Reports of the Committee on the Conduct of the War Part 17

Answer. Colonel Hardgrove.

Question. Where did you live?

Answer. I lived three miles the other side of Brown's mills.

Question. How long since you lived with him?

Answer. I went home once and staid with him a while, but he got to cutting up and I came away again.

Question. What did you do before you went into the fight?

Answer. I was cooking for Co. K, of Illinois cavalry; I cooked for that company nearly two years.

Question. What white officers did you know in our army?

Answer. I knew Captain Meltop and Colonel Ransom; and I cooked at the hotel at Fort Pillow, and Mr. Nelson kept it. I and Johnny were cooking together. After they shot me through the hand and head, they beat up all this part of my head (the side of his head) with the breech of their guns.

Ransom Anderson, (colored,) Co. B, 6th United States heavy artillery, sworn and examined.

By Mr. Gooch:

Question. Where were you raised?

Answer. In Mississippi.

Question. Were you a slave?

Answer. Yes, sir.

Question. Where did you enlist?

Answer. At Corinth.

Question. Were you in the fight at Fort Pillow?

Answer. Yes, sir.

Question. Describe what you saw done there.

Answer. Most all the men that were killed on our side were killed after the fight was over. They called them out and shot them down. Then they put some in the houses and shut them up, and then burned the houses.

Question. Did you see them burn?

Answer. Yes, sir.

Question. Were any of them alive?

Answer. Yes, sir; they were wounded, and could not walk. They put them in the houses, and then burned the houses down.

Question. Do you know they were in there?

Answer. Yes, sir; I went and looked in there.

Question. Do you know they were in there when the house was burned?

Answer. Yes, sir; I heard them hallooing there when the houses were burning.

Question. Are you sure they were wounded men, and not dead, when they were put in there?

Answer. Yes, sir; they told them they were going to have the doctor see them, and then put them in there and shut them up, and burned them.

Question. Who set the house on fire?

Answer. I saw a rebel soldier take some gra.s.s and lay it by the door, and set it on fire. The door was pine plank, and it caught easy.

Question. Was the door fastened up?

Answer. Yes, sir; it was barred with one of those wide bolts.

Sergeant W. P. Walker, (white,) sworn and examined:

By Mr. Gooch:

Question. In what capacity did you serve in the army?

Answer. I was a sergeant in the 13th Tennessee cavalry, company D.

Question. Were you at Fort Pillow at the time of the fight there?

Answer. Yes, sir.

Question. Will you state what took place there?

Answer. In the morning the pickets ran in. We were sent out a piece as skirmishers. They kept us out about a couple of hours, and then we retreated into the fort. The firing kept up pretty regular until about two o'clock, when a flag of truce came in. While the flag of truce was in, the enemy was moving up and taking their positions; they were also pilfering and searching our quarters.

Question. They finally took the fort?

Answer. Yes, sir.

Question. What happened then?

Answer. They just shot us down without showing us any quarter at all.

They shot me, for one, after I surrendered; they shot me in the arm, and the shoulder, and the neck, and in the eye.