Question. To what company and regiment do you belong?
Answer. Company E, 13th Tennessee cavalry.
Question. What was your position?
Answer. I was the company commissary sergeant.
Question. Where do you reside?
Answer. In Lauderdale county, Tennessee.
Question. What was your occupation?
Answer. I was a farmer.
Question. Were you at Fort Pillow when the fight was there?
Answer. Yes, sir.
Question. State what happened there.
Answer. The first thing, I went out sharpshooting, and was out about two hours, and then was ordered in the fort. I staid there, I reckon, about an hour. Then I was called out by Lieutenant Akerstrom to go down alongside the bluff sharpshooting again, because the rebels were coming down Cold creek. We staid there all the time until they charged into the fort. Then they all ran down under the hill, and we went down under the hill too. I reckon we staid there close on to an hour. They were shooting continually. I saw them shooting the white men there who were on their kees, holding up their hands to them. I saw them make another man get down on his knees and beg of them, and they did not shoot him. I started out to go up the hill, and just as I started I was shot in the thigh. Pretty well towards the last of it, before I got shot, while I was down under the hill, a rebel officer came down right on top of the bluff, and hallooed out to them to shoot and kill the last damned one of us.
Question. Do you know the rank of that officer?
Answer. I do not. I can't tell them as I can our officers. Their uniform is different. I went round on the hill then. I heard several of them say it was General Forrest's orders to them to shoot us and give us no quarter at all. I don't know whether they were officers who said so or not. I don't recollect anything else particularly that I saw that night. The next morning they came round there again, shooting the negroes that were wounded. I saw them shoot some 20 or 25 negroes the next morning who had been wounded, and had been able to get up on the hill during the night. They did not attempt to hurt us white men the next morning.
Question. Were any of their officers with the men who were round shooting the negroes the next morning?
Answer. One passed along on horseback, the only one I saw. He rode along while they were shooting the negroes, and said nothing to them. I said, "Captain, what are you going to do with us wounded fellows?" He said they were going to put us on the gunboats, or leave us with the gunboats. He had a feather in his cap, and looked like he might have been a captain. I don't know what he was. He was the only man I saw pass that looked like an officer while they were shooting the negroes.
Question. Where were you when the flags of truce were sent in?
Answer. I was down under the bluff sharpshooting.
Question. Is there anything else that you think of important to state?
Answer. I don't know that there is.
Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War be, and they are hereby, instructed to inquire into the truth of the rumored slaughter of the Union troops, after their surrender, at the recent attack of the rebel forces upon Fort Pillow, Tennessee; as, also, whether Fort Pillow could have been sufficiently re-enforced or evacuated, and if so, why it was not done; and that they report the facts to Congress as soon as possible. Approved April 21, 1864. Page 45