In April, 1864, General Nathan Forrest and his men captured Fort Pillow in Jackson, Tennessee. The fort contained 262 African American and 295 white soldiers. It was afterwards claimed that most of these soldiers were killed after they surrendered.

Abraham Lincoln condemned the atrocity but refused to agree to the demands of William Seward (Secretary of State), Salmon Chase (Secretary of the Treasury), Gideon Welles (Secretary of the Navy) and Edwin M. Stanton (Secretary of War), that an equal number of Confederate prisoners should be executed in an act of revenge.

After the war an official investigation discovered evidence that "the Confederates were guilty of atrocities which included murdering most of the garrison after it surrendered, burying Negro soldiers alive, and setting fire to tents containing Federal wounded." However, N was never prosecuted for the offence and he went on to become the first Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.