Fort Pillow Read online

  Fort Pillow

  Harry Turtledove

  Harry Turtledove

  Fort Pillow

  I

  Jackson, Tennessee, was a town laid out with big things in mind. The first streets were ninety feet wide. The first courthouse was built of logs, back at the start of the 1820s. Now, more than forty years later, buildings of red and gray brick prevailed. Oaks and elms helped shade those broad streets.

  The Madison County seat had not flourished quite so much as its founders hoped. Still, with the Forked Deer River running through the town and two railroads meeting there, Jackson was modestly prosperous, or a bit more than modestly. It was a considerable market for lumber and furs and produce from the farms in the Forked Deer valley.

  When civil war tore the United States in two, Jackson went back and forth between Union and Confederacy several times. Confederate General Beauregard made his headquarters there in early 1862. From that summer to the following spring, Jackson lived under the Stars and Stripes as one of U.S. Grant's supply depots. Then Nathan Bedford Forrest's cavalry ran the Yankees out again.

  In June 1863, U.S. General Hatch defeated the Confederate garrison and reoccupied the town. Now, in April 1864, Forrest was back, and the Stainless Banner replaced the U.S. flag.

  Forrest had his headquarters in the Duke home on Main Street. Two years earlier, Grant had stayed in the same two — story Georgian Colonial house. The Dukes were happier to accommodate the Confederate cavalry commander than they had been to host his opponent in blue.

  Although Forrest went to church on Sunday morning, he did not treat the Sabbath as a day of rest. For one thing, he couldn't afford to. For another, his driving energy made him hate idleness at any time. He paced back and forth across the Dukes' parlor like a caged catamount, boots clumping on the rugs and thumping on the oak planks of the floor.

  He was a big man, two inches above six feet, towering over the other Confederate officers in the room. He could have beaten any of them in a fight, with any weapons or none. He knew it and they knew it; it gave him part of his power over them. Though his chin beard was graying, his wavy hair had stayed dark. His blue eyes could go from blizzard cold to incandescent in less than a heartbeat.

  “I wrote to Bishop Polk last week that I was going to take Fort Pillow,” he said. He had a back — country accent, but a voice that could expand at need to fill any room or any battlefield. “I reckon we can go about doing it now. All the pieces are in place. “

  His aide — de — camp, Captain Charles Anderson, nodded. “Yes, sir,” he said. “General Buford's raising Cain up in Kentucky, and we've got enough men looking busy down by Memphis to keep the damnyankees there from moving north along the Mississippi.”

  “About time we gave that garrison what it deserves,” Forrest said. “Past time, by God. Niggers and homemade Yankees…” He scowled at the idea.

  “Wonder which is worse,” Anderson said.

  “Beats me.” Nathan Bedford Forrest's scowl deepened. That black men should take up arms against whites turned every assumption on which the Confederate States of America were founded upside down and inside out. “You sooner get bit by a cottonmouth or a rattlesnake?”

  Dr. J. B. Cowan, the chief surgeon on Forrest's staff, looked up from his cup of sassafras tea. “No,” he said. “I'd sooner not.”

  The concise medical opinion made Forrest and the rest of his staff officers laugh. But mirth did not stay on the commanding general's face for long. Most of the white Union troops in Fort Pillow were Tennesseans themselves, enemy soldiers from a state that belonged in the Confederacy. When they came out of their works, they plundered the people who should have been their countrymen. If half of what Forrest heard was true, they did worse than that to the womenfolk. And so…

  “We'll move then,” Forrest said. “Captain Anderson!” “Yes, sir?”

  “Colonel McCulloch's brigade is at Sharon's Ferry along the Forked Deer, right?” Forrest said. Anderson nodded. Forrest went on, “And General Bell's got his brigade up at Eaton, in Gibson County?” He waited.

  Charles Anderson nodded again. “Yes, sir, that's where he was last we heard from him.”

  Forrest waved dismissively. “Yankees haven't got enough men up there to shift him, so that's where he's at, all right. How many soldiers you reckon McCulloch and Bell put together have?”

  Anderson's eyes took on a faraway look. Under his mustache, his lips moved silently. He wore a neat beard much like Bedford Forrest's. “I'd say about fifteen hundred, sir.”

  “ 'Bout what I ciphered out for myself. Wanted to make sure you were with me.” Forrest's gaze sharpened. “Now, Captain, how many Yankees d'you suppose Fort Pillow holds?”

  “It can't have half that many.” This time, Anderson didn't hesitate, though he did add, “They've got a gunboat out in the river to support the place.”

  “That's bluff country,” Forrest said. “Gunboat won't be able to see up high enough to do 'em much good. Send orders to McCulloch and Bell, Captain. Get 'em moving tomorrow. I want them to hit Fort Pillow first thing Tuesday morning. We will take it away from the United States, and we will free this part of Tennessee from Yankee oppression. “

  “Yes, sir,” Anderson said once more. “General Bell in overall command?”

  “No, General Chalmers.” Forrest made a sour face. He'd tried to have James Chalmers posted somewhere other than under his command, but he'd been overruled both here in the West and by the War Department in Richmond. Chalmers was a good — better than a good — cavalry officer, but not respectful enough of those set above him. In that way, and in some others, he was more than a little like Forrest himself, though he had the education his superior lacked.

  “I'll draft the orders, sir, and I'll send them out as soon as you approve them,” Captain Anderson said.

  “Good. That's good. Tell General Bell especially not to sit around there lollygagging. He's got a long way to travel if he's going to get there by morning after next. He'd better set out just as fast as he can.”

  Anderson's pen scratched across a sheet of paper. “I'll make it very plain,” Forrest's aide — de — camp promised. Forrest nodded. Anderson was a good writer, a confident writer. He made things sound the way they were supposed to. As for Forrest himself, he would sooner pick up a snake than a pen.

  Fort Pillow was not a prime post. When it rained, as it was raining this Monday morning, Lieutenant Mack Leaming's barracks leaked. Pots and bowls on the floor caught the drips. The plink and splat of water falling into them was often better at getting men of the Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry (U.S.) out of bed than reveille would have been.

  One of the troopers in the regiment swore as he sat up. “Listen to that for a while and you reckon you've got to piss, even if you just went and did,” he grumbled.

  “Piss on the Rebs,” said the fellow in the next cot.

  “Pipe down, both of you,” Leaming hissed. He was about twenty — five, with a round face, surprisingly innocent blue eyes, and a scraggly, corn — yellow mustache that curled down around the corners of his mouth. “Some of the boys are still sleeping.” Snores proved him right. Quite a few of the “boys” were older than he was.

  The bugler's horn sounded a few minutes later. Some of the men slept in their uniforms. The ones who'd stripped to their long johns climbed into Federal blue once more. Some of them had worn gray earlier in the war. Most of those troopers were all the more eager to punish backers of the Confederacy. A few, perhaps, might put on gray again if they saw the chance.

  Leaming chuckled softly as he pulled on his trousers. That wouldn't be so easy. The United States wanted men who'd fought for the other side to return to the fold. The Confederates were less forgiving. In places like western Tennessee, the wa
r wasn't country against country. It was neighbor against neighbor, friend against former friend.

  Some of the troopers wore government — issue kepis. More used broad — brimmed slouch hats that did a better job of keeping the rain out of their faces.

  “Come on, boys,” Leaming said. “Let's get out there for roll call. Don't want to keep Major Bradford waiting.”

  Bill Bradford was a man with pull. The Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry was his creation. Recruitment and promotion were informal in these parts. Since Bradford came into U.S. service with a lot of men riding behind him, that won him the gold oak leaves on his shoulder straps. And he'd made an able enough commander so far.

  Pulling his own slouch hat down low over his eyes, Mack Leaming went outside. Along with the Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry, four companies of heavy artillery and a section of light artillery were lining up for roll call and inspection. Leaming lips skinned back from his teeth in a mirthless grin. The artillerymen came from colored outfits. The officers and senior sergeants were white men, but the men they led had been slaves till they decided to take up arms against the whites who'd held them in bondage — and who wanted to keep on doing it.

  Nigger soldiers, Leaming thought. He didn't like fighting on the same side as black men in arms — he was no nigger lover, even if he fought for the U.S.A. A Negro with a Springfield in his hands went dead against everything the South stood for. Leaming also wondered if the blacks would fight, if they could fight.

  They looked impressive enough. They were, on average, both older and taller than the men in his own regiment. They drilled smartly, going through their evolutions with smooth precision. But could they fight? He'd believe it when he saw it.

  Major Booth, who commanded them, seemed to have no doubts. Leaming might have trouble taking colored troops seriously. Nobody in his right mind, though, could lightly dismiss Lionel Booth. He was a veteran of the Regular Army, his face weathered though he was only in his mid — twenties, one cheek scarred by a bullet crease. Though he and his men came up from Memphis only a couple of weeks before, he was senior in grade to Major Bradford and in overall command at Fort Pillow.

  Back when the war was new, Confederate General Gideon Pillow ordered the First Chickasaw Bluff of the Mississippi fortified. With customary modesty, he named the position after himself. As the crow flew, Fort Pillow lay not quite forty miles north of Memphis. Following the river's twists and turns, the crow would have flown twice as far, near enough.

  General Pillow didn't think small when he built his works. His line ran for a couple of miles from Coal Creek on the north to the Mississippi on the west. The next Confederate officer who had to try to hold the place built a shorter line inside the one Pillow laid out.

  That didn't do any good, either. When the Confederates in the West fell back in 1862, Federal troops occupied Fort Pillow. The U.S. Army kept nothing but the tip of the triangle between the Mississippi and Coal Creek. The present earthworks protected only the bluffs at the apex of the triangle and ran for perhaps four hundred feet. The Federals did keep pickets in rifle pits dug along the second, shorter, Confederate line.

  These days, six pieces of field artillery aided the defenders: two six — pounders, two twelve — pounders, and two ten — pounder Parrott long guns. They were newly arrived with the colored troops from the Sixth U.S. Heavy Artillery and Second U.S. Light Artillery. Having come under artillery fire, Leaming liked it no better than anyone else in his right mind. He assumed the Confederates felt the same way.

  Major Bradford strode up in front of the drawn — up ranks of cavalrymen. Leaming saluted him. “All men present and accounted for, sir,” he said. Military formality sounded good. Outside the perimeter defined by the soldiers in the rifle pits, where would the troopers of the Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry go? If they didn't ride out in force, they were asking to get bushwhacked, to get knocked over the head and tipped into the Mississippi or buried in shallow graves with their throats cut.

  “Thank you, Lieutenant.” Bradford returned Leaming's salute with a grand flourish. He enjoyed being a major. He didn't much enjoy losing command of the fort to Major Booth. He couldn't do anything about it, though, not unless he wanted to arrange an accident for the younger man. Nodding to Leaming, he said, “Have the men fall out for sick call.”

  “Fall out for sick call,” Leaming echoed.

  Four or five men did. One of them shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot. “Sir, permission to visit the latrines?” he said. When Leaming nodded, he scurried away.

  Most of the sick men probably had some kind of flux of the bowels. Camp in one place for a while and that would happen, no matter how careful you were. Bad air or something, Leaming thought. Doctors couldn't do much about it. An opium plug might slow down the shits for a while.

  If you were already plugged up, the surgeon would give you a bluemass suppository instead. Leaming didn't know what the hell blue mass was. By the way it shifted whatever you had inside you, he suspected it was related to gunpowder.

  After roll call, he went up to Bradford and asked, “Any word of trouble from the Rebs?”

  “Not here.” The other officer shook his head. “I reckon General Hurlbut started seeing shadows under his bed, that's all. Why else would he send us all those darnn niggers?” He had even less use for them than Leaming did.

  “Worried about Forrest, I expect,” Leaming said. “Way he chased Fielding Hurst into Memphis…”

  Colonel Hurst's Sixth Tennessee Cavalry (U.S.) had had the misfortune of running into a detachment from Forrest's force not long before. Hurst's men were rough and tough and nasty. They needed to be. Like the Thirteenth, they were homemade Yankees, and the hand of every Secesh man in the state was raised against them. However rough, tough, and nasty they were, they couldn't stand up to Forrest's troopers.

  Major Bradford chuckled unkindly. “I hear tell Hurst ran away so hard, he galloped right out from under his hat.”

  What could be more fun than hashing over another outfit's shortcomings? “I hear tell he left his white mistress behind,” Leaming said, “and his colored one, too.”

  Now Bradford laughed a dirty laugh. “He had to have variety — unless he put 'em both in the same bed at the same time.” With a sigh, he pulled his mind back to matters military. “But anyway, Forrest isn't anywhere near here. He's off at Jackson, and that's got to be seventy miles away.”

  “I was talking with one of the officers who came up with the coons,” Leaming said. “You know what Forrest had the nerve to do?”

  “Son of a bitch has the nerve to do damn near anything. That's what makes him such a nuisance,” Major Bradford said. “What is it this time?”

  “He sent Memphis a bill for the five thousand and however many dollars Colonel Hurst squeezed out of Jackson while he held it,” Leaming said.

  Bradford laughed again, this time on a different note. “He better not hold his breath till he gets it, that's all I've got to say. He'll be a mighty blue man in a gray uniform if he does. Besides, that's not all Hurst has squeezed out of the Rebs — not even close.”

  “Don't I know it!” Mack Leaming spoke more in admiration than anything else. Colonel Fielding Hurst had turned the war into a profitable business for himself. People said he'd taken more than $100,000 from Confederate sympathizers in western Tennessee. Leaming couldn't have said if that was true, but he wouldn't have been surprised. The Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry had done its share of squeezing, too, but the Sixth was way ahead of it.

  “So anyhow,” Major Bradford went on, “I don't reckon we've got to do a whole lot of worrying about Bedford Forrest right this minute.”

  “Sounds good to me, sir,” Leaming said.

  Corporal Jack Jenkins had always hated Federals. Riding along these miserable roads in the rain did nothing to make him like them any better. Jenkins yawned in the saddle. The order from Jackson had reached Tyree Bell's brigade in Eaton in the middle of the night. Bell got his men in motion by midnight.


  “Black as the inside of a hog,” somebody near Jenkins grumbled. “Black as a nigger's heart,” somebody else added. The horses' hooves plopped in the mud.

  “Plenty of niggers in Fort Pillow,” Jenkins said. “Plenty of niggers, and plenty of Tennessee Tories.” He had no more love for the men from his state who clove to the D.S.A. than did any other Tennessean who followed the C.S.A.

  “Keep 'em moving! Come on, keep 'em moving!” That was Clark Barteau, colonel of the Second Tennessee Cavalry (C.S.). “You want those damn Missourians to get there ahead of us?”

  Protected by the darkness, somebody said, “Have a heart, Colonel. They ain't got as far to ride as we do.”

  Had Barteau been able to see who was complaining, he would have made the trooper sorry for it. As things were, he said, “And you bet your life they didn't set out as fast as we did, either. Sons of bitches are likely asleep in nice, warm beds even now. We've got to work harder, but we'll make all this hard work payoff. Ain't that right?”

  Nobody said no, not out loud. Men recognized a loaded question when they heard one. Too much growling and people would get in trouble even if the officers couldn't see who was doing it. They recognized voices — and they knew who was in the habit of saying what he thought.

  “When McCulloch's brigade does get moving, I reckon he'll say, 'Hustle it up! You want them bastards from Tennessee and Mississippi to get there first?' “ Jenkins said.

  He didn't pitch his voice to carry. Several soldiers close by laughed. One of them repeated it for a pal who hadn't heard. The pal passed it on. It made its way down the line of horsemen. Jenkins hadn't particularly meant it for a joke. He knew how officers got men to do what they wanted. You had to coax and cajole. Everybody in a cavalry regiment knew everybody else — people had grown up as friends and neighbors. You couldn't just give an order. Not even the damnyankees could get away with that very often. You had to give a reason, keep people sweet.