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Summary
Summary
In April 1864, the Union garrison at Fort Pillow was comprised of almost six hundred troops, about half of them black. The Confederacy, incensed by what it saw as a crime against nature, sent its fiercest cavalry commander, Nathan Bedford Forrest, to attack the fort with about 1,500 men. The Confederates overran the fort and drove the Federals into a deadly crossfire. Only sixty-two of the U.S. colored troops survived the fight unwounded. Many accused the Confederates of massacring the black troops after the fort fell and fighting should have ceased. The "Fort Pillow Massacre" became a Union rallying cry and cemented resolve to see the war through to its conclusion.
Harry Turtledove has written a dramatic recreation of an astounding battle, telling a bloody story of courage and hope, freedom and hatred. With brilliant characterization of all the main figures, this is a novel that reminds us that Fort Pillow was more than a battle---it was a clash of ideas between men fighting to define what being an American ought to mean.
Author Notes
Harry Turtledove was born in Los Angeles, California on June 14, 1949. He received a Ph.D. in Byzantine history from UCLA in 1977. From the late 1970's to the early 1980's, he worked as a technical writer for the Los Angeles County Office of Education. He left in 1991 to become full-time writer.
His first two novels, Wereblood and Werenight, were published in 1979 under the pseudonym Eric G. Iverson because his editor did not think people would believe that Turtledove was his real name. He used this name until 1985 when he published Herbig-Haro and And So to Bed under his real name. He has received numerous awards including the Homer Award for Short Story for Designated Hitter in 1990, the John Esthen Cook Award for Southern Fiction for Guns of the Southand in 1993, and the Hugo Award for Novella for Down in the Bottomlands in 1994.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Turtledove revisits the controversial 1864 Battle at Fort Pillow, also known as the Fort Pillow Massacre, in this even-handed, readable historical novel (after Days of Infamy) about the bloodbath in western Tennessee, where the Civil War pitted "neighbor against neighbor." The defenders at the Union-held Fort Pillow were made up of a unit of nearly 300 Tennessee Unionists ("homemade Yankees," according to their neighbors in gray) and an equal number of African American artillery men. Turtledove sifts through the disputed historical record and scrupulously reconstructs the scene. Although greatly outnumbered, the fort's defenders at first rejected a Confederate surrender offer, and the rebels?enraged by traitorous whites and armed Blacks?stormed the fort, slaughtering twice as many blacks as whites, even while the Unionists tried to escape or surrender. For a comprehensive view of the battle, Turtledove shifts the narrative among a mix of fictional characters and historical figures: Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest; Major Bill Bradford, who replaced Major Lionel Booth as the garrison's Union commander; and Sgt. Ben Robinson, one of the Negro troops. Fans of Civil War history will especially enjoy this balanced account. (May) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
Booklist Review
In April 1864, the Union garrison at Fort Pillow, Tennessee, consisted of 600 men, more than half of them black and many of the rest Tennessee unionists. They were commanded by Major William Bradford, who had gotten his command by raising regiments. Their position was attacked by General Nathan Bedford Forrest and 1,500 men, many of whom were also Tennesseeans. The Confederates overran the fort, and when the fighting was done, there were 226 Union survivors. Only 62 of the black troops survived unwounded. Major Bradford was killed shortly after being taken prisoner. Exactly what happened has been a subject of controversy from that day to this. An immediate congressional investigation found that Forrest's forces had deliberately murdered the black troops and their officers, and the Fort Pillow Massacre became a rallying cry for Union victory. The investigation's report, however, contains several errors of fact. Accounts of Forrest's campaigns written by Confederate sympathizers after the war maintain that Forrest's troops only fought--they didn't massacre--the Union troops. Turtledove's most impressive novel uses known facts and persons and extremely plausible extrapolations to paint a picture of one of America's least glorious affrays. After reading it, one is convinced that it happened that way. Turtledove also depicts the people of the time and place very vividly, making the novel a true window into history. --Frieda Murray Copyright 2006 Booklist
Library Journal Review
This is noted sf and alternate history author Turtledove's first foray into a "straight" historical novel. Grim but riveting, it describes what many consider one of the worst atrocities of the Civil War-the 1864 killing of black Union soldiers and their white officers by Confederates at Fort Pillow. Enraged that blacks would take up arms, 1500 Confederates under the command of Nathan Bedford Forrest attacked the 600-man Fort Pillow garrison, whose troops fought back savagely, further enraging the Confederates. When the fort was finally overrun, the killing continued, with racial hatreds exploding into mindless fury that Forrest felt unable, and unwilling, to stop. Later, the scope of the "Fort Pillow Massacre" was exaggerated and used as a rallying cry for the Union, while the Confederacy steadfastly denied that any such massacre occurred. Turtledove's narrative leaves no doubt that he believes something terrible happened at Fort Pillow, and is an excellent companion to his many alternate histories of the period. Recommended. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 1/06.]-Robert Conroy, Warren, MI (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
Chapter One Jackson, Tennessee, was a town laid out with big things in mind. The first streets were ninety feet wide. The first courthouse was built of logs, back at the start of the 1820s. Now, more than forty years later, buildings of red and gray brick prevailed. Oaks and elms helped shade those broad streets. The Madison County seat had not flourished quite so much as its founders hoped. Still, with the Forked Deer River running through the town and two railroads meeting there, Jackson was modestly prosperous, or a bit more than modestly. It was a considerable market for lumber and furs and produce from the farms in the Forked Deer valley. When civil war tore the United States in two, Jackson went back and forth between Union and Confederacy several times. Confederate General Beauregard made his headquarters there in early 1862. From that summer to the following spring, Jackson lived under the Stars and Stripes as one of U. S. Grant's supply depots. Then Nathan Bedford Forrest's cavalry ran the Yankees out again. In June 1863, U.S. General Hatch defeated the Confederate garrison and reoccupied the town. Now, in April 1864, Forrest was back, and the Stainless Banner replaced the U.S. flag. Forrest had his headquarters in the Duke home on Main Street. Two years earlier, Grant had stayed in the same two-story Georgian Colonial house. The Dukes were happier to accommodate the Confederate cavalry commander than they had been to host his opponent in blue. Although Forrest went to church on Sunday morning, he did not treat the Sabbath as a day of rest. For one thing, he couldn't afford to. For another, his driving energy made him hate idleness at any time. He paced back and forth across the Dukes' parlor like a caged catamount, boots clumping on the rugs and thumping on the oak planks of the floor. He was a big man, two inches above six feet, towering over the other Confederate officers in the room. He could have beaten any of them in a fight, with any weapons or none. He knew it and they knew it; it gave him part of his power over them. Though his chin beard was graying, his wavy hair had stayed dark. His blue eyes could go from blizzard cold to incandescent in less than a heartbeat. "I wrote to Bishop Polk last week that I was going to take Fort Pillow," he said. He had a back-country accent, but a voice that could expand at need to fill any room or any battlefield. "I reckon we can go about doing it now. All the pieces are in place." His aide-de-camp, Captain Charles Anderson, nodded. "Yes, sir," he said. "General Buford's raising Cain up in Kentucky, and we've got enough men looking busy down by Memphis to keep the damnyankees there from moving north along the Mississippi." "About time we gave that garrison what it deserves," Forrest said. "Past time, by God. Niggers and homemade Yankees . . ." He scowled at the idea. "Wonder which is worse," Anderson said. "Beats me." Nathan Bedford Forrest's scowl deepened. That black men should take up arms against whites turned every assumption on which the Confederate States of America were founded upside down and inside out. "You sooner get bit by a cottonmouth or a rattlesnake?" Dr. J. B. Cowan, the chief surgeon on Forrest's staff, looked up from his cup of sassafras tea. "No," he said. "I'd sooner not." The concise medical opinion made Forrest and the rest of his staff officers laugh. But mirth did not stay on the commanding general's face for long. Most of the white Union troops in Fort Pillow were Tennesseans themselves, enemy soldiers from a state that belonged in the Confederacy. When they came out of their works, they plundered the people who should have been their countrymen. If half of what Forrest heard was true, they did worse than that to the womenfolk. And so . . . "We'll move then," Forrest said. "Captain Anderson!" "Yes, sir?" "Colonel McCulloch's brigade is at Sharon's Ferry along the Forked Deer, right?" Forrest said. Anderson nodded. Forrest went on, "And General Bell's got his brigade up at Eaton, in Gibson County?" He waited. Charles Anderson nodded again. "Yes, sir, that's where he was last we heard from him." Forrest waved dismissively. "Yankees haven't got enough men up there to shift him, so that's where he's at, all right. How many soldiers you reckon McCulloch and Bell put together have?" Anderson's eyes took on a faraway look. Under his mustache, his lips moved silently. He wore a neat beard much like Bedford Forrest's. "I'd say about fifteen hundred, sir." " 'Bout what I ciphered out for myself. Wanted to make sure you were with me." Forrest's gaze sharpened. "Now, Captain, how many Yankees d'you suppose Fort Pillow holds?" "It can't have half that many." This time, Anderson didn't hesitate, though he did add, "They've got a gunboat out in the river to support the place." "That's bluff country," Forrest said. "Gunboat won't be able to see up high enough to do 'em much good. Send orders to McCulloch and Bell, Captain. Get 'em moving tomorrow. I want them to hit Fort Pillow first thing Tuesday morning. We will take it away from the United States, and we will free this part of Tennessee from Yankee oppression." "Yes, sir," Anderson said once more. "General Bell in overall command?" "No, General Chalmers." Forrest made a sour face. He'd tried to have James Chalmers posted somewhere other than under his command, but he'd been overruled both here in the West and by the War Department in Richmond. Chalmers was a good--better than a good--cavalry officer, but not respectful enough of those set above him. In that way, and in some others, he was more than a little like Forrest himself, though he had the education his superior lacked. "I'll draft the orders, sir, and I'll send them out as soon as you approve them," Captain Anderson said. "Good. That's good. Tell General Bell especially not to sit around there lollygagging. He's got a long way to travel if he's going to get there by morning after next. He'd better set out just as fast as he can." Anderson's pen scratched across a sheet of paper. "I'll make it very plain," Forrest's aide-de-camp promised. Forrest nodded. Anderson was a good writer, a confident writer. He made things sound the way they were supposed to. As for Forrest himself, he would sooner pick up a snake than a pen. Fort Pillow was not a prime post. When it rained, as it was raining this Monday morning, Lieutenant Mack Leaming's barracks leaked. Pots and bowls on the floor caught the drips. The plink and splat of water falling into them was often better at getting men of the Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry (U.S.) out of bed than reveille would have been. One of the troopers in the regiment swore as he sat up. "Listen to that for a while and you reckon you've got to piss, even if you just went and did," he grumbled. "Piss on the Rebs," said the fellow in the next cot. "Pipe down, both of you," Leaming hissed. He was about twenty-five, with a round face, surprisingly innocent blue eyes, and a scraggly, corn-yellow mustache that curled down around the corners of his mouth. "Some of the boys are still sleeping." Snores proved him right. Quite a few of the "boys" were older than he was. The bugler's horn sounded a few minutes later. Some of the men slept in their uniforms. The ones who'd stripped to their long johns climbed into Federal blue once more. Some of them had worn gray earlier in the war. Most of those troopers were all the more eager to punish backers of the Confederacy. A few, perhaps, might put on gray again if they saw the chance. Leaming chuckled softly as he pulled on his trousers. That wouldn't be so easy. The United States wanted men who'd fought for the other side to return to the fold. The Confederates were less forgiving. In places like western Tennessee, the war wasn't country against country. It was neighbor against neighbor, friend against former friend. Some of the troopers wore government-issue kepis. More used broad-brimmed slouch hats that did a better job of keeping the rain out of their faces. "Come on, boys," Leaming said. "Let's get out there for roll call. Don't want to keep Major Bradford waiting." Bill Bradford was a man with pull. The Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry was his creation. Recruitment and promotion were informal in these parts. Since Bradford came into U.S. service with a lot of men riding behind him, that won him the gold oak leaves on his shoulder straps. And he'd made an able enough commander so far. Pulling his own slouch hat down low over his eyes, Mack Leaming went outside. Along with the Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry, four companies of heavy artillery and a section of light artillery were lining up for roll call and inspection. Leaming lips skinned back from his teeth in a mirthless grin. The artillerymen came from colored outfits. The officers and senior sergeants were white men, but the men they led had been slaves till they decided to take up arms against the whites who'd held them in bondage--and who wanted to keep on doing it. Nigger soldiers, Leaming thought. He didn't like fighting on the same side as black men in arms--he was no nigger lover, even if he fought for the U.S.A. A Negro with a Springfield in his hands went dead against everything the South stood for. Leaming also wondered if the blacks would fight, if they could fight. They looked impressive enough. They were, on average, both older and taller than the men in his own regiment. They drilled smartly, going through their evolutions with smooth precision. But could they fight? He'd believe it when he saw it. 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 blue-mass 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 damn 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?" "Son of a bitch has the nerve to do damn near anything. That's what makes him such a nuisance," Major Bradford said. "What is it this time?" "He sent Memphis a bill for the five thousand and however many dollars Colonel Hurst squeezed out of Jackson while he held it," Leaming said. Bradford laughed again, this time on a different note. "He better not hold his breath till he gets it, that's all I've got to say. He'll be a mighty blue man in a gray uniform if he does. Besides, that's not all Hurst has squeezed out of the Rebs--not even close." "Don't I know it!" Mack Leaming spoke more in admiration than anything else. Colonel Fielding Hurst had turned the war into a profitable business for himself. People said he'd taken more than $100,000 from Confederate sympathizers in western Tennessee. Leaming couldn't have said if that was true, but he wouldn't have been surprised. The Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry had done its share of squeezing, too, but the Sixth was way ahead of it. "So anyhow," Major Bradford went on, "I don't reckon we've got to do a whole lot of worrying about Bedford Forrest right this minute." "Sounds good to me, sir," Leaming said. ... Copyright © 2006 by Harry Turtledove Excerpted from Fort Pillow: A Novel of the Civil War by Harry Turtledove All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.