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.
“No change?” Leaming asked.
“I'm afraid not,” Dr. Vail answered. “With a head wound like that, he's in God's hands, not mine. And God hasn't doled out many miracles lately. Potter's almost hopeless. I wish I could tell you different, but…” He spread his hands.
While Leaming was digesting that, the secretary who'd accompanied Messrs. Wade and Gooch to Mound City came into the ward. He spoke with Vail; the surgeon led him over to Leaming's bed. “Good morning, Lieutenant,” the secretary murmured. His voice and clothes were prissily precise. A cornholer? Leaming wondered. Wouldn't be surprised.
But that was neither here nor there. “Good morning,” Leaming said.
“I hope you continue to improve,” the secretary told him.
“He's making good progress,” Dr. Vail put in. “His prognosis is favorable, unlike poor Captain Potter's.”
“I am glad to hear it.” The secretary gave his attention back to Leaming. “The gentlemen from the Joint Committee are most desirous-most desirous, sir-of presenting the massacre at Fort Pillow to the people of the United States in terms as emphatic, and as condemnatory of Bedford Forrest and his brigands, as possible. Any assistance you can offer towards that end will be greatly appreciated. Do I make myself plain?”
“I think you do, sir,” Leaming answered. Wade and Gooch wanted him to slang the Rebs, and they wouldn't mind if he stretched things a little to do it. Neither would he. After everything that had happened at Fort Pillow, he wanted to pay them back any way he could.
The effete secretary withdrew, to return a few minutes later with the Senator and the Congressman. He administered the oath to Leaming, then took out his notebook and pen while Daniel Gooch started the questioning. With the secretary's encouragement, Leaming wasn't above stretching things when he talked about the truce. He complained that the Rebs who'd come down to the riverside to meet the Olive Branch took advantage of the white flag to improve their position. Because the steamer was not a party to the cease-fire, that wasn't exactly so, but it felt as if it ought to be. Congressman Gooch nodded gravely. The secretary's pen slid across the paper.
Leaming told how he'd been shot and robbed and succored only by his fellow Freemason. When he described how he'd been carried aboard the Platte Valley, Senator Wade took over for Gooch. He wanted to know who'd been drinking with the Rebs. Leaming hesitated about putting U.S. officers in hot water, and truthfully said he hadn't seen anyone doing so. Wade did not look happy. Leaming got the idea he seldom looked happy, but he looked even less so now.
“Do you know what became of Major Bradford?” Wade asked. “He escaped unhurt, as far as the battle was concerned,” Leaming answered. “I was told the next morning on the boat that he had been paroled. I did not see him after that night. “
A little later, Congressman Gooch asked, “What do you estimate Forrest's force to have been?”
“From all I could see and learn, I should suppose he had from seven thousand to ten thousand men,” Leaming answered. Major Booth hadn't thought so, but Major Booth was dead… and the larger number better suited the Union cause. A few questions later, Leaming got the chance to trot out one more rumor: “I have been told that Major Bradford was afterwards taken out by the Rebels and shot. That seems to be the general impression, and I presume it was so.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant,” Gooch and Wade said together. “No further questions,” Wade added.
After the secretary closed his notebook and put away his pen, Daniel Gooch nodded to Leaming. “Thank you, Lieutenant,” he said.
“That was very effective testimony.”
“I was doing my best to help, Your Excellency,” Leaming replied.
“Well, your best is damned good, son,” Ben Wade rumbled.
“We'll hold Bedford Forrest's toes to the fire with what you had to say-just see if we don't.” His face darkened with anger. “And we'll put a stop to the despicable practice some of our officers have of treating white men on the other side better than they treat colored soldiers in their own uniform. Despicable, I say, and we will stamp it out.”
“Er — yes, sir.” Till he'd seen the Negro artillerymen at Fort Pillow fight, Mack Leaming would have been that kind of Federal officer himself. Fighting for the Union and fighting for the Negro had seemed two very different things to him. They still did, as a matter of fact-but he had more sense than to admit it to the implacable Senator from Ohio.
“If I may be permitted to say so, Lieutenant, your testimony was exactly along the lines envisioned by the committee when it voted to send Senator Wade and Congressman Gooch west to investigate this tragic incident,” the secretary observed.
You told them what they wanted to hear. Leaming heard the words behind the words. “Good,” he said. The
