FORT PILLOW

Voice testy-maybe the pain was talking through him-Forrest answered, “I'm just as apt to be hit one way as another.” And he had that sturdy horse shot out from under him (though it was only wounded), but got yet another remount and finished the reconnaissance. When he did, his smile was purely predatory. “We've got 'em,” he said.

V

BELOW THE BLUFF ON WHICH the innermost line of Fort Pillow's works sat, a crescent-shaped ravine ran north into Coal Creek. Corporal Jack Jenkins crouched in that ravine, only a few feet away from General Forrest, when Forrest declared that he and his men had the Federals inside the fort.

Jenkins was glad General Forrest thought so. Forrest commonly knew what he was talking about. Jenkins hoped the general did this time. He hoped so, yes, but he was a hell of a long way from convinced.

If Coal Creek Ravine wasn't hell on earth, you could see it from there. Jenkins had ridden through the Hatchie bottoms to get to Fort Pillow. Coal Creek seemed a distillation of everything that was worst about the bottom country. The ground was muddy enough to suck the shoes right off a man's feet. Every sort of clinging vine and thorn bush seemed to grow there, all of them clutching at trouser legs and tunic sleeves when Jack and the other troopers in Colonel Barteau's regiment tried to push on toward the fort.

Poison ivy, poison oak, poison sumac… Jenkins tried not to think about any of those. If he broke out in welts later on, then he did, that was all. Now he just wanted to close with the enemy.

One thing worked in his favor, and in favor of the rest of the men in the Second Tennessee Cavalry (C.S.). Because Fort Pillow stood so high above Coal Creek Ravine, and because its earthen rampart was so thick, the soldiers inside the fort had to crawl out on top of the earthwork to shoot down into the ravine. When they did, Confederate sharpshooters farther back and higher up had clean shots at them. After a couple of Federals were wounded, or perhaps killed, the rest seemed less eager to expose themselves.

The cannon inside Fort Pillow would not bear on the ravine at all. Every so often, shrapnel rounds or solid shot would snarl by overhead, but they always came down far to the rear.

That didn't mean the troopers in Coal Creek Ravine went altogether free of bombardment. The Yankee gunboat out in the Mississippi lobbed an occasional shell into the ravine. Jenkins hated the gunboat. It could strike with impunity, for the Confederates weren't able to shoot back at it. But it was firing blind. Just as the bluff and the fort atop it shielded the gunboat from C.S. fire, so they also shielded the Confederates from the sailors who aimed the boat's cannon.

Some of the black men and Tennessee Tories inside Fort Pillow had nerve enough to keep exposing themselves to Confederate fire. One Negro soldier crawled out on top of the earthwork and had his pals within the fort pass him one loaded rifle musket after another, so he sent an almost continual stream of bullets down into the ravine.

Corporal Jenkins took a shot at him. So did a couple of other Confederate troopers not far away. The smoke that burst from their rifles announced where they were. In moments, the Negro sent minnies whistling through the undergrowth close to each of the three men.

As Jenkins reloaded, he said, “To hell with me if that nigger's not too dumb to realize how much trouble he's in.”

“I wouldn't be crazy enough to stick myself out there, that's for damn sure,” one of the nearby Confederates agreed.

More bullets whipped past the colored man. Had he been white-even if he were only a homemade Yankee-Jenkins would have respected his courage. But the corporal didn't want to admit, even to himself, that a Negro had courage. If a black man could be brave, wasn't he much the same sort of man as a white? And if he was much the same as a white, how could he also naturally be a slave?

Those two things didn't fit together. Jenkins could see that as plainly as Abe Lincoln could. Where it forced the President of the United States to conclude that all men should be free, it forced the Southerner and most of his comrades to deny the possibility that Negroes could show the same sort of courage as white men.

If Jenkins saw a black man exposing himself to enemy fire, then, the blue-uniformed Negro couldn't be brave. He had to be stupid instead.

Another Minie ball clipped leaves and twigs a few feet away from Jenkins. “This here's warmer work than I reckoned it would be,” he said.

“We'll get 'em,” another trooper said. “Long as they don't get reinforced from down the river, we'll get' em. And even if they do, we've still got most of the high ground. We'll make' em sorry they holed up in there.”