Description:
The battlefield reputation of Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest, long recognized as a formidable warrior, has been shaped by one infamous wartime incident. At Fort Pillow in 1864, the attack by Confederate forces under Forrest's command left many of the Tennessee Unionists and black soldiers garrisoned there dead in a confrontation widely labeled as a "massacre." In The River Was Dyed with Blood, Brian Steel Wills argues that although atrocities did occur after the fall of the fort, Forrest did not order or intend a systematic execution of its defenders. Rather, the general's great failing was losing control of his troops.
Brief description: Brian Steel Wills is the author of numerous books on Civil War history, including The Confederacy's Greatest Cavalryman: Nathan Bedford Forrest and George Henry Thomas: As True as Steel.
Review Quotes:
"Readers of Brian Steel Wills's biography of Nathan Bedford Forrest, A Battle from the Start, know the quality of his work. Wills now gives us the most comprehensive, dispassionate, and objective look we are likely to get of Forrest's most controversial moment--those awful minutes at Fort Pillow, Tennessee, when warfare briefly became butchery. The River Was Dyed with Blood must become our safest guide through the murky terrain that separates soldiery from savagery, and how participants and posterity choose to remember moments many would rather forget."--William C. Davis, author of The Fighting Men of the Civil War