"Gaming the more controversial actions of the war?" Topic

Just wondering how many of us have or would gamed such controversial battles as Poison Springs and Jenkins' Ferry in Arkansas or Fort Pillow in Tennessee?

Can we as gamers separate out the unpalatable parts to just game the battle itself or do we avoid those battles altogether?

Just wondering how many of us have or would gamed such controversial battles as Poison Springs and Jenkins' Ferry in Arkansas or Fort Pillow in Tennessee?

Forgive my ignorance, but what's controversial about them?

While the group here has played the Red River Campaign as a whole, neither battle you mention lends itself to the normal "fair fight" game we prefer. Still, I guess if you can come up with victory conditions to give both sides a chance, why not? I guess it's even possible to make a game on the burning of Atlanta if that floats your boat.

Avoid the battles altogether.

Massacres don't make good games, are you going to have special house rules to see if the Confederates break ranks to massacre black soldiers?

Sorry MajorB,

The controversies concern the killing of Black Union soldiers after they surrendered by the Confederates.

link

Hope that helps

Massacres don't make good games
Is this why people game the Alamo?

For me, it was always the 'desperate last stand' part of the Alamo battle that made a good game, not so much the 'execution of the disarmed prisoners' stage.

I have no wish to conflate the enjoyment of my hobby with the actions of morally bankrupt fanatic racists engaged in mass murder.

But maybe that's just me.

A last stand is not a massacre in game terms you might award a moral victory on how many turns the last standers manage to hold out.

Unarmed men being massacred, naw I'm not seeing the game in that. Perhaps the OP could shed some light?

During the fighting at all three engagements listed U.S.C.T were shot down 'in the heat of the battle', so let's be clear I am not discussing massacres of unarmed men. I have a scenario book with a Jenkins' Ferry scenario in it and an old miniature wargames issue with a scenario for Poison Springs…..I have never gamed either as yet

In all three actions, surrendering, already surrendered, and wounded black troops were murdered outright and sometimes scalped, dismembered, and otherwise tortured by "Good Old Rebels". These were no acts of war committed "in the heat of battle". They were acts of fanatical racist hatred and fear, and are among the worst war crimes committed on American soil by even nominally "American" troops. They are rightfully remembered only as shameful events, and it is doubly shameful to treat them otherwise.

You can still game the battles, but if any gamer would be so sick as to want to duplicate those actions, I wouldn't want to play with him again.

However in game terms, the units have already been 'removed'. So what is the problem?

We generally don't enquire too closely what has happened to our little lead heroes when we pick the bases up off the table, and irl all sorts of nasty things happened in all sorts of periods – massacre, murder, hanging, impaling, death marches, shipped to death camps, left to die on the steppe, bayonetted to death en masse while whooping onlookers cheer the killers on, burned alive, drowned, blown from cannons, thrown off bridges and out of windows etc. None of these sorts of things are generally modelled in our games, but they all happened.

Since the atrocities were all post-battle I'm not sure I understand what there is to game? Lots of colonial games involve potentially catastrophic endings for the losing side but the games really don't have a continuing resolution beyond win/lose.

I don't think you really thought this through (since you otherwise seem like a pretty reasonable fellow). Just to get this straight – your argument is that because there is a small chance of random individual brutality on any battlefield we should ignore *known* and *mass* incidents of torture and murder? I frankly don't see any sort of balancing effect, and think that such equivocating smacks of moral whitewashing.

Let's look at this from a practical wargaming perspective, if we must. The ACW was a war rich and replete with different tactical challenges – why is there any need to model the particular engagements where these horrible events occurred? And, even if you find a particular tactical challenge from these battles interesting, don't you think that a modicum of humanity and good taste would mean that you should remove it from its context and work up a hypothetical challenge instead?

Put in another context – would you wargame Wounded Knee?

A noncontroversial controversy. I would certainly game such battles as Braddock's Defeat, Oriskany, the Wabash, Fetterman's Massacre, or Little Big Horn. In any of these actions the winners showed no quarter, mutilated bodies, tortured captives to death, etc.

Of course the atrocities would happen off screen when the game part is over.

And the battles named above were all worse for the defeated than Fort Pillow.

Stupid topic, but i guess trolls gonna troll, right?

Yep.

Pretty much.

If there's a meaningful action to simulate (no matter how weighted in one side's direction), then yes, game it – so Jenkin's Ferry, the Alamo, Little Big Horn, various actions during the Battle of the Bulge, all suit. On the other hand, non-actions like Poison Springs or Lawrence or Fort Pillow don't have a central action that's worth playing. I don't buy the moral outrage against an important battle like Jenkin's Ferry being gamed, incidentally.

No moral outrage against Jenkins Ferry it just happens to be one of those battles where apart from regular fighting there were 'controversial incidents'

Was Fort Pillow a non-action? The Rebels stormed it after taking it under fire from the bluffs behind the fort. The shooting effectively 'suppressed' the garrison and allowed Forrest's men to get close enough to overrun the defenses.

I think that the main reason the fort was so easily captured is because the defenses were built to dominate the river, but the high ground just to the rear was left unoccupied. Booth, along with several gunners, were killed by sharpshooters, and Bradford appears to have been fairly incompetent.

I can see doing a re-fight where you present the Northern player with the terrain and give the fort a fake name. Maybe Fort Mattress or something. Let the Yankees set up how they want and see if you get a different result.

Just to get back to the gaming aspect, USCT had, as I understand it, been warned that they would be killed if the tried to surrender. USCT also, apparently, massacred Confederates that were taken prisoner as at Fort Pocahontas.

A letter from I.P. Farmer, a soldier from the 143rd sent to the "The Buckeye State" newspaper on July 7, 1864 in New Lisbon, Ohio,…

"The infantry fighting was done principally by the black troops and nobly did they repel the slander that "Niggers won't fight." Men who were in the fight told me that they charged several times to the mouths of the cannon in a Rebel fort and had to fall back. At the fifth charge they carried the works. The fort was in plain view of where I stood and I watched the volumes of white smoke it belched forth all day. The last charge was made after dark and during the time the sides of the fort seemed to be a sheet of flame. In five minutes all was dark and silent. The blacks had carried the works and a well credited camp report says that its garrison, over 200 in number, shared the fate of the garrison of Fort Pillow."

So the point is that if one side is aware that they are unlikely to be taken prisoner do they fight harder or panic and run

OP: Plenty of folks game the Battle of the Bulge without worrying about gaming Malmedy.

I game the Teutoberger Wald all the time – and the aftermath there was pretty awful

I've gamed Little Bighorn, The Alamo, Fetterman Fight, St Clair's defeat at Wabash, Braddock's Defeat, and the Bulge.
All these battles were really nasty with no quarter given or mutilation and torture inflicted on those who were defeated. Yet I love reading about and gaming them, although I obviously don't want to play the atrocities committed after the fighting, just the combat itself. If you don't want to game Jenkin's Ferry or Fort Pillow then also you shouldn't game San Jacinto, Isandlwana, Teutoburg Forest, the Warsaw Uprising or Operation Barbarossa, as all those fights saw atrocities that were as bad, actually probably worse, than those at the above mentioned Civil War battles.

Poison Springs just isn't interesting tactically unless you try to make it into a "save the wagons" type of game. I don't see any tactical reason to fight Fort Pillow on the table either. There's no way for the Union to win, or even have a victory condition to hold out a certain length of time.
Jenkin's Ferry is fairly interesting to me. One side outnumbered but with relatively secure flanks fighting successive waves of attackers. If I make a Trans-Mississippi scenario book, it will definitely have Jenkin's Ferry in it. Will I have special rules for massacring prisoners or wounded men? Of course not! That would be senseless, stupid, and turn off my customer base. Would a special rule increasing the ferocity of melee combat between USCT and the Confederates be insensitive? Its a very narrow rule tailored to a specific situation, and historically accurate, but I can see some people taking offense to it. But I don't think gaming Jenkin's Ferry as a whole should be avoided.
What about The Battle of the Crater? Would not these same issues apply?
So yes, if a battle can be made into a balanced and interesting scenario, I don't see any reason to avoid fighting it. There's no reason to shove controversy to the player's though.

Games where one side doesn't have a chance can be played, just need to program the losers then the real people all play the winning side and the one who does best wins the game.