The Battle Of Fort Pillow Essay

”We have but one flag, one country; let us stand together. We may differ in color, but not in sentiment.” -Nathan Bedford Forrest said in July 1875 during his speech to the black southerners of the Independent Order of Pole-Bearers Association. This was his last public appearance before his death and was considered a “friendly speech. This turned out to be one of the more controversial quotes Nathan Bedford Forrest ever stated. He claims that blacks are no different than us yet he is the first leader of the KKK (Grand Wizard) and has no problem putting black men in fields and working them to death. The Ku Klux Klan was formed in 1866 in Tennessee as a social group by a group of Confederate war veterans. They all wanted this group to be
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The former Confederate general and also white supremacist Nathan Bedford Forrest, architect of the Fort Pillow Massacre, became the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. The Klan murdered thousands of people in the former Confederate states in hope to stop the political positions of black Southerners. The Fort Pillow Massacre in Tennessee was on April 12, 1864, and about 300 African Americans died, and proved to be one of the more controversial battles of the Civil War. Confederates spotted and captured Union garrison which surrendered, and should have been taken as prisoners of the war, but the soldiers were killed. Since the South killed the prisoners instead of keeping them, the North was angry and wouldn’t trade prisoners any longer. In 1861, the Confederates constructed a military base at Fort Pillow, and named it for General Gideon Johnson Pillow, a Tennessee native. Fort Pillow overlooked the Mississippi River and was an important part of the Confederate river defense system before it was captured by federal forces in the summer of 1862. In March 1864, Confederate Major General Nathan Bedford Forrest who was the eventual leader of the KKK launched a cavalry raid in western Tennessee and Kentucky that was supposed to destroy Union supply lines and capture federal prisoners. In early April, he was determined to move on Fort Pillow, located 40 miles
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It came from Greek word kuklos which means circle, and klan was alliteration for clan, so Ku Klux Klan is said to be a clan, or band of brothers. They treated each other like family, had the same beliefs and were very trustworthy of each other. Also the name comes from three movements in the U.S. that have supported the KKK. This includes topics like white supremacy, white nationalism, and anti-immigration. The KKK used terrorism, including physical harm and murder, against groups and people that would not agree with the Klan. All three movements have been called the "purification" of American society by the Klan. This felt to the Klan like they had conquered the world, had supreme power, and they had did it. They have erased blacks from our country politically and socially in their