Jim Martin
Re: Revisionist (A Nonsensical Appellation)
Tue Jul 24 12:05:58 2001


I was watching a program recently on the Discovery Channel called "The Real Jamestown". The story concerned the recent finding of the location of the settlement (no thanks to the NPS or the professional archaeological community) for over a hundred years thought lost and underwater.

Evidence was shown, that until the time of the American Civil War, the history books focused on Jamestown as the first English settlement in the New World with Plymouth and the Pilgrims as a sidenote. After the CW, all of the text books changed and then pointed to Plymouth, MA as the founding of our country with almost nothing said about Jamestown. The program stated that the North, recent victors of a war fought on high moral precepts and including the destruction of slavery could not tolerate a Southern location (Virginia) being taught as our American beginnings.

My "hometown" is Memphis, TN and I have visited, metal-detected and scoured the Fort Pillow battlefield many times both before and after it was a park. The Timber Rattlers in the area can run-off logging crews in the Summer months. As a student of Forrest and his command (it's almost impossible not to be one if you're in Memphis), I've read and investigated most of the claims of his heroic acts and tactical genius and his negatives, including his pre-war engagement in the slave-trade and the claims of atrocities, not only at Fort Pillow, but at Paducah, KY, Brice's Crossroads, MS and other locations.

I also have a mixed ancestry of Confederate Alabamians, Tennessee Unionists and Confederates, Confederate and Union Indians, Kentucky Unionists and my surname "Martin" is from a family in Bedford, IN who contributed four of seven sons to the Union, of which two returned. I take equal pride in the exploits all of my family who gave up so much, for so long for what "they" thought was right and honorable.

Perhaps, due to my Native-American ancestry I am most skeptical when I see the words "massacre" and "actrocities", as so many of the encounters with the Cherokee in the 17th and 18th centuries were so misrepresented to give confirmation to the Europeans that the killing of Native-Americans and the taking of their homes was justified and good.

So many of these accounts of the "good" white men and the "heathen" and "evil" Indian are the products of "primary sources" fabricated and foisted on the public as fact.

But, I must admit, that the stories of the Cherokee, even from their official documents and tribal council gatherings are just as lopsided in favor of the heroic and just Cherokee.

What I've found is that the real story most often lies somewhere in between. For anyone to look at Fort Pillow with the racial and regional composition of the garrison, local claims of atrocities on Southern families, the terrible leadership of Union commanders Bradford and Booth, the failed use of the "New Era", the fears of the Tennessee Unionists and African-American soldiers, the stated position of the Confederate government to return black soldiers to their masters or enslave them to work for the Confederate government, the prior attacks against the honor of Forrest's men from the Chicago and Louisville newpapers, and I could go on and on. Fort Pillow was a powder keg, waiting to explode.

Still however, to call this a massacre which is the same word to describe events such as , Sand Creek, Wounded Knee and Goliad doesn't seem to fit. I'm sure there were atrocities, but I'm also sure that the mindset of the Union garrison and their actions after the Confederates stormed the fort contributed greatly to the high losses, especially suffered by the black troops.

We'll not settle this here and I'm sure a hundred years from now, we will argue about how many scalps were taken at Pea Ridge and who took them? Did Forrest plan and participate in