Forrest either ordered his men to accept no surrender or his Confederates lost control but in either case, they began to slaughter black soldiers. The casualty list confirms a massacre. Confederates suffered 14 killed and 86 wounded, while the Union force lost 231 killed and 100 wounded; only 58 of the 226 surviving Union prisoners were black soldiers.
The U.S. Congress’s Committee on the Conduct of the War investigated, and after much testimony from survivors—including horrifying accounts of black soldiers being buried alive—it denounced the Confederate actions as murder and atrocity. Forrest’s most complimentary biographer, Brian Steel Wills, concluded that the committee’s findings were valid and that Forrest was responsible for the slaughter.
Check it out:
Brian Steel Wills, A Battle from the Start: The Life of Nathan Bedford Forrest, 1992
See also:
Albert Castel, The Fort Pillow Massacre: A Fresh Examination of the Evidence, Civil War History, 1958
I accept that Forrest was a capable officer and certainly his bravery is unquestioned. The fly in the buttermilk is that Forrest fought in the west, the Confederacy surrendered in the east.
Elias Fall's a negro soldier testified at the Congressional Committee that General Forrest expressly gave orders to stop shooting, and that, "after peace was made," an office told a "Secesh soldier," if he did that again (shoot), he would arrest him.
The burned bodies you refer to probably came from the Federals burning the fort or the New Era gunboat shelling the Confederates as they buried Union soldiers following the battle.
Thomas Addison's testimony was unreliable as well.
Also if you look at the questioning of the committee, the questions were phrased in a leading fashion.
i repeat: the so-called "massacre" NEVER happened. period. end of story.
PITY that evidently you're too dumb to know that.
free dixie,sw