Fort Pillow: A Novel of the Civil War

There were two areas I most appreciated in Harry Turtledove' Fort Pillow: A Novel of the Civil War. Looking back I realize that I liked these aspects the most, because I learned something from them. The first is that I got a real sense of race relations during the Civil War. I haven't spent extensive time studying this era, a class or two in high school and two courses in college. I gained some knowledge of what happened and a consensus of why. This book showed me the dynamics of how. My history lessons left me with an impression of clear cut race relations along the Mason-Dixon line. Fort Pillow reminded me that attitudes towards race and racism is dynamic. i.e. At the beginning of the war most whites on both sides might have believed show more that black men simply cannot fight. They believed the propaganda at different levels that have been hammered into them for generations. But when the black heroes proved them wrong they reacted differently. People with an open attitude and those who fought alongside with them welcomed them and started to treat them more equally. On the other side, where the general opinion was that blacks cannot be brave by default the fight caused more confusion. This cognitive dissonance led to the massacre depicted in the book.

My first lesson was the diffusion of the idea that racism existed only one one side and one shape, along with the idea that people's attitude can be changed via experience. The second lesson came, when I was about third way through the book. That's when I started to read the “historical note” at the end of the book. I was curious to what extent the author made up the story and the characters and which part of it is actual historical truth. There I learned about the four major sources Turtledove used and how he worked their contradicting storylines into one coherent narrative. He even explained on what principles he based his decisions on which version to believe when. The principle was simple (consider the bias of the sources) the execution of integration was not.

Having described what I gained from the book maybe I should mention what it was about. It describes the siege, capture and demolition of Fort Pillow by Confederate soldiers in 1864. The characters include real, documented historical figures, mostly the higher ranks soldiers, and fictional privates. The story starts before the siege, introducing the era, the geography and the main players; goes through the various stages of the fight (most of the book is “war talk”) and concludes with the massacre of black and white Union soldiers. The people depicted are complex enough characters with conflicting values and thoughts to make it an interesting read beyond the history lessons. show less

This is the author's recreation of the action at Fort Pillow during the US Civil War. Unlike many of his books, this is not alternate history. Turtledove has attempted to create a plausible story of the events out of what little is known today. The battle is sometimes described as a massacre, mostly based on after the fact newspaper reports. I found it realistic, enlightening and enjoyable. It felt a little bit more like fiction than history, but the basic facts are all valid.