This is one of the key issues I'm hoping Wills will look at. It's always been alleged that Forrest, the die-hard rebel, deliberately ordered the black soldiers killed. The men he commanded were not prime specimens, either, but guys who were literally beat out of the brush - deserters, skulkers, draft-dodgers, etc. A lot of them had hard feelings toward Ft Pillow. It's possible, though, he turned a blind eye. He had some mashed ribs from an earlier accident...but he'd been working a Parrot gun on the river. He didn't lead the attack himself - Chalmers did - because he suddenly needed to have those ribs fixed. The question, of course, is: did he just get to the point he couldn't tough out broken ribs anymore, or did he find it a convenient excuse to absent himself (and deflect culpability) from what he knew would be a nasty thing, perhaps something he couldn't control?