FORT PILLOW

When the Confederates had more soldiers in the neighborhood than the Federals, did they fight a kinder, gender war? To put it as mildly as possible, that is hard to believe. They had exactly the same sort of scores to settle as their U.S. counterparts, and just as much zeal to settle them. And, at Fort Pillow, two groups of men they hated more than anyone else on earth were delivered into their hands. Bedford Forrest had warned Major Bradford he could not answer for his men if they got into Fort Pillow, and they proceeded to prove he knew what he was talking about.

Of course, Forrest issued the same warning whenever he assaulted a U.S. garrison. The most compelling piece of evidence that he meant it this time was his decision to hang back from the fighting. In almost every engagement where men he commanded went into action, he fought at the fore. True, this time he was dazed and bruised after his horse fell on him when shot, but that seems too small a reason for a man who ignored gunshot wounds to stay out of the fray. More likely he understood what would happen if his men got into the fort, understood they would get in, and stayed away while the savagery was at its worst to keep from having to try to play King Canute against the blood-dimmed tide.

We remember Fort Pillow today because it is a microcosm of what the Civil War was all about. It showed that blacks could fight, could be men like any others, and it showed how determined white Southerners were not to give them the chance. It also showed that an inexperienced major was no match for the best cavalry commander on either side, even with earthworks and a gunboat to help him.

Forrest won the battle. The Union won the war. In many ways, the South won the peace for the next hundred years. Only in the past couple of generations have we begun to confront the issue of how to make the black man truly equal to the white. We still have a long way to go. Looking back at what happened at Fort Pillow, though, tells us how far we've come.