When, later in the war, it was decided at the North to arm and use as soldiers such able-bodied negroes as might be induced to volunteer, the recruits were naturally drawn in the main from the large companies of runaway slaves who had escaped into the Federal lines. This fact gave to the military employment of negroes against the South the aspect of an attempt to create a servile insurrection and war—the one thing which had been always most dreaded in those states in which the negroes outnumbered the whites. Servile insurrection was understood to mean rapine, the burning of homes, the butchery of women and little children, and all else of horror that savage warfare may signify. The Southerners therefore held the enlistment of negroes in the Northern armies to be an act of unforgivable vandalism and savagery. They peremptorily refused to recognize the negro anywhere as a soldier, or in case of his capture to treat him as a prisoner of war.
In execution of that purpose of absolute and unflinching historical truthfulness which the author of this work has tried to make his only inspiration, it must be said that in many cases, and particularly on occasions of raids into undefended country, certain of the negro troops did many things to justify the Southern view of the iniquity of their employment against white men. In regions undefended they frequently committed outrages of a kind which the instincts of humanity never forgive.
It is proper here to emphasize again the fact to which the present historian directed earnest attention in a work published in 1874—namely, that throughout the war, when all the Southern white men were in the field, and when all the plantations with the women and children inhabiting their homes were unprotected, the negro slaves who remained upon the plantations were affectionately loyal and obedient, nowhere instituting insurrection or in any other wise betraying the trust reposed in their fidelity and affection, and this in spite of the fact that they perfectly knew that the failure of the South in the War must result in their own emancipation. Emphasis is here given to this fact in order that nothing recorded concerning the atrocities committed by certain negro troops shall impair or reflect upon the negro character generally.
But from beginning to end the Confederates refused to recognize the right of their enemy to enlist their runaway slaves in the war against them. From first to last they refused to regard negroes as soldiers, entitled to be treated as such. So returning to our theme, it must be said that when Forrest found Fort Pillow garrisoned chiefly by negro troops, even had he desired it to be otherwise, he could not have prevented the slaughter that ensued. His men simply would not make prisoners of war out of negroes in arms, and the result of the struggle was a Federal loss of about 500 killed together with nearly all their officers, while the Confederates according to Forrest's report lost only about twenty men. In his dispatches, written at that time of excitement, Forrest said, "It is hoped that these facts will demonstrate to the Northern people that negro soldiers cannot cope with Southerners." His words have since been construed to mean a blood-thirsty antagonism to the negroes. That construction may be correct, but General Forrest himself contended to the end of his life that he meant only to point out the ease with which Southern soldiers conquered and destroyed this negro force as illustrating the inefficiency of black men in fighting white men. That meaning would seem to be the only one which it is necessary to give to the language of his dispatch.
Other minor operations during the period of preparation for the tremendous struggle of 1864 were carried on in different parts of the South with results that had no important bearing upon the general course of the contest or upon its outcome. These operations need not be more particularly mentioned here.
[CHAPTER XLIV]
Grant's Plan of Campaign
As the month of April neared its end Grant prepared to execute the plans he had so laboriously formed, and for which he had given to all his lieutenants in every quarter of the country orders as minute as they could be made without risk of leaving any lieutenant embarrassed for want of liberty of action in the event of an emergency.
For the sake of a clear understanding let us state again in brief outline his scheme of operation. His fundamental conception was that in order to conquer the Confederacy he must destroy its armies in the field, and especially Lee's army, which had been from the first the chief source and center of danger to the Federal cause, both by reason of its superb fighting quality, and by reason of the masterful genius of Lee that directed it. Grant's first care, therefore, was so to employ all the subsidiary forces in all quarters of the South as to prevent the sending of any reinforcements to Lee.