Fort Pillow

by Harry Turtledove

  Even so, the near miss made him stop thinking about what his soldiers could do to the Confederates and start worrying about what Forrest's men could do to Fort Pillow. He walked over to talk to Theodorick, who was wigwagging signals to the New Era. If that also took him away from the Rebels' fire, well, he wasn't altogether brokenhearted.

  “Hello, Bill,” Theo said. “We're giving 'em hell, aren't we?” As if to prove his point, the gunboat roared out another volley.

  Bradford smiled as the shells hissed through the air, and again when they burst among the Rebs. See how you like it, you bastards, he thought. But then he brought his mind back to business. “Send a question down to Captain Marshall, if you'd be so kind,” he said.

  “At your service.” His brother looked attentive. “What is it?” “Ask him if the New Era can support us with canister if we have to come down by the riverside.”

  If the Confederates broke into Fort Pillow, that meant. It sounded much better when he said it the way he did, though. But no matter how he said it, Theodorick understood the true meaning. “Is that likely?” the older officer asked, sudden alarm in his voice and on his face.

  “No, no, no,” William Bradford said quickly, as much to reassure himself as to ease Theo's mind. “I just want to cover every possible contingency.” There was a fine, impressive-sounding word.

  “All right, Bill.” Theo sounded relieved. He waved his flags to draw the New Era's notice, then started semaphoring again. His younger brother admired his speed and what looked like his precision, though semaphore signals were a closed book to the major.

  “Isn't anyone paying attention down there?” he asked.

  But then, down on the gunboat in the Mississippi, someone with flags of his own wigwagged from the foredeck. “They have the message,” Theo reported.

  “Well, what do they say about it?” Bradford demanded. “Nothing yet,” his brother answered. “They have to pass it on to Captain Marshall and wait for his reply.”

  “All right. I understand.” Bill Bradford also had to wait. He liked it no better than any other busy, important man would have-so he thought of himself. After what seemed a very long time but couldn't have been more than a couple of minutes, the sailor with the semaphore flags on the New Era started using them.

  “At your service in every way, Captain Marshall says,” Theodorick told his brother.

  “That's good. Thanks a lot, Theo.” Bradford took off his hat and waved it in salute to the gunboat, though the sailors far below probably wouldn't notice.

  More than a little reluctantly, he made his way back toward the firing. Nothing had hit him yet. Nothing would hit him. He kept telling himself so, over and over again. Whenever the law had to say something repeatedly, it was a sign nobody was paying attention to it. As an attorney, Bill Bradford understood that principle. Applying it to his own case didn't occur to him, which might have been just as well.

  “Captain Young!” he shouted. “Where are you, Captain?”

  “I'm here, sir,” John Young answered after Bradford called his name several times. Fort Pillow's provost marshal was a large, solidly built man with a habitual scowl and a black beard so thick it was almost like a pelt. “What do you need?”

  Bradford pointed toward the New Era. “I want you to get some men to take a store of cartridges down to the riverbank. If we have to fight down there, 1 don't want it to be just with whatever ammunition we chance to carry with us.”

  Captain Young's frown deepened. “If we have to fight by the riverbank, that will mean the Rebs have carried the fort,” he said. Major Bradford waited with a scowl of his own. After a pause that stretched, Young added, “Sir.”

  “Yes, I know it will,” Bradford said. “Would you rather not nail new shingles on the roof in case of rain?”

  Young grunted. “Well, when you put it that way-”

  “That is precisely how I put it, Captain.” Bradford drew himself up again.

  He didn't have to wait so long this time. With a crisp salute, Young said, “Yes, sir. I'll take care of it.” He started shouting for soldiers. Before long, he had men lurching and staggering down the side of the bluff, two of them carrying each heavy crate. “All right, sir,” he reported when the job was done. “We've got half a dozen cases of minnies down there. If those aren't enough to keep up the fight, God help us all.”

  “Yes,” Major Bradford said. “God help us all.”

  Bedford Forrest watched the fighting at Fort Pillow from a swell of ground about a quarter of a mile from the Federal earthworks. Sharpshooters from Colonel McCulloch's brigade not far away sniped at the Union men. Unlike the troops farther forward, who simply fired as fast as they could, the sharpshooters took their time and made sure they had good targets before they pulled the trigger.

  “There you go!” Forrest shouted encouragement. “Keep banging away at them. They'll fall down.”

  One of the sharpshooters whooped, so maybe the soldier he'd aimed at did fall over. Forrest hoped so. The men in blue inside the fort were putting up a stronger fight than he'd expected. He still thought he could overrun their works-with his men on so many high spots around Fort Pillow, they could fire into the fort with devastating effect, and could keep the enemy from doing as much as he would want to when the final assault came. Still, that final assault was liable to prove more costly than he looked for when he set out from Jackson. And so… A slow smile spread over his face. Even if the colored troops and homemade Yankees inside the fort hadn't fought unusually well, he supposed he would have trotted out one of his favorite ploys. He used it for one simple reason: it worked often enough to make it worthwhile.

  “Captain Anderson!” he yelled. “Where in the tarnation is Captain Anderson?” Then he laughed at himself. “To hell with me if I didn't send him down to the riverbank my very own self.” He called to one of the soldiers on the little rise with him: “Hey, Zach! Go down to the river and bring Captain Anderson here, will you?”

  “Sure will, General.” Zach hurried away. Bedford Forrest smiled. Sometimes an order phrased as a request worked better than any other kind. Touchy about their personal pride, a lot of Confederates resented being flat-out told what to do.

  Rough, steeply sloping ground and fallen trees made Zach's trip down to the riverbank slower than it might have been. Captain Anderson couldn't come back up much faster, even if he was on horseback. Sketching a salute to Forrest, he said, “What's up, sir?”

  Forrest pointed toward the fort. “I'm going to give those people in there a chance to surrender. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.”

  “Sure worked in Union City three weeks ago.” A smile stole over Anderson's face. “Poor Colonel Hawkins has surrendered to you twice now, even though you were only there once.”

  “Well, so he has.” Forrest. grinned, too. His detachment under Colonel Duckworth that intimidated-buffaloed, really-the luckless Isaac Hawkins into yielding Union City was a good deal weaker than the force that surrendered to it. A lot of the Federal officers who went into captivity were furious at their commander-which did them no good at all.

  “All right, sir. Let's see if they'll throw in the sponge.” Captain Anderson always had paper and pencil handy. “Go ahead.”

  “Headquarters Forrest's Cavalry. Before Fort Pillow, April twelfth, eighteen sixty-four.” Forrest had sent in a lot of surrender demands; he could begin one without even needing to think about it. His aide-de-camp scribbled furiously. Then the general commanding paused. “What's the name of the Yankee son of a bitch in charge there?”

  Charles Anderson always had such minutiae at his fingertips; he made a good aide-de-camp. “Booth, Sir — Lionel Booth. He's a major.”

  “Yes, I remembered that. Well, then.” He paused again. Captain Anderson poised the pencil. Forrest resumed: “Major Booth, commanding United States forces, Fort Pillow. Major…” He weighed phrases in his mind. “The officers and men of Fort Pillow have fought well…” As usual, fought came out as fit. This time, h
e shook his head. “No, that won't do. It hasn't got the right pitch to it.”

  “Start again, sir?” Anderson asked; he'd seen Forrest edit despatches on the fly before.

  “Reckon I'd better. How's this…?” Forrest said. “The conduct of the officers and men garrisoning Fort Pillow has been…” the delay this time was to let Anderson's pencil catch up “… such as to entitle them to being treated as prisoners of war.” Listening, he nodded. “Yes, that'll do.”

  ''I'm up with you, sir,” Captain Anderson said. “What next?”

  “I demand the unconditional surrender of this garrison, promising you that you shall be treated as prisoners of war.” Forrest knew he'd repeated himself, but let it go. The Federals were bound to be anxious about the point. He went on, “My men have received a fresh supply of ammunition, and from their present position can easily assault and capture the fort.”

  “Every word of that's true,” his aide-de-camp said when he caught up with Forrest's dictation. He grinned again; Forrest and the commanders who served under him had lied like Ananias in several surrender demands, most recently the one that bagged Union City. They didn't always work, either; the fortress up at Paducah, Kentucky, had held out against his forces not long before, even though his men controlled most of the town for half a day. “Now for the warning?” Anderson asked.

  “Oh, yes.” Even though the Federals inside Fort Pillow couldn't hear him, Bedford Forrest sounded lion-fierce as he continued.

  “Should my demand be refused, I cannot be responsible for the fate of your command. Respectfully, N.B. Forrest, Major-General commanding… Read that back to me, Anderson.”

  “Yes, sir,” Anderson said, and then, when it was done, “Does it suit you?”

  “Yes, it'll do,” Forrest said.

  “Shall I deliver it to the enemy myself?” Anderson asked.

  “No, I want you back down by the river, fast as you can get there,”

  Forrest replied. “I'll send somebody else.” He looked around for another man and spotted one of General Chalmers's staff officers not far away, ready to do anything Chalmers might require of him. Well I need him more than Jim does now, Forrest thought. “Captain Goodman!” he called.

  “Yes, sir?” Walter Goodman was not only brave-no one who wasn't brave served under Forrest for long-but had a pretty good head on his shoulders. “What can I do for you, sir?”

  “Take a flag of truce and ride up toward the fort,” Forrest answered. That drew Chalmers's notice, too; Forrest thought it might. He went on, “Captain Anderson here has written out a call for the Federals to surrender. Will you take it to them?” He held out the paper.

  “Of course, sir,” Goodman said.

  “Good.” Forrest nodded to himself; again, he'd phrased the order as a request, but that didn't make it any less an order. “Round up a couple of more officers as you go forward, if you care to-that'll give you a proper-looking truce party.”

  “I'll take care of it.” Captain Goodman read the surrender demand. He looked up with a frown on his face. “Ask you a question, sir?”

  “What is it?” Forrest said. “Something not clear?”

  “You say the garrison's entitled to be treated as prisoners of war,”

  Goodman replied. “Does that include the niggers, too? The Federals are bound to ask, and they've got a hell of a lot of coons in there.”

  Forrest grimaced unhappily. What to do about Negroes in blue uniforms had bedeviled the Confederacy since the U.S.A. started arming them. The usual practice, codified by a law out of Richmond, was to return runaway slaves-who formed the bulk of the colored troops-to their owners. Here, though… “Yes, dammit, we'll treat the niggers as prisoners of war — if they give up now. I want that fort, and I want it before the Yankees can bring reinforcements up the river.” He glanced over to General Chalmers. Chalmers didn't look happy about it, either, but he nodded.

  Walter Goodman looked sorry he'd asked. “All right, sir,” he said, “but a lot of the men won't like it.” He wasn't wrong. If anything, ordinary Confederate troopers hated the idea of colored soldiers worse than their officers did.

  But challenging, or even seeming to challenge, Nathan Bedford Forrest was the wrong thing to do. Bristling, the general commanding snapped, “If I say we'll take nigger prisoners as long as the Federals give up now, then we damn well will. Have you got that, Captain?”

  “Oh, yes, sir,” Captain Goodman said hastily.

  “All right, then.” Forrest's temper cooled as quickly as it rose. “Go on forward and see what this Major Booth has to say for himself.”

  “If he has any sense, he'll quit now, while he's still able to,” Brigadier General Chalmers said. “We can storm the place if he's stubborn. “

  “Looks that way to me, too,” Forrest agreed.

  Captain Goodman shouted for a white cloth he could make into a flag of truce. When he had one, he started up toward Fort Pillow. Forrest sent Captain Anderson back down to the Mississippi.

  “Well,” he said, as firing began to fade with men on both sides spying the white flag, “now we see what happens next.”

  “Look, sir!” an excited trooper from the Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry called to Mack Leaming. “The Rebs are sending up a truce flag.”

  “So they are.” Lieutenant Leaming didn't sound as happy as the private did. Forrest used flags of truce all the time. He was known to take advantage of them, too, if he saw the chance to do it.

  For the moment, though, the rattle of musketry from both sides faded. Major Bradford called out a command to his brother: “For God's sake, Theo, let the New Era know we've got a cease-fire!”

  “Yes, sir!” Theodorick Bradford waved the wigwag flags as if suddenly stricken with St. Vitus' dance. A few minutes earlier, gunfire would have drowned his voice and his younger brother's. Now they rang clearly, the loudest things on the suddenly quiet field.

  “Leaming!” Bill Bradford shouted. “Are you there, Leaming?” The commandant couldn't have been standing more than twenty feet away from Leaming, but his back was turned so he could call to his signals officer. “I'm here, sir,” the adjutant replied.

  Bradford turned. “Well, so you are,” he said with a sheepish smile. Pointing out toward the approaching Confederate truce party, he went on, “I want you to go find out what the enemy has in mind.”

  “Yes, sir.” Leaming couldn't help blurting, “By myself, sir?” Major Bradford started to nod, but then checked himself. “Well, maybe not,” he allowed. “We don't want Forrest to reckon we can only spare the one man, do we now?”

  “That's what 1 meant, sir,” Leaming said gratefully. And it was.. part of what he meant, anyhow. Going out there alone to face Forrest's fearsome fighters, even under flag of truce, also struck him as too much like sticking his head in the lion's mouth. If he didn't have to admit that out loud, he didn't want to.

  “Fair enough,” Major Bradford said. “Take Captain Young with you, then. He's a sharp fellow, and solid as a rock. And”-he looked around and nodded toward the first other officer he saw-”take Lieutenant van Horn with you, too, and a few mounted men for swank.”

  “Yes, sir.” Leaming nodded, too. He liked that a lot better. Easier to stay brave when you weren't trying to do it all by yourself. And bringing along Second Lieutenant Dan van Horn was a downright good idea. He came from the Sixth U.S. Heavy Artillery (Colored), and could report directly to his fellow officers-those of them left alive-about what went on.

  Van Horn was a young man, younger than Mack Leaming. He still looked excited about the fighting, which was more than Leaming could say. John Young didn't, but he wasn't a man who would rattle easily, either-Bradford was right about that. As for the troopers… Leaming picked the first four men he saw and told them to get up on horseback.

  Less than five minutes later, he and his companions, carrying their own flag of truce, went down from Fort Pillow toward the Confederates, who waited on the ground that sloped up toward the fort from the end of the
battered rows of barracks buildings nearer the Mississippi. All the Rebs were mounted; Leaming, Young, and van Horn moved forward on foot.

  “Good morning, gentlemen.” Polite as a cat, the C.S. officer holding the white flag saluted his U.S. opposite numbers. “I am Captain Walter Goodman, General Chalmers's adjutant general. Accompanying me are Captain Tom Henderson, commanding our scouts, and Lieutenant Frank Rogers.” He didn't bother naming the enlisted men with his party.

  “Pleased to make your acquaintance, Captain Goodman.” Leaming saluted, too. The formal courtesies of war went on even while men did their best to murder one another. So did life in general: only a few feet away, a robin hopped over the muddy ground, now and then pausing to pull up a worm. Leaming introduced himself, continuing, “I have the honor to be post adjutant. With me are Captain John Young, our provost marshal, and Lieutenant Dan van Horn.” Captain Goodman hadn't said what Lieutenant Rogers did; Lieutenant Leaming didn't mention that Lieutenant van Horn led colored troops. He also didn't name the troopers from the Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry who'd come forward with him.

  Goodman held out a folded sheet of paper. “Please take this to your commander, Lieutenant. It is General Forrest's demand for the surrender of the fort. “

  “I will convey it to him, sir,” Leaming said. “May I read it first, so I can clear up with you any questions he is likely to have?”

  “By all means.” Captain Goodman nodded and gestured. “Be my guest. “

  Leaming unfolded the paper. From everything he'd heard, Bedford Forrest was not an educated man. By the smooth, flowing script he saw, he doubted the Confederate commander had written this note himself. But it held Forrest's fierce, arrogant tone all the same. “I do have a question,” Leaming said when he finished reading it.

  “Ask, sir, ask.” Walter Goodman was the soul of politeness. He might have been trying to sell Leaming a phaeton or a surrey, not trying to talk him into going into captivity.