Sanitary Fair Speech, President Lincoln April 18, 1864

Six days after the massacre at Fort Pillow, Abe Lincoln took to Baltimore, Maryland to speak about the liberty, partly in the context of the 13th Amendment and the freeing of slaves. While the opening of the speech focuses on the different definitions of liberty the North and South have, the second part of his speech focused on Fort Pillow. One line of the speech that sticks out to me, and gives mention to the public opinion at the time, was "To take the life of one of their prisoners, on the assumption that they murdered ours, when it is short of certainty that they do murder ours, might be too serious, too cruel a mistake." 

Lincoln had to address the issue of "retribution" as he later called it because not only were there opinions within his own party that favored retribution, like Wade, but there were also many citizens who felt the need to do so, otherwise he would not have had to mention it in his address. Another indication from his address that there was strong support (cannot determine how strong, but strong enough to matter) for retribution was Lincoln's diction. Lincoln went as far as saying that he thought the investigation would find no massacre, likely in hopes of calming down the situation and the opinion of the masses. He also reiterates multiple times that it has yet to be proven that there was a massacre. He is likely doing so because Northern papers at the time were not waiting for the congressional report to deem the event a massacre. 

This helps my argument that Wade did not need to exaggerate the findings of the report in order to get support for retribution. The support was already there, or Lincoln would not have had to address it. It is possible that if Wade had concluded some of the more unrealistic Northern claims from his report, that it would have been taken more seriously and the Battle of Fort Pillow would be a rallying cry for retribution. But by publishing some far fetched claims of Southern brutality and publishing a report on the treatment of prisoners, Fort Pillow faded into the background and prisoner treatment came to the foreground. The treatment of prisoners had a solution to lessen brutality and weakened the push for retribution.