📰 TODAY IN HISTORY 📰

On April 13, 1864 the Union tinclad USS Silver Cloud arrived at Fort Pillow.

The following is the report of Acting Master’s Mate Robert S Critchell and the evidence of the horrors that had occurred there the day before (GRAPHIC FIRSTHAND ACCOUNT WITH ORIGINAL LANGUAGE)

“Our boat arrived at the fort about 7½ A.M. on Wednesday, the 13th, the day after the rebels captured the fort. After shelling them whenever we could see them for two hours, a flag of truce from the rebel General Chalmers was received by us, and Captain Ferguson of this boat made an arrangement with General Chalmers for the paroling of our wounded and the burial of our dead; the arrangement to last until 5 P. M.”

“We then landed at the fort, and I was sent out with a burial party to bury our dead. I found many of the dead lying close along by the water’s edge, where they had evidently sought safety; they could not offer any resistance from the places where they were, in holes and cavities along the banks; most of them had two wounds. I saw several colored soldiers of the Sixth United States Artillery, with their eyes punched out with bayonets; many of them were shot twice and bayonetted also. All those along the bank of the river were colored. The number of the colored
near the river was about seventy.

“I had some conversation with rebel officers and they claim that our men would not surrender and in some few cases they ‘could not control their men,’ who seemed determined to shoot down every negro soldier, whether he surrendered or not.”