Been in the Storm So Long_ The Aftermath of Slavery - Leon F. Litwack [71]
Several months after the Fort Pillow affair, the anger had not yet subsided. In the wake of new reports of black soldiers “mown down like grass at Petersburg,” the Reverend H. H. White told a mass meeting called by Boston Negro leaders that a sense of despair prevailed among the people. But he refused to be discouraged. Whatever the losses sustained by black people, the thought that should remain uppermost in their minds is that God had brought about the sacrifice of millions of men in other countries “for the cause of liberty and humanity.” The speakers who followed, however, found it impossible to share the Reverend White’s optimism or explanation. The most forceful disclaimer came from William Wells Brown, a veteran black abolitionist and former advocate of emigration who had recently helped to recruit the 54th Massachusetts Regiment. “Mr. White’s God is bloodthirsty!” Brown charged. “I worship a different kind of God. My God is a God of peace and good will to men.” Although he had once urged black men to fight, in order to convince “this God-forsaken nation” that they could be as courageous as other men, he now confessed his doubts and disillusionment. “Our people have been so cheated, robbed, deceived, and outraged everywhere, that I cannot urge them to go.… We have an imbecile administration, and the most imbecile management that it is possible to conceive of. If Mr. White’s God is managing the affairs of this nation, he is making a miserable failure.”65
Since editorial outrage, mass meetings, and executive decrees were obviously insufficient to deal with the problem, black troops were left to consider actions that might produce the effect initially intended by the President’s order. An officer with the 22nd United States Colored Troops made explicit a growing feeling among many of the black soldiers: “Sir, we can bayonet the enemy to terms on this matter of treating colored soldiers as prisoners of war far sooner than the authorities at Washington can bring him to it by negotiation. This I am morally persuaded of.” Six days after the fall of Fort Pillow, Confederate troops in Arkansas routed Union forces in the Battle of Poison Spring, including soldiers belonging to the 1st Kansas Colored Regiment. Not only were some black prisoners summarily executed but captured Union wagons were also driven back and forth over the bodies of wounded blacks. That was more than sufficient inducement for the men of the 2nd Kansas Colored Regiment to vow to take no more prisoners, and in a subsequent clash at Jenkins Ferry, Arkansas, the black regiment charged the Confederate lines, shouting “Remember Poison Spring,” and inflicted heavy losses on the enemy. But they fell slightly short of their avowed goal; one Confederate prisoner was taken—apparently by mistake—and he was returned to his regiment to impart the lessons of this battle. When black troops at Memphis reportedly took an oath “on their knees” to avenge Fort Pillow and show no mercy to the enemy, General Nathan Bedford Forrest, of all people, lodged a Confederate protest, charging that the oath had been taken in the presence of Union officers. “From what I can learn,” a Union general replied, “this act of theirs was not influenced by any white officer, but was the result of their own sense of what was due to themselves and their fellows who had been mercilessly slaughtered.”66
The Fort Pillow Massacre obviously had a different impact than General Forrest intended. If blacks were not to be treated as prisoners of war, they would fight that much harder to