He was younger than a lot of the colored soldiers he was talking to. But he'd treated every last one of them, and was plainly doing the best he could with them. Ben traded glances with Sandy Cole and Charlie Key, but he was inclined to give the surgeon the benefit of the doubt.
“Something's up,” Gordon repeated. “We're going to have men from the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War visit you today: Senator Wade and Congressman Gooch.”
Even a colored artilleryman who'd been a soldier for only a little while knew about the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War. When something went wrong with the Union war effort, the members of the committee swooped down like eagles-some said like vultures to pin the blame on whoever deserved it (or whoever they thought deserved it). They could blight an officer's career. They could, and they had, and by all accounts they liked doing it.
“Do Jesus! Us niggers gonna be in trouble for losing the fight?” Robinson asked in more than a little alarm.
But the surgeon shook his head. “No, no, no. So help me, no. As far as they're concerned, you're heroes for fighting as well as you did. No, what they're after is making Bedford Forrest out to be a monster on account of the massacre. They aim to use it to fire up people in the North to fight the Rebs harder.”
“I got you,” Ben said, but he couldn't help adding, “If you was ever a slave, you already got all the reason you need to fight them Confederate bastards hard as you can.”
“There are no slaves up here,” Dr. Gordon reminded him. “A lot of people up here have never set eyes on a colored man, let alone owned one. The men from the committee want to remind them what the war is all about. There's an election coming up, you know. If Honest Abe doesn't go back to the White House, the Democrats will give the damn Rebs whatever they want.”
“Do Jesus!” Ben said again. He'd imagined the Federals beaten. He knew the Confederates fought hard. But he'd never dreamt the United States might just give up the fight.
He felt better when he saw the members of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War. Congressman Daniel Gooch was about forty, with a round face, reddish hair and beard, and worried eyes behind small, oval spectacle lenses. Senator Benjamin Wade was at least twenty years older, and quite a bit tougher. He combed his graying, thinning hair straight back. His eyes were narrow and shrewd, his mouth a disapproving slash across his clean-shaven face. He effortlessly dominated the proceedings.
“We are going to get to the bottom of the bad faith and treachery that seem to have become the settled policy of Forrest and his command,” Wade declared in a rasping voice that brooked no argument. “We must convince the authorities of our government of this fact. Even the most skeptical must believe that it is the intention of the Rebel authorities not to recognize the officers and men of our colored regiments as entitled to the treatment accorded by all civilized nations to prisoners of war. And at Fort Pillow the brutality and cruelty of the Rebels were most fearfully exhibited.”
A secretary took down his words as he spoke them. This man means it, Robinson realized. He'd always known the Rebs were in grim earnest. He'd sometimes doubted his own side was. Here, though, here stood a man with as much iron in his spine as even Nathan Bedford Forrest had.
Congressman Gooch started questioning the colored man closest to him, Elias Falls of Company A. Falls spoke of what he'd seen and heard during the fight. He said Bedford Forrest had ordered the firing stopped, and that a Secesh officer had threatened to arrest a soldier for shooting a Negro. The secretary wrote down his words just like Senator Wade's.
When Falls finished testifying-he didn't take long-Ben Wade spoke again: “That will be about enough of that. We are here to show the people of the United States what monsters the Rebels are. We are going to do that. If you men want to testify to anything else, do it before the Confederate Congress. Do you understand me?” After that, no one talked much about officers trying to stop the shooting.
Congressman Gooch asked most of the questions. Senator Wade chimed in now and again. They worked their way through the ward, coming closer and closer to the cot where Ben Robinson lay. At last, the secretary told him, “Raise your right hand.” When he did, the white man said, “Do you solemnly swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?”
“Yes, suh,” Robinson answered, impressed by the gravity of the phrases.
“I have sworn in the witness, sir,” the secretary said formally to Daniel Gooch. “You may proceed.”
“Thank you.” Gooch's voice was a light tenor. His New England accent gave Ben a little trouble, but he managed. “Were you at Fort Pillow in the fight there?” Gooch asked.
“Yes, suh,” Ben said. The secretary scribbled, taking down his words for all time.
The Congressman took him through what had happened and how he got shot. Gooch asked if he had seen the Confederates burn any soldiers. He said no, because he hadn't. Gooch's mouth tightened a little, but he went on to ask about burials, and whether Ben had seen anyone buried alive. Robinson mentioned the one Negro who was still working his hand when he went into the ground.
“Were any Rebel officers around when the Rebels were killing our men?” Gooch asked.
“Yes, suh-lots of them,” Robinson answered.
“Did they try to keep their men from killing our men?”
“I never heard them say so.” Ben explained how Bedford Forrest had ridden his horse over him three or four times.
Daniel Gooch let him finish, then asked, “Where were you from?” “I come from South Carolina,” Robinson replied.
“Have you been a slave?”
“Yes, suh.”
“Thank you, uh, Sergeant.” Gooch went on to the colored man in the next bed, a private from Company B named Dan Tyler. He asked him the same sorts of questions he'd asked Ben. He and Senator Wade continued through the ward till they'd heard the stories of most of the Negroes there. Even badly wounded Tom Adison got to speak his piece.
“Thank you, men,” Ben Wade said when they finished. “Thank you for your bravery down South, and thank you for what you told us here today. We aim to make it so that everyone in the whole country will remember Fort Pillow for as long as this nation lives. It deserves remembering, and that's a fact. Men will go into battle crying, 'Remember Fort Pillow!' And we will pay the Rebels back in their own coin. Never doubt it, men, for we will!”
He lumbered out of the room, Congressman Gooch and the secretary hurrying along in his wake. “We was part of history,” Ben Robinson said in wonder as the door closed behind them. “We reckoned we was just soldierin', but we was part of history. I be damned. Me-a part 0' history.” Up till now, history, like freedom, had been something for whites only. In an odd way, a completely unexpected way, he felt more of a man than he ever had before.
Mack Leaming wasn't happy, and the pain from his wound wasn't the only thing to make him unhappy. Like everyone else who'd lived to come north from Fort Pillow, he knew the officials from the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War were on their way west to find out what went wrong.
He knew when they reached Mound City, and he knew when they questioned the Negroes who'd survived Bedford Forrest's murderous attack. Senator Wade and Congressman Gooch got to the coons before they asked the white survivors a single question. And if that wasn't wrong, Lieutenant Leaming had never run into anything that was.
Not until the following day did Wade and Gooch and their obsequious secretary come to Ward B, where Leaming lay recuperating. The surgeon, a tall, thin, doleful-looking man named Charles Vail, came early in the morning to change his dressings. Vail also stopped by the bed of Captain John Potter, who lay not far away. He looked at Potter-who'd led Company B of the Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry-and shook his head.