Unerring Fire

On 12 April 1864 a Confederate cavalry force, led by General Nathan Bedford Forrest, assaulted and captured an incompetently defended Union fortification in western Tennessee, near Memphis. The unusual number of predominantly African-American troops who were killed during the subsequent rout led the Northern public to charge that a racist massacre had occurred. Although Lincoln's cabinet decided against systematic reprisals, outraged Federal soldiers took vengeance during several small engagements, foraging expeditions, and anti-guerrilla campaigns. For its part, the Confederacy defended the killings as the result of circumstances ("stubborn resistance") or military necessity, the product of an "unavoidable heat of battle" or "drunken" Blacks who forced the victorious troops to defend themselves. Blacks under arms were not recognized by the Confederacy as soldiers - they were simply runaways, not enemy combatants. As a former slave trader, General Forrest claimed he would never deliberately have destroyed valuable recaptured property.