“They can shout and wail as much as they please. Bradford had the chance to surrender, and he damn well didn't take it. I told him I wouldn't answer for my men if he didn't, so he only got what was coming to him,” Forrest growled. “Besides, we did take prisoners. We gave some of 'em back to the Federals by the river-”
“I did that myself,” Anderson said.
“Of course you did,” Bedford Forrest said. “And we've got more prisoners going on down to Mississippi with the men. And there are niggers in both batches. Am I right or wrong?”
“You don't need to ask me, sir,” Captain Anderson said loyally. “I know damn well you're right.”
Nathan Bedford Forrest dropped it there. He'd won at Fort Pillow, which was all that really mattered. But he also knew-however little he cared to admit it-his men had got out of hand when they took the fort. Going up against Negroes with guns and Tennessee Tories, it wasn't surprising. He'd expected it after Bradford refused his surrender demand; he might even have had trouble enforcing a peaceful surrender had the Federal commander yielded. His soldiers hated the men they were fighting: it was as simple as that.
“They say all the Yankees' nigger troops are taking an oath to avenge Fort Pillow,” Anderson added.
“They can say any stupid thing they want, and the niggers can swear any stupid oath they want,” Forrest said scornfully. “It won't amount to a hill of beans next time they bump up against our boys. With an oath or without one, nigger troops can't stand up against white men.”
“I should hope not, sir!” Anderson said.
“Don't worry about it, Charlie, because they damn well can't. Just remember the bloodstains in the Mississippi.” Forrest remembered them himself, with somber satisfaction. He didn't care to remember how long the garrison in Fort Pillow had fought, how defiant the enemy had been, or how outnumbered they were. Since he'd won, he didn't need to remember any of those things. Get there first with the most men. He'd done that. Whenever and wherever he had to do it again, he expected he could.
He had less faith in the Confederacy's other generals, with the partial exception of Robert E. Lee. Joe Johnston was bound to be an improvement on Braxton Bragg. Forrest couldn't think of anything breathing that wouldn't be, including the mangiest Army mule. But could Johnston stand against the Federals when they finally started south from Chattanooga? Could anyone? Nathan Bedford Forrest didn't know.
In one way, it wasn't his worry. He'd done what he aimed to do, and he saw no reason he couldn't go on doing it for a long time. But if the great Confederate armies fell, what difference did it make? Could he go on bushwhacking even after they fell?
If I have to, I will, he thought grimly. If it means holding the niggers down, I will. He wasn't afraid; what concerned him were ways and means.
He shrugged broad shoulders. Thinking about bushwhacking and defeats to other generals was also borrowing trouble. The day-to-day routine of war was enough to worry about and then some. Soon he and his staff would follow the rest of his men down to Mississippi. “We'll lick 'em yet, Charlie,” he said.
“Of course we will, sir,” Anderson answered. Bedford Forrest hoped he meant it.
HISTORICAL NOTE
Sergeant Benjamin Robinson, Lieutenant Mack Leaming, Major William Bradford, and, of course, Major General Nathan Bedford Forrest are historical figures. Private Matt Ward and Corporal Jack Jenkins are fictitious. The Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry (U.S.) was also known as Bradford's Battalion and as the Fourteenth Tennessee Cavalry (U.S.) (there was another Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry (U.S.) that served mostly in the eastern part of the state); because contemporary sources discussing the events of April 12, 1864, call it the Thirteenth, I have used that name here. Coal Creek is now more often known as Cold Creek. Again, as the first name seems in more common use at the time of the fight at Fort Pillow, I chose it here.
Piecing together exactly what happened at Fort Pillow on that eventful day is anything but easy. There are four principal primary sources: the contemporary reports from both sides in The Official Records of the war of the Rebellion; the testimony collected by Messrs. Wade and Gooch of the U.S. Congressional Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War immediately after the engagement and published as The Fort Pillow Massacre; the Confederate rejoinder in Jordan and Pryor's 1868 book, The Campaigns of General Nathan Bedford Forest and of Forrest's Cavalry (in essence, Forrest's own military memoir); and Wyeth's 1899 biography, The Life of General Nathan Bedford Forrest, which is written from a Southern point of view and is generally sympathetic to Forrest and his men.
The problem is that reconciling events in the contemporary documents-particularly in The Fort Pillow Massacre-and those of the two accounts inclining more toward Bedford Forrest's viewpoint-is often next to impossible. Knowing whom to believe — or whether to believe anyone — gets tricky. The accounts of Forrest's backers are unabashedly racist. In them, that Negro troops are none too brave and that blacks are mentally inferior to whites are givens. They seem to imply that the insults the colored artillerymen hurled at Forrest's troopers from the earthworks of Fort Pillow justified a massacre in and of themselves.
This should leave The Fort Pillow Massacre as a more reliable source… except that it is a propaganda piece in its own right, designed to paint the Confederates in general and Bedford Forrest in particular in colors as dark as possible. Forrest's force of about 1,500 men was inflated to from 7,000 to 10,000. The account emphasizes the slaughter of soldiers white and (particularly) black after the surrender of Fort Pillow-but there was no surrender, not in any formal sense. Bradford, acting in the dead Major Booth's name, refused to give one, and the fort was taken by storm.
Trying to find out what happened to Major Bradford after the fighting ended is another case in point. Pro-Confederate sources say that he was well treated, was given dinner by Colonel McCulloch, and gave his parole not to escape so he could bury his brother, Theodorick, who was killed when Fort Pillow was stormed. Bradford broke his parole, was recaptured in civilian clothes, and was shot while being taken from Brownsville to Jackson, where Forrest was. Jordan and Pryor say (p.455, note), “On the way, he again attempted to escape, soon after which one of the men shot him… mainly due to private vengeance for well-authorized outrages committed by Bradford and his band upon the defenseless families of the men of Forrest's cavalry.
[While at Fort Pillow] [h]e was treated with the utmost consideration and civility.” Wyeth, writing a generation later (p.588, note), says, “There is nothing in the records to show that the men who murdered Major Bradford were ever brought to trial for this unwarrantable act”: he does recognize that it should not have been done. My account of Bradford's last moments is based on the testimony of trader W R. McLagan, as reported in The Official Records of the War of the Rebellion, which shows that he was shot in cold blood rather than after an escape attempt.
Meanwhile, though, what motivated Bradford to break his parole? An affidavit from two U.S. lieutenants (Fort Pillow Massacre, p.105) states, “Major William F. Bradford, commanding our forces, was fired upon after he had surrendered the garrison. [He never did so.] The rebels told him he could not surrender. He ran into the river and swam out some 50 yards, they all the time firing at him, but failing to hit him. He was hailed by an officer and told to return to the shore. He did so. But as he neared the shore the riflemen discharged their pieces at him again. Again they missed. He ran up the hillside among the enemy with a white handkerchief in his hand in token of his surrender, but still they continued to fire upon him… [W]hen they found they could not hit him, they allowed him to give himself up as a prisoner and paroled him to the limits of the camp.” Pro-Confederate sources say… nothing of any of this. If a tenth of it is true, Bradford had good reason to mistrust the Rebels' “consideration and civility.”