The Mississippi Marine Brigade was a Union army unit, despite its confusing name. It was an amphibious strike force, relying on boats on the Mississippi River for quick transport to the scene of action, where the men would disembark and then function like any other land-based unit. The brigade was composed of infantry, artillery, and cavalry units, under the overall command of Brig. Gen. Alfred W. Ellet. Known as a man who could stretch the truth, Ellet was aghast at what he and his men saw on June 30, 1863 as they marched inland, following the ashen path of Parsons’ troopers. The smoking ruins of slave cabins contained charred corpses, “sick negroes whom the unscrupulous enemy were too indifferent to remove,” he wrote in his report.

Maj. James Farnan of the 5th Illinois Cavalry relayed a similar report to Lt. Col. Samuel J. Nasmith of the 25th Wisconsin Infantry:  “charred remains found in numerous instances testified to a degree of fiendish atrocity such as has no parallel either in civilized or savage warfare.”

U.S. General-in-chief Henry Halleck wrote to Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant at Vicksburg in August, enclosing an article from the Missouri Democrat declaring that the Mississippi Marine Brigade, after the battle at Milliken’s Bend, had found charred human remains, including those of white officers who had been crucified! Grant found the article ludicrous, and dismissed it out of hand.

Though undoubtedly exaggerated and sensationalized, it does seems that the Missouri Democrat may be based upon a kernel of truth – that burned corpses had been found by the Mississippi Marine Brigade in the wake of Parsons’ raid. This occurred in late June, and bore no relationship to the fight at Milliken’s Bend. It also appears to have been unsystematic. It was not a deliberate atrocity. Though horrifying, Ellet’s initial response was probably correct. The bodies were probably those of sick Negroes who could not flee their burning cabins. But Parsons’ mission to evacuate as many freedpeople as possible to Louisiana’s interior would seem to indicate that those who died in the flames were victims of reckless and indiscriminate destruction, not special targeting.

But rumors of Confederate atrocities, like the burning flames, would flare up, then subside, throughout that summer. The fate of some of the men captured at Milliken’s Bend would not be learned until later that fall; and others would not be heard from until months after the war’s end in 1865.

Source: Milliken’s Bend: A Civil War Battle in History and Memory, pp. 124-126.