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Chapter Three Military Life at the Fort O NE of the first Confederates stationed at Fort Pillow wrote that it sat on the Chickasaw Bluff “so high that I have thought many of us would never get nearer to heaven.” The site offered a pleasant campground and beautiful vistas during the warmer part of the year. During winter, though, Private James M. Williams from Alabama called the brown landscape “bleak and cheerless.” In that season troops encountered a penetrating wind, which whipped over the hills, as well as what an Iowan described as “snow & rain & mud in superabundance.”1 During the year of Confederate presence and the two years of Federal occupation, military units stayed at or near Fort Pillow for periods ranging from a few days to sixteen months (see Tables 3 and 4). Soldiers from both sides commented, like Confederate Captain Evander Graham, that the fort was a “very much out of the way place.” Wilderness areas in the river bottoms had an amazing abundance of wetlands wildlife.2 Like that environment , military life also must have seemed exotic to many in the fort’s garrisons. Since the difficulties played an important role in affecting events there, the challenges of everyday military life deserve examination. In general, the Federal government provided better for its forces than the Confederacy did. The United States’ logistical systems for the army and navy had long been in place and could draw upon the more diversified Northern economy. Nevertheless, newly created Confederate military structures supplied the fort’s garrison with ample food for the most part in 1861. In addition, during warm weather local farmers either sold produce at low prices or gave it away.3 During April and May 1862, all of General Beauregard’s command had to endure a beef shortage. Although surviving records are silent about it, soldiers at the fort could have obtained meat then by hunting, foraging, or stealing. They did build ovens at the fort to bake their own bread. Confederates operating in the area after the fort’s fall fed themselves with donated, purchased, or appropriated supplies.4 During the campaign against the fort, the Federals regularly had plenty of rations shipped downriver. They also procured fresh meat by hunting 39 Military Life at the Fort and by foraging. After establishing a garrison at the fort in the fall of 1862, they relied mostly upon foraging for basic foods. An Iowan wrote his hometown paper that “whatever we find in the country that we need, we feel it our duty to take. The boys enjoy the feasting.”5 Meat came mainly from Arkansas, especially from the Lanier and McGavock herds, which grazed in Craighead Point’s swampy canebrakes. Archaeological work at the fort has uncovered many bones of butchered domestic animals. From December 1862 through July 1863, the post benefitted from the services of a government steamer, first the Davenport and later the O’Brien. Foraging parties would surround an area and drive the cattle toward the steamboat’s ramp. As Captain Franklin Moore noted, “We loaded it pretty heavily down.”6 When lacking a steamer, Federals used gunboats and light craft to bring smaller quantities of butchered meat across the river, and they foraged more on the Tennessee side. A company stationed briefly at Fulton in the fall of 1862 did much fishing with long trot lines.7 For the variety and challenge, some soldiers liked to steal animals. Because of the need to speed and hide depredations, looters preferred chickens and hogs. One day on a march back from an unsuccessful raid, a cavalry captain, lenient but concerned about Confederate pursuers, banned all shooting yet advised his men to kill “anything that has’nt taken the oath [of loyalty to the United States]” by quietly using rifle butts as clubs. Private Albert Trask remembered: “By the time we reached the [Mississippi] river it was very evident that poultry, at least, had’nt taken the oath worth a cent.” Since the army strictly banned unauthorized foraging of this sort, the looters had to sneak the goods into the fort. Two mounted soldiers once slipped away from a march and, after waiting for the column to get out of hearing, killed a hog. They wrapped the butchered meat in blankets, which they placed under their saddles when passing the fort’s pickets. While this sort of activity provided great satisfaction to adventuresome young soldiers , it harmed relations with civilians.8 Both governments tried to provide clothing for...

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