Page:The rising son, or, The antecedents and advancement of the colored race (IA risingsonthe00browrich).pdf/382

 Brown during the great struggle in that territory. These black men, as it will be seen, bore the brunt of the fight, and never did men show more determined bravery than was exhibited on this occasion.

Nothing in the history of the Rebellion equalled in inhumanity and atrocity the horrid butchery at Fort Pillow, Kentucky, on the 13th of April, 1864. In no other school than slavery could human beings have been trained to such readiness for cruelties like these. Accustomed to brutality and bestiality all their lives, it was easy for them to perpetrate the atrocities which startled the civilized foreign world, as they awakened the indignation of our own people.

After the rebels were in undisputed possession of the fort, and the survivors had surrendered, they commenced the indiscriminate butchery of all the Federal soldiery. The colored soldiers threw down their guns, and raised their arms, in token of surrender; but not the least attention was paid to it. They continued to shoot down all they found. A number of them, finding no quarter was given, ran over the bluff to the river, and tried to conceal themselves under the bank and in the bushes, where they were pursued by the rebel savages, whom they implored to spare their lives. Their appeals were made in vain; and they were all shot down in cold blood, and, in full sight of the gunboat, chased and shot down like dogs. In passing up the bank of the river, fifty dead might be counted strewed along. One had crawled into a hollow log, and was killed in it; another had got over the bank into the river, and had got on a board that ran out into the water. He lay on it on his face, with his feet in the water. He lay there, when