“Go ahead.”
“Headquarters Forrest's Cavalry. Before Fort Pillow, April twelfth, eighteen sixty-four.” Forrest had sent in a lot of surrender demands; he could begin one without even needing to think about it. His aide-de-camp scribbled furiously. Then the general commanding paused. “What's the name of the Yankee son of a bitch in charge there?”
Charles Anderson always had such minutiae at his fingertips; he made a good aide-de-camp. “Booth, Sir — Lionel Booth. He's a major.”
“Yes, I remembered that. Well, then.” He paused again. Captain Anderson poised the pencil. Forrest resumed: “Major Booth, commanding United States forces, Fort Pillow. Major…” He weighed phrases in his mind. “The officers and men of Fort Pillow have fought well…” As usual, fought came out as fit. This time, he shook his head. “No, that won't do. It hasn't got the right pitch to it.”
“Start again, sir?” Anderson asked; he'd seen Forrest edit despatches on the fly before.
“Reckon I'd better. How's this…?” Forrest said. “The conduct of the officers and men garrisoning Fort Pillow has been…” the delay this time was to let Anderson's pencil catch up “… such as to entitle them to being treated as prisoners of war.” Listening, he nodded. “Yes, that'll do.”
''I'm up with you, sir,” Captain Anderson said. “What next?”
“I demand the unconditional surrender of this garrison, promising you that you shall be treated as prisoners of war.” Forrest knew he'd repeated himself, but let it go. The Federals were bound to be anxious about the point. He went on, “My men have received a fresh supply of ammunition, and from their present position can easily assault and capture the fort.”
“Every word of that's true,” his aide-de-camp said when he caught up with Forrest's dictation. He grinned again; Forrest and the commanders who served under him had lied like Ananias in several surrender demands, most recently the one that bagged Union City. They didn't always work, either; the fortress up at Paducah, Kentucky, had held out against his forces not long before, even though his men controlled most of the town for half a day. “Now for the warning?” Anderson asked.
“Oh, yes.” Even though the Federals inside Fort Pillow couldn't hear him, Bedford Forrest sounded lion-fierce as he continued.
“Should my demand be refused, I cannot be responsible for the fate of your command. Respectfully, N.B. Forrest, Major-General commanding… Read that back to me, Anderson.”
“Yes, sir,” Anderson said, and then, when it was done, “Does it suit you?”
“Yes, it'll do,” Forrest said.
“Shall I deliver it to the enemy myself?” Anderson asked.
“No, I want you back down by the river, fast as you can get there,”
Forrest replied. “I'll send somebody else.” He looked around for another man and spotted one of General Chalmers's staff officers not far away, ready to do anything Chalmers might require of him. Well I need him more than Jim does now, Forrest thought. “Captain Goodman!” he called.
“Yes, sir?” Walter Goodman was not only brave-no one who wasn't brave served under Forrest for long-but had a pretty good head on his shoulders. “What can I do for you, sir?”
“Take a flag of truce and ride up toward the fort,” Forrest answered. That drew Chalmers's notice, too; Forrest thought it might. He went on, “Captain Anderson here has written out a call for the Federals to surrender. Will you take it to them?” He held out the paper.
“Of course, sir,” Goodman said.
“Good.” Forrest nodded to himself; again, he'd phrased the order as a request, but that didn't make it any less an order. “Round up a couple of more officers as you go forward, if you care to-that'll give you a proper-looking truce party.”
“I'll take care of it.” Captain Goodman read the surrender demand. He looked up with a frown on his face. “Ask you a question, sir?”
“What is it?” Forrest said. “Something not clear?”
“You say the garrison's entitled to be treated as prisoners of war,”
Goodman replied. “Does that include the niggers, too? The Federals are bound to ask, and they've got a hell of a lot of coons in there.”
Forrest grimaced unhappily. What to do about Negroes in blue uniforms had bedeviled the Confederacy since the U.S.A. started arming them. The usual practice, codified by a law out of Richmond, was to return runaway slaves-who formed the bulk of the colored troops-to their owners. Here, though… “Yes, dammit, we'll treat the niggers as prisoners of war — if they give up now. I want that fort, and I want it before the Yankees can bring reinforcements up the river.” He glanced over to General Chalmers. Chalmers didn't look happy about it, either, but he nodded.
Walter Goodman looked sorry he'd asked. “All right, sir,” he said, “but a lot of the men won't like it.” He wasn't wrong. If anything, ordinary Confederate troopers hated the idea of colored soldiers worse than their officers did.
But challenging, or even seeming to challenge, Nathan Bedford Forrest was the wrong thing to do. Bristling, the general commanding snapped, “If I say we'll take nigger prisoners as long as the Federals give up now, then we damn well will. Have you got that, Captain?”
“Oh, yes, sir,” Captain Goodman said hastily.
“All right, then.” Forrest's temper cooled as quickly as it rose. “Go on forward and see what this Major Booth has to say for himself.”
“If he has any sense, he'll quit now, while he's still able to,” Brigadier General Chalmers said. “We can storm the place if he's stubborn. “
“Looks that way to me, too,” Forrest agreed.
Captain Goodman shouted for a white cloth he could make into a flag of truce. When he had one, he started up toward Fort Pillow. Forrest sent Captain Anderson back down to the Mississippi.
“Well,” he said, as firing began to fade with men on both sides spying the white flag, “now we see what happens next.”
“Look, sir!” an excited trooper from the Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry called to Mack Leaming. “The Rebs are sending up a truce flag.”
“So they are.” Lieutenant Leaming didn't sound as happy as the private did. Forrest used flags of truce all the time. He was known to take advantage of them, too, if he saw the chance to do it.
For the moment, though, the rattle of musketry from both sides faded. Major Bradford called out a command to his brother: “For God's sake, Theo, let the New Era know we've got a cease-fire!”
“Yes, sir!” Theodorick Bradford waved the wigwag flags as if suddenly stricken with St. Vitus' dance. A few minutes earlier, gunfire would have drowned his voice and his younger brother's. Now they rang clearly, the loudest things on the suddenly quiet field.
“Leaming!” Bill Bradford shouted. “Are you there, Leaming?” The commandant couldn't have been standing more than twenty feet away from Leaming, but his back was turned so he could call to his signals officer. “I'm here, sir,” the adjutant replied.
Bradford turned. “Well, so you are,” he said with a sheepish smile. Pointing out toward the approaching Confederate truce party, he went on, “I want you to go find out what the enemy has in mind.”
“Yes, sir.” Leaming couldn't help blurting, “By myself, sir?” Major Bradford started to nod, but then checked himself. “Well, maybe not,” he allowed. “We don't want Forrest to reckon we can only spare the one man, do we now?”
“That's what 1 meant, sir,” Leaming said gratefully. And it was.. part of what he meant, anyhow. Going out there alone to face Forrest's fearsome fighters, even under flag of truce, also struck him as too much like sticking his head in the lion's mouth. If he didn't have to admit that out loud, he didn't want to.
“Fair enough,” Major Bradford said. “Take Captain Young with you, then. He's a sharp fellow, and solid as a rock. And”-he looked around and nodded toward the first other officer he saw-”take Lieutenant van Horn with you, too, and a few mounted men for swank.”
“Yes, sir.” Leaming nodded, too. He liked that a lot better. Easier to stay brave when you weren't trying to do it all by yourself. And bringing along Second Lieutenant Dan van Horn was a downright good idea. He came from the Sixth U.S. Heavy Artillery (Colored), and could report directly to his fellow officers-those of them left alive-about
