River run red

On April 12, 1864, on the Tennessee banks of the Mississippi River, a force of more than 3,000 Confederate cavalrymen under Nathan Bedford Forrest stormed Fort Pillow, overwhelming a garrison of some 350 Southern white Unionists and over 300 former slaves turned artillerymen. By the next day, hundreds of Federals were dead or wounded, over 60 black soldiers had been captured and reenslaved, and over 100 of their white comrades had been marched off to their doom at Andersonville. Confederates called this bloody battle and its aftermath a hard-won victory. Northerners deemed it premeditated slaughter. To this day, Fort Pillow remains one of the most controversial battles in American history. The fullest, most accurate account of the battle yet written, River Run Red depicts the incompetence and corruption of Union occupation in Tennessee, the horrors of guerrilla warfare, and the pent-up bigotry and rage that found its release at Fort Pillow. Andrew Ward brings to life the garrison's black troops and their ambivalent white comrades, and the former slave trader Nathan Bedford Forrest and his ferocious cavalry, in a narrative that hurtles toward that fateful April day and beyond.