Although lacking in formal military training, Nathan Bedford Forrest was among the Civil War's most brilliant cavalry commanders. A slave trader prior to the war, Forrest hoped to use the Fort Pillow battle to demonstrate the foolishness of using African-Americans in combat. (Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Brady-Handy Photograph Collection.)

News of the Fort Pillow massacre created a wave of sensational headlines in northern newspapers. This headline from the New York Herald was typical.(New York Herald, April 16, 1864.)

This Harper's Weekly illustration depicts northern soldiers being brutally slaughtered by Confederates during the Fort Pillow Massacre. (Harper's Weekly, April 30, 1864.)

Typical of many portrayals of the Fort Pillow massacre, this depiction shows helpless Union soldiers being massacred by Confederates. (Frank Leslie's Illustrated Weekly, 1894)

The Fort Pillow massacre would permanently fix the reputation of Nathan Bedford Forrest as a heartless murderer in the minds of many Northerners. For the rest of his life, Forrest was known as 'the butcher of Fort Pillow.' (From cartoon by Thomas Nast, titled 'Leaders of the Democratic Party' with the label 'The Butcher Forrest,' 1868. Library of Congress, Broadside Collection, LC-USZ62-43958.)