FORT PILLOW

And the same was also true of Sergeant Ben Robinson. Next to him, though, U. S. Grant had started out a nobleman. Ben Robinson was born a slave on an indigo plantation not far outside of Charleston, South Carolina. He'd heard the big guns boom when the Confederates shelled Fort Sumter.

Not long after that, his master ran short of cash and sold him and several other hands to a dealer who resold them at a tidy profit to a cotton planter with a farm outside of Jackson, Mississippi. Not without pride, Ben knew he'd brought the dealer more money than any of the other hands. He was somewhere around thirty, six feet one, and close to two hundred pounds. And he worked hard – or as hard as any slave was likely to work, seeing that he wasn't working for himself.

Once, drunk, his new owner told him, “If all niggers was like you,

Ben, we'd have a hell of a time keeping slaves.”

The white man didn't remember it the next morning. Ben Robinson never forgot it. He probably would have run off anyway when Federal troops got down to Corinth, Mississippi. He'd long been sure he could run his own life better than any white man could run it for him. But finding out that his master more or less agreed with him sure didn't hurt.

He'd been a stevedore, a roustabout, a strong back for the Yankees, too – till they started signing up colored soldiers. He was one of the first men to volunteer. Even the very limited, very partial freedom he had as a laborer struck him as worth fighting for.

His size and strength got him accepted at once. And, along with the good head on his shoulders, they got him promoted not once but twice. Officers in the Sixth U.S. Heavy Artillery were all white. Most of the sergeants were white, too. For a colored man to get his third stripe was no mean feat.

Ben Robinson had heard that there actually were a handful of Negro officers in the U.S. Army. There was even a major, a man named Martin Delany. But he'd been born in the U.S.A. and educated like a white man. For somebody who'd started out a field hand and who still couldn't write his name, sergeant was a long, long climb.

A soldier in Robinson's company tossed a well – gnawed hambone on the ground. “Is you a pig, Nate?” the sergeant called. “Way you leaves your rubbish all over, I reckon mebbe you is. Take it back to the kitchen an' throw it out there.”

Nathan Hunter scowled at him. “Is you happy you gits to play the white man over me?”

A lot of Negro soldiers preferred to take orders from whites, not from their own kind. It was as if they'd been taking orders from white men for so many generations, that seemed natural to them. But if another black man told them what to do, they saw him as a cheap imitation of the real thing.

“Don't want to be no white man.” Robinson meant that from the bottom of his soul. All the same, he tapped his chevrons with his right hand. “Don't got to be no white man, neither. All I gots to be is a sergeant, an' I am. This here place bad enough if we do try an' keep it halfway clean. If'n we don't, we might as well be pigs fo' true.”

Still scowling, Hunter picked up the bone and carried it away. Ben Robinson nodded to himself. Military punishments weren't so harsh as the lashes a master or an overseer could deal out – quite a few of the men in the Sixth U.S. Heavy Artillery joined the Army with stripes on their backs. But marching back and forth with a heavy plank on your shoulder or sitting out in the open gagged and with your hands tied behind you and your knees drawn up to your chest, while they weren't painful, were humiliating. For men whose sense of self often was still fragile, stripes could be easier to bear than embarrassment.

Although Robinson had the authority to mete out such punishments himself, he wouldn't have done it. Had he tried, a soldier would have gone over his head to an officer – probably straight to Major Booth. Better to let the men with shoulder straps – and with white skins – take care of anything really serious.

He walked over to the twelve – pounder for which his company was responsible. The smoothbore gun threw an iron ball as big as his fist a mile, or hurled a round of shrapnel just as far. At close range, canister turned the piece into an enormous shotgun that could mow down everything in front of it.

Ben set a proud, affectionate hand on the smooth curve of the barrel, almost as if it were the smoothly curved flank of a woman he loved. He hadn't seen combat yet, but he'd practiced with the gun. He knew what it could do. He frowned. He knew what it could do if it got the chance.

Sergeant Joe Hennissey belonged to Company A. He had no more rank than Robinson, but he had white – very white – skin, red hair, and a beard the exact color of a new penny. He had a better chance of getting something done than Robinson did. The Negro waved to him. “Reckon we got us some trouble here, Sergeant,” he said.