FORT PILLOW

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?”