Fort Pillow, Tennessee. Confederate troops under Nathan Bedford Forrest commit atrocities against captured Black Union prisoners, killing dozens. Lincoln refuses immediate revenge on the Confederate prisoners. But in a battle on the Mississippi shortly thereafter, a Union lieutenant writes, “We didn’t take many prisoners. The Negroes remembered Fort Pillow.” The Confederates will continue to refuse equal treatment for white and Black prisoners throughout the conflict. Grant, however, refuses a prisoner exchange, because the Confederates would swell the depleted Confederate ranks. By the end of the war, 194,000 Union and 215,000 Confederate prisoners will be held captive, of whom 30,000 and 26,000 respectively will lose their lives while in captivity.
