Fort Pillow Read online

  The men inside Fort Pillow were running around like ants after their hill is kicked. The colored troops' white officers screamed for gun crews to man the half — dozen cannon that had come north from Memphis with them. Negroes not serving the guns took their places along the earthwork with the whites from the Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry. They started banging away at whatever was out there.

  They didn't just shoot at the Confederates, either. To show their scorn for the men who might have owned them in the not — too — distant past, they shouted filthy obscenities out toward the enemy, and backed them up with more lewd gestures.

  “Don't you act like those niggers!” Leaming shouted to his white troopers. “Forrest's men are bad enough any which way. You see any sense to ticking 'em off worse?” He spotted one of the officers in Company C. “Logan! Get your men moving faster!”

  “Yes, sir!” the young lieutenant answered. “We're doing our best, sir! “

  “Never mind your best, dammit,” Leaming said. “Just do what you've got to do.”

  “Yes, sir,” Lieutenant Logan said again — what else could he say? Before long, about fifty men carrying rifle muskets and cartridge boxes stumbled out through the mud toward the rifle pits beyond the two rows of disused barracks outside the perimeter.

  As Major Booth had before him, Mack Leaming paused to listen to the gunfire out there. Booth had it straight — the Confederates were putting a lot of lead in the air. How many men had Bedford Forrest brought through the swamps east of Fort Pillow, anyhow?

  Too many, Leaming thought worriedly. That had hardly gone through his mind before one of the troopers going out to the picket line caught a bullet in the face and crumpled, his Springfield falling from his fingers. Another soldier also fell, grabbing at his leg. His howl of pain pierced the gravel- on-a-tin-roof rattle of musketry.

  How many men have they got out there? Leaming wondered, and shivered. One way or another, the garrison would find out.

  “Fire!” Captain Carron shouted.

  Sergeant Mike Clark pulled the lanyard — the white man was in charge of the gun. A friction primer already stood in the touchhole: a goose quill filled with gunpowder and topped with shredded match. A looped steel pin was fixed in the primer, and the lanyard hooked to the loop. When Clark yanked it out, the match caught and set off the powder below. There was a hiss when the finely ground powder in the friction primer caught, then a roar as the main charge went off. Fire and smoke belched from the twelve — pounder's muzzle. Away flew a shrapnel round, to come down — with luck — on the advancing Confederates' heads.

  Sergeant Ben Robinson watched for the burst along with Carron and Clark and with the rest of the colored artillerymen who served the gun. “Long!” the captain said, and then something more pungent. “Robinson! Bring the range down fifty yards!”

  “Down fifty yards! Yes, suh!” Robinson said. Fifty yards was two turns of the altitude screw. He had to make sure he turned it the one way and not the other. He didn't want to raise the gun's muzzle instead of lowering it.

  Meanwhile, the rest of the crew got the twelve — pounder ready to fire again. One Negro soldier used the worm — a giant two — pronged corkscrew on the end of a pole — to bring smoldering bits of wadding and cartridge bag out of the barrel. Another shoved a dripping sponge down the gun's iron throat to douse any bits of fire that remained. When the sponge was withdrawn, yet another black man shoved in the cartridge full of black powder. While he was loading the next round of shrapnel and the wadding that helped give it a tight seal, Sergeant Clark jabbed a sharp awl through the touchhole and punctured the cartridge bag again and again.

  The whole colored gun crew manhandled the piece back into its proper position; even in the mud, recoil had shoved it several feet to the rear. When Captain Carron nodded in satisfaction, Sergeant Clark inserted another friction primer and fixed the lanyard to it.

  “Fire!” Carron yelled again. The twelve — pounder roared and jerked backward. Nobody in the gun crew stood behind it when it went off. The heavy carriage could crush a man almost like a man squashing a bug.

  Fireworks — smelling smoke made Robinson cough. The shrapnel round burst somewhere between a quarter mile and half a mile away: red fire at the heart of another burst of smoke. A savage glee filled Ben Robinson's soul. That burst and the balls flying from it might maim men who'd bought and sold Negroes with no more thought or care than if they were cattle. What could be sweeter?

  “Hey, Charlie!” Ben called to the loader. “Ain't this grand?”

  “We finally gits to shoot the buckra, you mean?” Charlie Key said.

  Robinson nodded. The loader's grin showed a lot of white teeth — one missing in front — in his black face. “The gun go off the first time, I aIm os' quit this world altogedder.”

  “Gun go off the first time, I almos' go off myself,” Robinson said.

  Charlie Key laughed. His grin got wider.

  “Bring it down again, about a gnat's hair,” Captain Carron said.

  “A gnat's hair. Yes, suh.” Robinson gave the altitude screw half a turn. That was about as small a change as would mean anything at all. Then, grunting with effort, he helped shove the twelve-pounder back up to the parapet.

  “Fire!” the white officer yelled. The white sergeant pulled the lanyard. The gun boomed and rolled back. The Negroes who crewed the piece reloaded it and muscled it into position again.

  They worked a lot harder than the whites set over them. Ben Robinson had worked harder than the whites above him his whole life long. He knew that wasn't always so. On small farms where the landowner could barely scrape up the cash for a Negro or two, everybody worked like a mule. On plantations like the one where he'd grown up, though, blacks worked hard so whites didn't have to. Whites made no bones about it, either.

  Things were different here. Captain Carron and Sergeant Clark knew more about the business of serving a gun than did the men they commanded. And that wasn't the only difference. As Robinson told Charlie Key, he could finally do what he'd wanted to do ever since he was a pickaninny: he could hit back at the whites who'd treated him like a beast of burden almost his whole life long.

  The rest of the guns brought into Fort Pillow were banging away, too. Shrapnel rounds and solid shot hissed through the air. “We gots the range you wants, Mistuh Captain, suh?” Robinson asked as the twelve — pounder got ready to fire again.

  “What? Oh. Yes.” Captain Carron checked himself. “Yes, Sergeant, thank you.”

  Ben Robinson preened. A lot of whites on both sides of the battle line thought military courtesy a waste of time. Like most colored soldiers, he saw things differently. To him, military courtesy meant treating everybody the way his rank said he should be treated — his rank, not his color. And Robinson had earned enough rank to be treated with respect even by a captain.

  Tiny in the distance, a gray — clad soldier threw up his arms and reeled away when the next round of shrapnel from the twelvepounder burst near him. “You see dat?” Charlie Key whooped. “You see dat, Ben? Uh, Sergeant Ben?”

  “I seen it,” Robinson said. “Dat one dead Secesh!” They both capered and danced in glee. If their company commander and gun chief watched with wry amusement as they carried on… If they did, Ben neither noticed nor cared. He wished he could kill all the Confederates from the Mississippi to the Atlantic as easily as he'd slain that one trooper.

  With only half a dozen cannon, not all the colored soldiers inside Fort Pillow had one to serve. Most of them fought as infantry, going through the foot soldier's practiced motions with their Springfields (Load in nine times!.. Load! The drill sergeant had taught them by the numbers, and the training stuck.) and firing at Bedford Forrest's men along with the dismounted troopers from the Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry.

  Bullets came back at them, too. Mini? balls — minnies to most of the men — whined through the air when they weren't close. When they were, they cracked as viciously as an overseer's whip. Ben found himself du
cking whenever he heard one of those cracks. He tried not to, but couldn't help himself.

  Shame filled him. The last thing in the world he wanted was to play the coward in front of the whites who'd given him the chance to shoot back at the Confederates. Then he saw that Captain Carron and Sergeant Clark were ducking, too, as were the other Negroes in the gun crew. He realized people couldn't help it when bullets flew by. That made him feel better.

  “How's it going here?” Major Booth came up to the gun and peered down the long iron tube at the advancing Confederates. “You fellas giving the Rebs hell?”

  “Yes, suh!” Robinson said. His voice was the first and loudest among those of the Negroes serving the gun, but everybody sang out.

  “A white crew couldn't do any better, sir,” Sergeant Clark said. Hearing that, Ben wanted to burst his buttons with pride. A white sergeant, an experienced artilleryman, said he and his comrades were doing well! If he couldn't feel good about such praise, what could he feel good about?

  Major Booth took their good performance for granted, which made Ben Robinson even prouder. “I didn't expect anything different,” Booth said. “Not one thing, you hear? Only thing that matters is how well trained a gunner is. The only thing — you hear me, Sergeant? The gun doesn't care if the men serving it are black or white or green. It'll shoot the same way for anybody — as long as he knows what he's doing. “

  “Well, they do, sir,” Clark said, and then, “Ain't that right, boys?” The Negroes raised a cheer. Robinson had been called boy before. This didn't feel like that. Clark would — or at least could — have called a group of white soldiers boys the same way. He wasn't using it as an insult, or to deny the Negroes' manhood. Just the opposite, in fact.

  Major Booth grinned and nodded and slapped Ben on the back. “Well, we've sure as hell trained ‘em, all right.”

  That was true. They'd had to start from the very beginning. Even wearing shoes was something Ben Robinson and a lot of the Negroes had had to get used to. Marching in step seemed pointless, but after a while he realized it did a couple of things. It got him used to automatically obeying the kinds of commands he heard in the Army. And it made him understand he was part of something much bigger than he was. He wasn't taking on Jeff Davis and Robert E. Lee and Bedford Forrest all by his lonesome. He was part of this enormous outfit, and everybody was doing it together. Knowing — understanding in his belly — that he wasn't alone made soldiering a lot easier, even before he started practicing on a field piece.

  “We ain't gonna let you down, Major Booth, suh,” he said. Most of the rest of the black men serving the gun with him nodded. No matter how scared you were, you didn't want to show it, not in front of the man who'd turned you from a field nigger into a soldier.

  “I didn't reckon you would,” Booth said. “I wouldn't have let you go into combat if I thought you would.” A minnie cracked past overhead. Major Booth ducked, too, just like anybody else. He grinned and chuckled and shrugged. “I don't expect the bullet with my name on it's been made yet. Now you fellows, I know you're going to work hard here, and I know you're going to be brave here. That right?”

  “Yes, sub.''' the gunners shouted as one man.

  “Good,” Major Booth said. “Now, I've told the sutlers to put out whiskey and dippers along the line. You need a little shot of nerve, you go on and take one. Don't take too much — you've still got to be able to fight the gun. But a little never hurt anybody, white or colored, and that's the God's truth.”

  After Booth went on his way, Sergeant Clark eyed the gun crew. “Soon as you see me havin' a drink, you can take one yourselves. That sound fair to you?”

  The colored artillerymen looked at one another. “Reckon so, Sergeant,” Robinson said. The others either spoke words of agreement or nodded. They couldn't very well tell the white man set directly over them no, regardless of what Major Booth said. And Clark's comment did strike Ben as fair. He wasn't asking them to do anything he wouldn't do himself.

  Brasher than the other Negroes, Charlie Key said, “I gots me a thirst and then some, Sergeant. When you reckon you ply the dipper?” He mimed dipping up whiskey and pouring it down.

  Mike Clark looked at him. “Don't aim to use it at all,” he answered calmly. As the blacks stared in dismay, Clark went on, “We've got lots of men with Springfields on the line. Some of them get plastered — well, hell, so what? They'll still put a bunch of minnies in the air, and some of 'em'll hit. Half the time, riflemen hardly aim anyhow. But we've only got six guns. We've got to make every shot count, best we can. We better have clear heads for that, don't you think? You with me?”

  Ben considered. Yes, they called popskull Dutch courage. But with a big slave trader and his men coming at Fort Pillow, how much extra courage did the Negroes inside need? “Looks to me like you's right,” he said to Clark, with regret but without any doubt. “Onliest thing I wish is, I wish we could get them gun muzzles down lower, depress 'em, I mean.” He trotted out the word Sergeant Hennissey gave him. “If the Secesh boys slide down under us, we can't touch ‘em“

  “Damn thick breastwork,” Clark muttered. Ben Robinson nodded. He'd said the same thing the day before. The white man went on, “Well, we just got to make sure they don't get that close. Come on, you bucks — quit fooling around here! Let's give 'em another round! “

  They served the twelve — pounder with a will.

  A minnie cracked past Matt Ward's head, almost close enough to lift the slouch hat right off it. Almost close enough to drill me between the eye, thought the trooper from Missouri. He shoved that down into the nightmare place where such notions naturally dwelt. Losing his hat to a bullet was something he could think about without shivering. But if all the branches and vines in the Hatchie bottoms couldn't steal that hat, he didn't fancy losing it to a damnyankee's Mini? ball, either.

  Another bullet zipped past, this one not quite so close. Matt didn't think the Federals had a whole lot of men in the rifle pits out beyond their earthwork, but the soldiers they did have were shooting as fast as they could load. A well-trained man with a Springfield could get off two rounds a minute, and the men in those pits knew what they were doing.

  A shrapnel round from the fort itself screamed down and burst with a roar off to Ward's right. Along with the rest of Colonel McCulloch's men, he was on the left of the Confederate line, closest to the Mississippi. He and his comrades pushed north toward Fort Pillow. At the other end of the line, Barteau's regiment of Bell's brigade would be advancing west, along Coal Creek.

  Ward and his companions nearby were already inside the first line of works around Fort Pillow, the line laid out by the general who'd named the place after himself. That was high ground. From where Ward crouched, he could see into the much smaller perimeter the galvanized Yankees and their colored stooges held. The range was long-it had to be more than a quarter of a mile-but his rifle would reach that far.

  A minnie thudded into a stump not far away. “Thank you, Jesus!” yelled a trooper in back of the stump. The garrison inside Fort Pillow hadn't done much of a job of clearing the approaches to their position. The attackers could take cover behind lots of bushes and stumps and fallen trees.

  Cautiously, Ward raised his head from behind the stump that sheltered him. He fired at a man in blue in one of the rifle pits. The Enfield carbine he carried bucked against his shoulder. The rifle musket spat fire and a puff of black-powder smoke.

  The Yankee in that rifle pit kept moving around, so Ward supposed he'd missed him. “Shit,” the trooper from Missouri said, without much rancor. He ducked down and reloaded, biting the paper cartridge and pouring powder and a cloth patch into the Enfield's muzzle, sending the minnie after the powder and wadding and ramming it home, drawing back the hammer to half-cock so he could set a copper percussion cap in place, and then raising the carbine to his shoulder and firing.

  This time, the soldier at whom he aimed flinched and crumpled. A Mini? ball weighed almost an ounce. When one hit, it hit hard.
He bit open another cartridge. After a long fight, soldiers who'd done a lot of shooting had so much black powder on their faces, they looked like refugees from a minstrel show.

  Ward wished he had a breech-loading repeating rifle like the ones some Federal cavalrymen were starting to carry. A regiment armed with rifles like that had the firepower of a brigade with ordinary weapons.

  “Wish for the moon while you're at it,” Ward muttered, tasting sulfur from the powder. Those fancy repeaters needed equally fancy brass cartridges. Even if you captured one, you also had to capture the ammunition to go with it, and keep on capturing more and more. Otherwise the rifle would be useless, except as a club.

  Ward wondered why the Confederacy couldn't make rifles like that and the ammunition to go with them. Probably for the same reason it had trouble keeping its men in uniforms and shoes. A lot of the troopers in McCulloch's brigade wore tunics and trousers and shoes damnyankees didn't need anymore. Some of the trousers were still blue. Forrest insisted that shirts, at least, go into the dye kettle right away. If they turned butternut, your buddies were less likely to try to plug you by mistake.

  More than a few Confederates carried captured Yankee Springfields, too. Their.58-caliber minnies and the.577 Enfield bullets both worked in both weapons.

  If it wasn't for everything the Federals make, we couldn't hardly fight 'em, Ward thought. That was funny if you looked at it the right way. It was worrisome if you looked at it wrong, so Ward did his best to laugh.

  He slipped another percussion cap onto the nipple and looked for a new target. There was some damnfool nigger cutting capers on the main earthwork. The black man acted like a drunk. That not only made Ward angry at him, it made the Missourian jealous. He drew a careful bead and pulled the trigger.

  He couldn't have missed by much. The Negro's comic tumble behind the breastwork would have brought down the house in a play. But this wasn't a play. It was real. Matt Ward wanted that man dead. Now the coon might pick up a rifle and hurt somebody with it.