Bradford shook his head. That wasn't so: Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation superseded what had been the law. When it was first issued, Bradford had no use for the Emancipation Proclamation. It seemed like a sop to Northern abolitionists and nothing more, because it freed slaves only in regions beyond the reach of Union forces. What did that do, except win the President political capital?
But the answer soon became clear. Federal troops might not be able to free Negroes through most of the Confederacy, but a great many slaves were able to free themselves by running off to the closest U.S. garrison. They voted with their feet against the South's peculiar institution.
Southerners still insisted Negroes were slaves by nature, and never could match up against whites on even terms. Maybe they were right. Though a strong Union man, Bill Bradford had always believed that himself. But what the Negroes here at Fort Pillow were doing was making him change his mind.
No, they and their white comrades couldn't keep Bedford Forrest's men out of the fort. But how many more men did Forrest have? And weren't those big black bucks fighting as well as the whites beside whom they stood? Bradford couldn't see that they weren't.
He also couldn't see that he could stay up here on top of the bluff much longer, not if he wanted to go on breathing. Keeping that Springfield between himself and the enemy, he fell back toward the slope that led down to the Mississippi.
Moving a gun was work for a team of mules or horses, not for men. Like the rest of the yelling, cheering Confederates with him, Matt Ward didn't give a damn. They swarmed over the twelve-pounder, literally manhandling it toward the edge of the bluff.
“We hit that son of a bitch of a gunboat a couple times, we'll kill it deader'n a cow that gets in front of a locomotive,” somebody said.
More cheers rang out. Not one of the troopers shoving the cannon into place was an artilleryman; Forrest hadn't brought his batteries west against Fort Pillow. Considering the state of the roads the cavalry traveled, that had to be wise. But, like any soldiers, the troopers were convinced they could do anything. They had the gun. They had cannonballs. They had bags of powder. And they had a target. What more did they need?
“Look!” Ward's voice broke with excitement. “There's that stinking scow, just sitting in the water waiting for it. Let's give it to the damnyankees! “
“How?” somebody said. “Damn gun won't point so low.”
“We lift the trail up, that'll bring the barrel down,” Ward said.
Half a dozen Confederates suited action to work, grabbing the trail and, grunting with effort, lifting it into the air. Then a sergeant said, “That won't work, boys.”
“Why not, goddammit?” one of them demanded irately.
“On account of you can't fire steady that way, and on account of the recoil'll run the gun carriage right on over you and squash you like a bunch of bugs,” the sergeant answered. “Jesus God, you got to be dumber'n a nigger if you can't see stuff like that.”
The trooper remained irate, but he couldn't very well argue because the sergeant was obviously right. “What'll we do, then?” he asked.
“Put stuff under the trail till it stays up and the barrel goes down,” Ward said. He wouldn't have insulted the other Confederate the way the sergeant did, but the fellow wasn't what you'd call smart.
Enough “stuff” lay scattered across the grounds of Fort Pillow: boards, barrels, sandbags, what have you. Ward would have used bluebellies' bodies to prop up the trail, but nobody else seemed to want to do that. Even without bodies, they found plenty to depress the gun barrel.
They loaded a sack of powder into the muzzle of the gun. They didn't bother sponging it out first; if any bits of wadding, were still smoldering, they might have been very sorry, but luck stayed with them. Somebody shoved a twelve-pound iron ball into the muzzle and rammed it down toward the end of the bore. And someone else, ignorant of friction primers, stuck a burning splinter in the touch-hole… Matt Ward wasn't the only one who jammed his fingers in his ears. But nothing happened.
“Hang on,” the sergeant said. “You got to prick the bag so the powder's loose and the flame can get at it.”
Artillerymen, no doubt, had a special iron tool to do just that. Forrest's troopers had to improvise-and they did. Several of them carried horseshoe nails and hoof picks in their pockets. One of those proved long enough and straight enough to do the job. Then Matt Ward put a percussion cap over the vent. “Somebody whack it with a rock!” he said. “If that won't set the blamed thing off, I'm a nigger.”
“I'll do it,” the sergeant said. “We aimed at that son of a bitch?” He looked down the barrel of the gun, then nodded. “Oh, yeah.” He smacked the cap not with a rock but with a hammer he'd picked up God knew where.
Boom! The twelve-pounder's roar was a truly impressive noise. Flame and a great, choking cloud of smoke belched from the muzzle of the gun. Cannon, carriage, and all jerked backward, knocking down the ramshackle support the troopers built under the trail. The sergeant had to spring to one side to keep from getting run over, just as he'd warned the men who wanted to hold the trail up by hand.
They missed the Yankee gunboat. The cannonball kicked up a truly impressive splash about fifty feet behind it and well to its left. There were probably fancy nautical terms to describe that better, but Ward neither knew them nor cared about them. All he knew was, the miserable gunboat still floated.
Several troopers cussed. “We shot the stinking gun once,” Ward said. “We can damn well do it again, right?”
“That's the spirit!” the sergeant said. “And even if we did miss, we let those damnyankee bastards down there know this here fort's got it some new owners, right?”
“Right!” the troopers shouted. Maybe they really were heartened. Maybe they just knew better than to argue with anybody who wore three stripes on his sleeve. Under his profane direction, they shoved the twelve-pounder back to the very edge of the bluff. Getting it ready to fire again didn't take so long. Now they had some idea of what they were doing.
They thought so, anyhow. The colored artillerymen whose captured gun they served would have laughed themselves silly. Those colored artillerymen never once entered Ward's mind. Like the rest of the cavalry troopers at the gun, he was intent on the gunboat down in the river.
The sergeant walloped another percussion cap. Again, the cannon bellowed. A gust blew some of the smoke into Ward's face. He coughed and wiped his streaming eyes on his sleeve. More curses erupted from his comrades. This cannonball went into the Mississippi about as far ahead of its intended target as the other one was behind it. “Well, we scared 'em, by God,” Ward said.
“We can still hit that damn thing.” The sergeant had no quit in him. “All we've got to do is split the difference between those two. We do that, we put a cannonball right through the blamed boat's brisket. “
He seemed to think his makeshift gun crew had the skill to split the difference. Real artillerymen would have, no doubt about it. The Negroes who'd been driven from the gun would have. This swarm of Forrest's troopers? They had enthusiasm and very little else.
They did load the twelve-pounder again. Jostling one another to peer down the barrel, they tried their best to aim the field piece at the gunboat-and to hold it on target with that flimsy pile of stuff raising the trail and depressing the muzzle.
“Here we go! This time for sure!” the sergeant shouted, and brought the hammer down on a third percussion cap.
Fire. Smoke. Thunder. The iron shot splashed into the Mississippi at least as far from its target as either of the earlier two. “Hell's bells!” somebody said in disgust. “We can see the son of a bitch down there. Why in blazes can't we hit it?”