; he
lay there for some twenty-four hours, and was finally taken out by
somebody. The others, next to him, were buried so deep that they could
not get out, and died.
Question. Did you hear anything about any of them having been thrown
into the flames and burned?
Answer. I do not know anything about that myself. These men did not say
much, and in fact I did not myself have time to question them very
closely.
Question. What is the general condition now of the wounded men from Fort
Pillow under your charge?
Answer. They are in as good condition as they can be, probably about
one-third of them must die.
Question. Is your hospital divided into wards, and can we go through and
take the testimony of these men, ward by ward?
Answer. It is divided into wards. The men from Fort Pillow are scattered
through the hospital, and isolated to prevent erysipelas. If I should
crowd too many badly wounded men in one ward I would be likely to get
the erysipelas among them, and lose a great many of them.
By Mr. Gooch:
Question. Are the wounds of these men such as men usually receive in
battle?
Answer. The gunshot wounds are; the sabre cuts are the first I have ever
seen in the war yet. They seem to have been shot with the intention of
hitting the body. There are more body wounds than in an ordinary battle.
Question. Just as if they were close enough to select the parts of the
body to be hit?
Answer. Yes, sir; some of them were shot with pistols by the rebels
standing from one foot to ten feet of them.
The committee then proceeded to the various wards and took the testimony
of such of the wounded as were able to bear the examination.
The testimony of the colored men is written out exactly as given, except
that it is rendered in a grammatical form, instead of the broken
language some of them used.
* * * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account