The Fort Pillow Massacre and the DIY History of the New Lost Cause

The Civil War, often touted as America’s bloodiest, has a long list of moments remembered generations later because of violence. The Fort Pillow Massacre in 1864 is one such example. When Confederate troops overtook the Union Fort Pillow and accepted the surrender of most of its garrisons, the expectation was that surviving Union soldiers would be taken as prisoners of war, a practice that had been long honored during a war when brother quite literally fought brother. Because Fort Pillow was run by mostly Black soldiers, Confederate Major General Nathan Bedford Forrest and his troops slaughtered men who, had they been white, would have been taken as prisoners. How Americans feel about the Fort Pillow Massacre today – if they remember it at all – depends on which narrative they remember. Americans who remember Emancipation as the war’s most important outcome remember this moment of violence as an example of the South’s determination to preserve slavery. Americans who follow the Lost Cause, a revisionist memory of the war which glosses over the reason for secession as simply “states’ rights,” are more likely to see the Fort Pillow Massacre as an unfortunate event, but not uniquely violent, perhaps comparing the event to the burning of Atlanta. More recently, a new narrative as emerged, one that often works in tandem with the alt-right to provide historical proof for whatever argument its users need in the moment. The “New Lost Cause” narrative denies any wrongdoing of Confederate troops and claims Forrest later went on to be a sort of civil rights activists after the war. How Americans recall this specific instance of violence during the Civil War acts as a litmus test for which narrative of the war they ascribe to, and how likely they are to “DIY” facts to match their rhetoric.