As a fitting Juneteenth decree, rather than just a symbolic acknowledgement, President Biden should issue an Executive Order establishing the Fort Pillow National Monument in Tennessee. It would simply involve designating the already existing Lower Hatchie National Wildlife Refuge a national monument and renaming it Fort Pillow Battlefield National Monument and Wildlife Refuge.
Last Friday, as part of the national celebration of Juneteenth, a group of Memphians honored the African American soldiers buried at the Memphis National Cemetery.
On April 12, 1864, Confederate forces massacred African American soldiers serving in the United States army and their white officers at Fort Pillow, located on the Mississippi River near Henning, Tennessee. It was a strategic location, held by United States army just north of Memphis and controlling river access to and from St. Louis and the Ohio River Valley. The Confederates were under the command of General Nathan Bedford Forrest, later a founder of the Ku Klux Klan. In his battle dispatches, Forrest wrote, “The river was dyed with the blood of the slaughtered for two hundred yards. The approximate loss was upward of five hundred killed, but few of the officers escaping. My loss was about twenty killed. It is hoped that these facts will demonstrate to the Northern people that negro soldiers cannot cope with Southerners."
The events at Fort Pillow are well documented. A Confederate soldier, Sergeant Achilles Clark, wrote a letter in which he described how "I with several others tried to stop the butchery, and at one time had partially succeeded but Forrest ordered them shot down like dogs, and the carnage continued."
Congress passed a joint resolution calling for an official inquiry into the massacre and in response President Lincoln demanded that captured Black soldiers be treated the same way as White soldiers. The Confederacy rejected the demand and there never was a federal response, even though the massacres did not stop.
At the end of the Civil War, the United States moved quickly to forgive Southern racists and murderers. As a result of the Amnesty Act of 1872, the vast majority of former Confederates were free to own land, vote, and hold office. Confederate Brigadier General John R. Chalmers, who commanded the first division of Forrest's cavalry at Fort Pillow, was elected to Congress as a Democrat in 1877. The United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Friends of Forrest still maintain a bust of Forrest at the Old Live Oak Cemetery in Selma, Alabama. The 7-foot tall monument honors Forrest as a "Defender of Selma" and "Wizard of the Saddle." A plaque reads, "This monument stands as a testament of our perpetual devotion and respect for Lt. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest CSA 1821-1877, one of the South's finest heroes."
You can contact President Biden advocating for the Fort Pillow Battlefield Monument electronically via https://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/.
You should also contact Representative David Kustoff who represents western Tennessee in Congress. Kustoff, who voted to reject the results of the 2020 Presidential election, is blocking Congressional action renaming the Fort Pillow Battlefield and declaring it a national monument. On his website, Kustoff describes himself as “Supporting the Trump Agenda” and “Standing for West TN Values.” Let Kustoff know conservatives don’t have to be racists.
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