Fort Pillow and the Crater: The History of the Most Notorious Battles Where the Confederates Massacred Black Soldiers

"It was the saddest affair I have witnessed in the war." – Ulysses S. Grant’s description of the Battle of the Crater

At the end of 1863, Confederate cavalry leader Nathan Bedford Forrest began operations in west Tennessee with a small unit, but he managed to recruit several thousand volunteers, including a number of veteran soldiers, and he whipped them into shape so that they were combat ready before their first confrontation. Upon hearing of Forrest’s growing aptitude for adaptive warfare, General Sherman wrote to Union Commander-in-Chief Henry Halleck that men like Forrest are “men that must all be killed or employed by us before we can hope for peace. They have no property or future, and therefore cannot be influenced by anything except personal considerations.” Sherman repeatedly ordered his Memphis commanders to catch “that devil Forrest,” essentially putting a bounty on his head.

As far as skirmishes go, Fort Pillow was a completely unremarkable fight. Before attacking, Forrest demanded the unconditional surrender of the Union garrison, a normal custom of his, and he warned the Union commanding officer that he would not be responsible for his soldiers’ actions if the warning went unheeded. What made Fort Pillow markedly different was that a sizable amount of the Union garrison defending the Fort was comprised of black soldiers, which particularly enraged Confederate soldiers whenever they encountered those they viewed as former slaves in the field. It is still unclear exactly how the fighting unfolded, but what is clear is that an unusually high percentage of Union soldiers were killed, and the Confederates were accused of massacring black soldiers after they had surrendered. Primary sources tell conflicting accounts of what happened at Battle of Fort Pillow, leaving scholars to piece together the battle and determine whether Confederate soldiers purposely shot Union soldiers after they had surrendered.

After the Overland Campaign, Grant and Lee's armies began to dig in around Petersburg, but at the end of June 1864, Pennsylvania coal miners in the Army of the Potomac came up with an idea. They offered to dig a mine over 500 feet long underneath the lines between the Union and Confederate armies and fill it with gunpowder, which would detonate just 20 feet below where the Confederate soldiers were positioned. Through skillful work, the mine was packed with 8,000 pounds of gunpowder and set to detonate on the morning of July 30. The ensuing explosion would rip a giant hole in the Confederate line, allowing a Union attack to rush through the breached Confederate line and into Petersburg itself. Ulysses S. Grant later said, "Such an opportunity for carrying fortifications I have never seen and do not expect again to have."

Sure enough, the detonation of the mine produced one of the most amazing scenes of the entire Civil War. The force of the explosion created a crater that was nearly 200 feet long, 100 feet wide, and 30 feet deep. Remnants of the crater can still be seen today. But through a mix of bad luck, fog of war, and incompetent leadership, the Union assault that followed the explosion was badly bungled. Instead of capturing Petersburg, the Battle of the Crater was a Union debacle that left more than 4,000 Union soldiers killed, wounded, or captured. The Confederates lost about 1,500, with nearly 300 of them being casualties of the initial explosion.

The Battle of the Crater didn’t help the Confederates much in front of Petersburg, but it remains the most memorable and controversial battle of the entire siege. There were charges that the Confederates slaughtered black soldiers after they had surrendered, and the botched operation cost several Union generals their careers, including one of the most important and controversial generals of the entire Civil War. As Grant noted, it was the Union’s last great chance to end the war before they ultimately won in April 1865.