Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 44 - Gideon Pillow Ft. Matt Palmquist

Episode Date: March 25, 2019

Joe is joined by the purveyor of @civilwarhumor Matt Palmquist to talk about Gideon Pillow. A General who spent his entire life proving the fact that you may be terrible at your job, steal a cannon, and never learn how to read a map but if your best friend is the President you can do whatever you want. Follow Matt: @civilwarhumor Support the show and get more content: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys buy some merchandise: https://teespring.com/stores/lions-led-by-donkeys-store Follow the show: @lions_by

I'm Henry from Fortress on a Hill. We're a leftist veteran podcast that aims to expose the reality of the U.S. military's many wars abroad, the horror that it puts on the people that live in those places, and the damage that military service does to Americans. role, giving oversight to the military, Fortress on a Hill aims to change that. Fortressonahill.com or wherever you get your podcast. Now, back of Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. I'm Joe and with me today is Matt Palmquist. He's a journalist and he runs the Civil War Humor Twitter account, which is the only humorous historical Twitter account that I actually like. So welcome to the show, Matt. Thanks very much for having me. It's great to be here. having me it's great to be here yeah uh so you run uh yeah well obviously the civil war humor twitter account but uh like what made you want to do that like it seems like it's obviously it's super niche like any random historical fandom that exists on the internet but uh what made you want to do that um you know i needed more angry mentions uh you know, I just a couple years ago, as you know, some of these issues around the Civil War, you know, are kind of frighteningly relevant. I, you know, kind of

thought I wanted to kind of look for a way to, you know, talk about, you know, history on Twitter, but maybe use a different way in than most people do. And of course, you know, when most people think about the Civil War, they think comedy. So, you know, but I thought if I sprinkled in, you know, some humor with, you know, some of the actual history stuff that I was trying to get across, that that might be a way of reaching different people. And, um, you know, I've been really gratified with the response. It's been really great. So, uh, so far, so far, so good. Yeah. And that's that frighteningly relevant thing. And like, it totally sticks out to me, but, and there's another thing I think, um, kind of scared me away from the civil war because if anybody's been listening, we've only ever done one civil war

episode and it was on a submarine of all things. Um, I listened to that one. It was great. Thank you. Uh, and it's one of those conflicts that is, you know, niche or whatever. But, you know, and my normal co-host, Nick, is a reenactor of like World War One and Two. But like he didn't dabble in the Civil War stuff because he said they're really weird and creepy. I don't know how true that is to me. All of the stories he told me that everybody that does that's really weird and creepy. I think the word I use is insular. It's a very insular insular world i think yeah yeah once he told me this story about he knew a friend who bought an entire tank i knew i wanted nothing

to do with them because it's weird and i like tanks it's what my job was but yeah we try to stay away or at least i do um uh stay away from the civil war because it's one of those things that i mean i'm used to people sending me hate mail uh it's part of being a public person i guess but it's one of those conflicts that you you can get someone's uniform wrong in uh world war ii or world war one most people aren't going to give you a lot of shit for it right though i know nick nick has done that to me before because like a stupid fucking pants detail once but like if you say someone's like random regimental uniform was so much had like one wrong button on it in the civil war you're gonna have like four like professors sliding into your dm's tell you how much of a dumb ass you are yes yes you are

yeah no i'm still recovering because i uh one time i was doing a post about george meade and said he held the Council of War at Gettysburg in a tent and he actually held it in a house. And, you know, I'm like still digging out from from the mention. So, yeah, people take it people take it very seriously. And, you know, the term Civil War buff, you know, is I think, you know, has been popularized for a reason because there's a lot of people that identify very closely with it. So but yeah, you know, some people can take it a little too seriously. Um, certainly, uh, but you know, I try not to focus so much on, you know, those kinds of details and try to go for more like big picture and, and personalities and, you know, and kind of like the historical trends that kind of inform the civil war and we're kind of swirling all around it. So,

you know, I, I try not to get, you know, too far kind of swirling all around it so you know i i try not to get you know too far deep into like button humor but you know every once in a while i'm tempted um but you know yeah the badges and the buttons and all that stuff it's it's uh yeah you don't want to you don't want to get anything wrong that's for sure yeah yeah i think it happened i think it happened to me once when i said something stupid on Twitter about Zouaves. And someone lit into me with a four-string DM and would not let me forget it. So I'm a bit shell-shocked. The baggy pants crowd takes things especially seriously.

But it's also a complicated period of American history. And I feel like things like you know, things like the revolution and world war two are a little bit more prevalent in pop culture, you know, whether it's Hamilton or, or movies and, you know, the civil war is, is just, it's, it's, it's, you know, more complex, it's uglier, it's harder to talk about. Um, and I think for that reason, you know, I didn't get it taught to me a lot growing up in school. You know, I feel like we got a ton of revolution stuff, you know, crammed down our throats. But, you know, really, Civil War was was, you know, relatively ignored. So, you know, I'm always kind of amazed that beyond, you know, some of the main personalities, your grants, your Shermans, your Lees, you know,

people don't really know once you start getting into that, like second tier or, you know, maybe like who we're going to talk about today, the 12th tier of civil war personality so um so yeah that's what i try to do with the account yeah if we were looking at civil war generals as draft picks gideon johnson pillow would have definitely gone undrafted yeah he's a walk-on which i guess we should kind of sort of move into that. We're talking about – solid transition point. We're talking about Gideon Johnson Pillow. And he has two distinct parts of his military career.

We'll call it one before the Civil War and one after. And we will talk about them separately. And so I don't sound like a complete ass i brought on someone who knows about civil war uh uh so i will be talking about his early life and his career up until the mexican america up until the end of the mexican american war um so sounds good yeah sounds good and by the way i did want to say before we start there's actually if you need like a last minute advertiser, there is a company called Gideon Pillows. They actually like manufacturers of pillows. So if you're looking for, you know, a pillow that runs away from you in the middle of the night or whatever, you should try to try a Gideon pillow.

So if you're looking for a pillow who can't read a map. Exactly. Or just get or just get comfy to listen to this podcast. That's right. So Gideon Pillow might just be the human embodiment of privilege. Because sometimes it doesn't matter how good you are at something. And everybody here can probably relate to that. There might just be some asshole who gets promoted over you based on who he knows. And if you're in the U.S US military in the mid-1800s,

there's a very good chance that man's name was Gideon Pillow. So Gideon Pillow was born on June 8th, 1806 in Williamson County, Tennessee. He was born into a family of incredible wealth and his family was known for a deep loyalty to President Andrew Jackson

and a reputation as Indian fighters. So you can just imagine all the negative horrible shit his family did uh to get that reputation um it's a good chance his family has a long long history of being the bad guys in a history book um so i'm not really going to go into a lot about the middle years of pillow's life, but he eventually graduated from the university of Nashville and began to practice law in Columbia, Tennessee. Uh, there's a very good chance that this would be the end of the story. Uh, if pillow did not have some powerful friends, um, one of those men was his current law partner,

One of those men was his current law partner, James K. Polk, the future president of the United States. Not only were they partners in business, they became best friends. While Polk went off into the world of federal politics, Pillow was appointed the district attorney general as well as a brigadier general in Tennessee. This being back, of course, when ranks held by militia were different than those within the kind of small federal army. But Pillow got bored of the rigors of peacetime militia command and quit after three years. When Pillow heard his good buddy

Polk was running for president, he decided to get involved. But as we will discover about Pillow, he was adverse to doing any actual work. It's not entirely known what exactly he did to help Polk run for president, but he is pretty heavily implicated in bribing people to vote for him as well as just lying to other people about how much footwork he actually did. But he made sure to tell Polk how much he helped Polk.

You know, the, the, the vote rigging and bribing, it sounds awful because it is, but it was also really common back in the day. Oh, absolutely. So he wasn't like, he didn't stick out as being an asshole for doing that. He was just one of many.

Yep. So only a few years later, the Mexican-American War broke out. As the federal army was always very, very small, a lot of that has to do with, I believe we've talked about before, but I'll repeat myself. A lot of that has to do with the revolution being largely untrustworthy of a large standing army. And that would change with the Civil War and the years afterwards. But up until the years before the Civil War, it was kept very, very small and then kind of supported by militia and volunteers to yada, yada, yada our way through 100 years of American military history.

Exactly. But in order to shore up those numbers, Congress approved the appointment of volunteer generals who had prior experience in order to have some command structure. Technically, Pillow had experience as a general. Now, he never went to any military academy or anything. Nope. But being a general is a lot like being a plumber. It's an apprenticeship. Exactly.

The political general begins to rear its head. And so in order to get that position – and there's other generals who were being appointed at the time who are political generals as well. But other people were like, well, he's never actually done anything. But the one thing that he had was like a trump card, and that was a personal letter of appointment to the rank of brigadier general from the president himself. That'll do it. So not many people can outrank him then. Right. So flush with his

new rank pillow made his way to mexico in the summer of 1846 now we're not going to go into the mexican-american war depth here just blame texas that's what i normally do but just know that the campaign was generally split between two commanders zachary old rough and ready taylor and winfielduss and Feather Scott, both of whom seem like they either lost a nickname competition or they are preparing for some really bad porn. Like those are I mean, I understand there's there's a large rainbow of strange nicknames for this era's generals. But those suck. Yeah, we're going to get to another porn star general name later on, I think. Fantastic.

Foreshadowing. So Pillow presented himself to Taylor along with his first Tennessee regiment. Unlike Pillow, Taylor was a skilled military commander and knew a shitbag when he saw one. He immediately grew to hate Pillow and dismissed him as little more than a political appointee, which was true. political appointee, which was true. He somehow managed to separate Pillow from his own regiment and made him sit on the sideline during the Battle of Monterey while his soldiers fought

without him. Afterwards, Taylor managed to cook up a bullshit reason to get rid of Pillow entirely and send him across the country to Scott's command. It was under Scott that Pillow actually saw combat for the first time. To everybody's shock, he didn't fuck up.

He did okay. Or at least he didn't do anything too awful to warrant a note. He was solidly mediocre, which is like the pinnacle of his career is being mediocre. It's all downhill from here. You're exactly right.

His ability to not totally suck got him promoted once again by the order of the president to major general. Sometimes, like, I don't know. So he was part of dispatches that get sent back to the president. And his name was just mentioned as being a commanding officer in this operation. And that was enough to get him promoted. Yeah. The famous, famous like mentioned in dispatches yes yes something he would this is something that uh pillow would seemingly go out

of his way to make everybody regret from here on out first there's a battle of carmago or carmage i'm not really sure um i think it's carmago uh where he ordered his soldiers to pile dirt on the wrong side of a ditch, despite the fact that his fellow officers pointed this out to him and that was where the enemy was supposed to be coming from. He had, in effect, built the enemy their own defenses, after which

his fellow officers called him, quote, a mass of vanity, conceit, ignorance, ambition, and want of truth. Which I assume is 1800th military, uh, military officer speak for like spitting hot fire. Exactly.

Uh, it's, it should be impressive that they actually wrote that down into letters. Uh, about some of that ranked him. Yeah. We're going to, we're going to get to some,

some good put downs a pillow. Uh, so in his first battle in command as a major general, he ordered troops to march directly into mexican artillery now before people ask um isn't that kind of what infantry did back in the day sometimes that's true um pillow was actually supposed to march as men behind a nearby ridge which have would have protected them from incoming fire uh you see pillow was actually unable to read the fucking map that was given to him at the time

and decided not to bring that up to anybody. Also, he seemed to completely lack common sense to, I don't know, bring his soldiers around the ridge. That was with an eye shot. His officers were not so dumb that were under him. They got into a screaming match at this point between his lower lieutenants and himself. That was apparently so loud that the Mexican gunners heard them allowing to dial their sights and allow them to know when to switch over to grape shot. That's just amazing.

That's just pinpointing artillery based on listening to the general arguing is just fantastic. And the flurry of cannon fire pillow was uh somehow lightly wounded and then ran away leaving his men to their fate other than that though the battle was largely a mexican failure entirely the only unit they did uh any kind of real damage to his pillows unfortunately for the soldiers of the united states army that was not the last time pillow would see action in mexico due to his pillows. Unfortunately for the soldiers of the United States Army, that was not the last time Pillow would see action in Mexico. Due to his best friend being president of the United States, Pillow outranked several

people who knew what the hell they were doing. One of those men was David Twiggs, who was a veteran of the War of 1812. Now, if we have any new listeners, we did a series on the War of 1812. I did not talk about David Twiggs, but he was involved. Though Scott was smart enough to know that twigs was a better general and actually gave him the mission like he knew pillow outranked him but he just left pillow in support now technically scott told pillow to take command if something was wrong twigs hated pillow but uh being a military man who accepted an asshole who outranked him like any veteran of the united states army could say they've done

about a half dozen times myself included uh he just took it he understood that he was going to be the one assaulting these positions and you know pillow would get the credit largely for being in command uh but a caveat to that was he twig was given assurance that pillow would not be able to take real command of the advance without express permission from winfield scott himself so you know what happens next pillow assumed command without consulting scott and decided and decided to lead a marching route in a completely different direction. They were trying to assault a point known as San Geronimo. So he thought his marching route was a much better plan because it would flank it rather than being a frontal assault, which sure, that makes sense. But remember, Pillow can't read a map.

So they immediately got lost in the night but you know twigs tried to point it out that you know this is really bad idea we should just keep going forward but he was a good officer he just sucked it up and followed pillow they got lost after several hours they arrived at a place several miles away from the actual battle they were supposed to be fighting. By the time our boy pillow finally found himself to where he was supposed to be, the battle was over. I don't even know how you do that.

Like it's, yeah, it's remarkable. Guns are allowed. Walk towards the guns. Yeah. Yeah. Especially the sound of the firing as they say

yeah uh sir it certainly sounds like we're getting further away of the sounds of muskets right right nope nope i know what i'm doing hold my beer i got this uh somehow in the middle of getting lost pillow had injured his ankle uh probably rolled it or something uh and he had to be laid up while it held uh he heard about a local painter named james walker who was making sketches of the battle he had been hurt in kind of it was the battle he was kind of near that one time he wasn't right remember he was not actually in the battle uh pillow talked walker into uh painting a second version of the battle uh showing his division at the forefront of the battle he was not at.

He then sent his version to the president with a note, quote, I am placed in my proper position in this painting. Make sure you hang it up high. And he did. That sounds like fake news. It's stolen valor. It is stolen valor.

Oh man, get those Twitter douchebags on that guy so pillow's vanity and willingness to lie out of his ass let the people of america know just how great general pillow was did not end there he wrote a series of letters while he was healing and sent them off to dozens of publications throughout the U.S. Here's a sample of one of them. Pillow's plan of battle and the disposition of his forces were most judicious and successful. He invinced in this, as he had done on other occasions, that masterly military genius and profound knowledge of the science of war, which has astonished so much in

the mere marionettes of the profession. During this great battle which lasted two days, General Pillow was in command of all forces engaged except General Wurst's division, which was not engaged. All of that is not true. To make matters worse, and this is probably the most cringy shit imaginable, he had two

pen names, one of which was Leonidas and the other was Veritas. Yeah. Well, and just, you know, it's interesting because this whole phenomenon of writing, you know, quote unquote, anonymous letters to newspaper editors would be a thing throughout the Civil War. Like, I mean, he wasn't the only guy who did this.

And it's just remarkable because it's always transparent. I mean, it seems like they always got found out. So I'm not quite sure about what the genius was behind picking these pen names. None of it was true. Winfield Scott was in command and he completely shit on him. This reminds me. Once upon a time

when I was in the military, I had a really lazy superior who didn't want to write my monthly counseling. It's kind of like evaluation reviews. And he made me write it. He made me write my own review. How'd you do? Oh man. Best month of my entire eight year long career. Let me tell you. It would be exactly if Pillow wrote his own fucking promotion certificates. Yeah. I think he signed it with

like a pretentious pen name oh yeah oh yeah what's more pretentious than leonidas that's up there uh so in one of these letters to the times pick a yoon of new orleans pillow tells a story about how he faced down a charging mex Mexican lancer with his sword before spinning around, disarming him, and casually shooting him in the face. Of course, that didn't happen. And, you know, obviously, these eventually made their way

to Winfield Scott, and it did not take him more than about ten fucking seconds of reading this bullshit. No, Pillow had written it and then pillows aid because Scott went and talked to pillows aid who immediately dimed him out and at the same time pillow was

getting pissed like he was he was thinking about a court-martial but he wasn't sure if he could actually make it fly because he knew he was the president's best friend so he needed some hard evidence of being a malingering asshole to really charge him thankfully the person he was investigating was gideon pillow and he would quickly give him that evidence uh pillow had loaded two mexican howitzers into personal baggage to bring home the man had stolen fucking cannons and was trying to

bring him to his house. Finally, Scott court-martialed his ass. And despite the fact he finally had piles of evidence to prove Pillow was guilty of something. The matter was dropped due to the intervention of, who else?

President Polk. There he is. He wrote in the matter, quote, General Pillow is a gallant and highly meritorious officer and has been greatly persecuted by General Scott for no other reason. He is a Democrat in his politics and he is supposedly my best friend. I love 1800s letters. They're just so good oh man and so it is with that that the the wonderful career of gideon pillow ended for a time and that is where matt will pick up in his wonderful civil war life it gets even better i love i just have no idea like he wrote two personal appointment letters to pillow and then he's like supposedly

they say he's my friend he was just a coffee boy a quote unquote yeah this guy i owned a business with yep yep um so that's gonna be you know as you kind of as you kind of outlined, he's a he's a political mover and shaker. He in before the Civil War, he actually tries to get the Democratic nomination for vice president twice. He doesn't get it. He tries to run for a Senate seat, doesn't get it. He's kind of a lawyer because like the bar wasn't nearly as hard to pass back then. Um, so like, like a lot of like, I would say like, you know, it's like, it feels like 98% of, especially like Southern generals were, you know, quote unquote lawyers, but he's

really like a, like a real estate guy. Um, and so by the time the war starts, he's pretty much the richest guy in Tennessee. Um, so that means, you know, especially back in those early days of the Civil War before there were huge organized armies that he can basically raise his own militia. So that's what he does. He raises and pays for and equips his own militia. He just bought his own army. Yeah. You know, a couple of like rich guys in the South did that at the start of the Civil War.

It was almost like going back to like medieval or feudal times or whatever um but this is what's great because when that you know quote-unquote army is eventually absorbed into the full-fledged confederate army it goes from being a major general in his army to a brigadier general in the confederate army so the war hasn't even started yet and he's already been demoted. So that's that. So he's you know, he's in a mood, you know, right when right when the war starts, he's actually put under the command of William Hardy, who was in the Mexican war as well. And actually, like literally like wrote the book on infantry tactics. So, you know, Hardy is pretty well respected. So, you know, Hardy is pretty well respected. But Pillow writes to the secretary of war, quote, You can judge with what reluctance I yield the command to an officer who is a captain under me in the Mexican war while I was a major general.

Why is it that I have been placed in position and ranked by nearly every general officer of the Confederate Army when it is known I ranked every officer now in that army in my long term of service. And there's actually there's a great journal article from the 60s called Gideon J. Pillow, A Study in Egotism. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah. So, you know, so that's what we begin to see here. And and pretty much the first thing that he does in the Civil War is part of a massive miscalculation with enormous political ramifications not our boy gideon yeah you'll never believe it um but on the orders of of another leonidas and this is uh general leonidas polk uh who was a former bishop was that actually his first name

oh man yep so he's a former bishop and like he and Pillow do not get along from the get go. But Polk has the idea of like trying to advance into Kentucky. So he sends Pillow north into Kentucky, which is an issue because when the piss off, you know, the Kentucky legislature. But in September of 1861, our boy Pillow just marches right on in the city of Columbus on the Mississippi River. And obviously this has, you know, the opposite of effect of what it was intended. It totally pisses off the unionists in the state. You know, the state legislature is angry. You know, the Confederate government sort of forms like a flimsy Kentucky state government, but legislature is angry. The Confederate government sort of forms a flimsy Kentucky state government, but it never takes.

Basically, this action flips Kentucky into the union column. Wow. If you're scoring along at home, we have not even fired a musket in anger yet, and Pillow has helped lose the Confederacy of State. Man, that's a whole new level of fucking up it's amazing it's amazing how did he not get fired or like you know that was like it was kind of

polk's idea and so you know he was you know quote unquote just following orders but you know you know the western theater of the civil war you know just doesn't get as much attention. Um, I find as like the, as like the Eastern, uh, theater, um, you know, because like, you know, in the West you have these huge States and distances involved, whereas like in the East, like you're basically fighting at bull run every few months, um, kind of seems. Um, and so like one of the reasons, you know, this particular area, you know, Missouri, Kentucky, Illinois is so important is because of the Mississippi River, which obviously, you know, at that point in terms of like logistics, trade, communications, I mean, symbolism, like, you know, we're kind of getting into the age of Mark Twain and the steamboats and everything. So, you know, if the union controls the Mississippi, it can effectively cut the Confederacy in half. So that's why this particular area was so important and so sensitive.

And the other reason I bring this up is because basically the first Civil War battle Pillow was involved in occurs along the Mississippi and it's at Belmont, Missouri. One of the reasons that this battle is also famous is because it on the other side, on the union side, it's got an obscure at that point, scruffy dude who liked the drink now and then. Although it wasn't as big a deal as his biographers make it out to be now. But who was Ulysses S. Grant? Oh, yeah. So they they really kind of slammed him politically for being a drunk. But he wasn't really a drunk, was he? You know, this is, um, you know, this is one of the big, um, I would say current, uh, controversies kind of around grant. Um, a couple of biographies have come out that make a big deal of his drinking,

but a couple of academics that I really respect have kind of debunked those, um, those biographies, you know, there's not a lot of, I would say personally, there's not a lot of like contemporary accounts of his drinking. A lot of them are kind of made up after the fact or, or emerged long after he was dead or whatever. Um, but I mean, there's no question he had, he had issues with alcohol at various times in his life. It's just, you know, whether he was sloshed on the battlefield or things like that, which i don't i don't tend to think that he was but i've also heard like he hated like he was terrified of the sight of blood and refused to shower in front of his own men and all sorts of other stuff like that yeah i mean he was a great he was a great horseman like i mean that he's still i mean i think you know up until a while ago he had not a while ago but until fairly recently he had like records at west point for horsemanship and stuff i mean he's a really interesting guy and you know, supposedly Spielberg is making a movie of his life. That would be interesting.

I'd watch that. Yeah. Apparently Leonardo DiCaprio is on board. Um, to play Grant. Yeah. Yeah. Cause when I think Ulysses S.

Grant, I think Leonardo DiCaprio, you don't think the pussy posse, that's the first thing that comes to mind. Yeah, you know, it's a weird one. I've done a couple posts about it. And who knows? Hollywood movies like this take forever to make.

It could change a dozen times before now and then. But yeah, that was the talk fairly recently. And DiCaprio's accent game is fucking awful. He's a good actor, but like his southern accent in Django Unchained made me want to stab myself in the fucking ears with a nail. I don't see it personally. Like I don't see the resemblance to Grant or the same affect as Grant, who is a pretty reserved, you know, low key guy.

I just I don't know. I don't I don't see it, but we'll have to see what what Hollywood magic can can happen. Yeah, that's true. OK, so so when we left off, so Grant, so Grant wants to attack this Confederate camp that they have on the Mississippi River at Belmont. Polk finds out and sends Pillow there to intercept to intercept Grant. And this is kind of like our first like real great Gideon Pillow Civil War moment because he you know, he goes to intercept Grant. And this is kind of like our first, like real great Gideon pillow civil war moment because he, you know, he goes to intercept grants men and he kind of just decides to like stand and

take it. So he lines his men up more or less in a straight line, like irrespective of terrain, you know, things that you never like to hear, like flanks in the air, flanks dangling, um,

you know, and whereas like the union is basically massing in in the woods, you know, within within, you know, gunfight within gunshot of the Confederates. So they can approach pretty closely. They have plenty of trees and rocks to fight behind. So one of Pillow's soldiers said it was like fighting a duel with an enemy when he's behind a tree and you're in an open field. So that's not good. One of his other officers said, and I love this quote, it would be very difficult to place our troops in any position where they would be more open to the fire of the enemy. So so that's our boy getting pillow, possibly a double agent, possibly a double agent. Possibly a double agent. For which two sides, we don't know.

So, you know, over the next couple hours, you know, Grant and the Union, you know, push him back, push him back. And, you know, because of like the hurried nature of Pillow going to intercept, you know, Grant's troops, some of the rebels had like three cartridges. About half of them left their bayonets back in camp. So at one point, Pillow orders like a desperate bayonet charge, but half of his men didn't have bayonets. So I guess it's like, what do you do then? It's like forks and spoons. You know, I don't know.

Why did nobody tell him that? Like, should we tell him that none of us have bayonets? I don't know. This will come up in a moment, actually. So eventually, so the Union gets the Confederate camp and, you know, they kind of drive Pillow and his men away. And then, like, things get super out of hand for Grant. It becomes like a 90s rave because this was like, you know, the Union troops first combat. So they just start partying, dancing, looting.

partying, dancing, looting. Um, one of Grant's subordinates named McClernand, who is not one of my faves is like, let's do three cheers, you know, which is not what Grant wants because he's trying to organize his men. And he's got like, you know, a bunch of like teenage Midwestern dudes running around firing guns in the air. Um, so finally he's like, fuck it. Let's just light the camp on fire. Because if we light the camp on fire, you know, my men will have nothing to party with and we'll have to get out of here. But while all this is going on, the rebels kind of regroup and then they counterattack. So all of a sudden the union finds itself surrounded. And Grant gives, you know, one of his famous lines, quote, you know, well, we must cut our way out as we cut our way in, which is, you know, never a confidence boosting thing to hear on a battlefield. Right. We got him right where we want him all around us.

Exactly. So mad rush back to the ships. Um, and this is another kind of like one of, as we talked about, maybe this will be a, a Hollywood moment in his biopic, but at one point Grant kind of rides out because he's looking for a lost regiment or he sees a body of troops and he realizes that the rebels and they're about 50 yards away. So he goes, you know, walks his horse back towards the shore and then makes a run for it. And, you know, basically like skids down the mud embankment of, you know, one of the captains of the ship realizes who he is, comes back, drops the gangplank, Grant runs onto the ship, you know, collapses like on a couch in like the, in the ship's cabin, but has like a strange feeling. And this is all from his memoirs. So he like gets up immediately to go check on his men. And he claims that a couple seconds

after he got up, a musket ball comes right through and hits where he was sitting. So if we can sum up, you know, that afternoon for Pillow, he had a chance to either, you know, knock Grant out of the war or maybe capture him when he's 50 yards away or maybe get lucky and even kill him when he was aboard ship. But instead, you know, Grant gets away and goes on to become, you know, obviously the most famous general for the Union in the Civil War. So there's one other funny side note, which is that the Confederates have this enormous gun at Belmont and they nickname it Lady Polk after the bishop's wife. I guess bishops always like to make fun of – make light of like enormous cannons that kill people. fun of, you know, make light of like enormous cannons that kill people. So four days after the battle, the Lady Polk blows up and it kills a bunch of officers and it kind of like concusses or stuns Polk. So he has to hand over leadership to Pillow.

And as soon as Pillow's in charge, he starts firing off letters claiming that he's surrounded by Union troops. At one point, he marches 10,000 of his guys out into a field to meet a union attack that just like never materializes. So one of his officers writes, quote, No one here has the slightest confidence in Pillow's judgment or ability. But despite all this, he's still kind of hailed as a hero in the South because like Belmont was treated as a victory. So he has voted the thanks of the Confederate Congress, um, in late in, in December

of 1861. And so what do you do if you get the thanks of the Confederate Congress, if you're Gideon pillow, you immediately quit. So he, he, he is tight. I gotta go. I peaked. I'm out. Um, so he's feuding with Polk because like you asked a couple of minutes ago, like basically like Pillow blames Polk for not supplying him with ammo and not having his troops ready enough. Whereas like so this is what Polk responds to the War Department. You know, he basically says, look, I've known Pillow for a long time and he always tells me how awesome he is. basically says, look, I've known Pillow for a long time and he always tells me how awesome he is. I was not surprised upon my taking command to find him exhibiting petty jealousies and indulging

in disingenuous criticism. He's been telling me he can shoot lasers out of his eyes for years. I have yet to fucking see it. But guess who does believe in Pillow's abilities is Jefferson Davis. Of course. Showing the brilliant judgment that he will conduct,

you know, the entire war with, so he gives pillow, gives pillow back a command. Um, and now he's serving under Albert Sidney Johnston was a different Confederate commander. Uh, and now we kind of switch focus to this,

to really pillows like big moment in the civil war, which is the battle of Fort Donaldson, which is again, um, against grant. And this is kind of really where the fun begins. So the fort is, um,

on, on a, on a river. And, uh, it's basically the, the key to, it's on the Cumberland river.

And it's on the, it's basically the key to Nashville. So if the union can get past this fort, like the, it opens up the river to Nashville, which is obviously union can get past this fort, like the, it opens up the river to Nashville, which is obviously one of like the South's biggest cities. So there's like an adjoining fort that the union take in like an hour and a half using only gunboats. So now they're coming after Fort Donaldson and the Confederacy is kind of wondering what we should do. The main

commander in the West, Albert Sidney Johnston, won't actually come to Fort Donaldson, but he assigns three different generals to lead it. So we have Pillow. We have a guy named Simon Bolivar Buckner, which is a great Civil War name. And we have John Floyd. And Floyd was actually the Secretary of War in the United States before the Civil War broke out. and he shipped a bunch of like cannons and rifles to arsenals in the south so he is a dick move and you know somebody that like if the union could capture would probably you know be tried for treason he'd probably be the only person well i mean there's only a one person hung after the civil war officially i think it wasn't at the commandant of uh andersonville yeah i mean floyd didn't make it through the Civil War like he died of illness.

So, you know, we'll never we'll never know what would have happened. There's some other characters there. There's speaking of porn star Civil War general names. There's a guy named Bushrod Johnson. Oh, yeah. And then there's also a guy who I'm not a fan of named Nathaniel Medford Forrest, who was also on hand. He had a wonderful legacy of having

a special child named after him yeah didn't he didn't he just and if you just skip over everything else about him it's quite heartwarming yeah so basically you know so many cooks spoil the broth like Pillow and Buckner still hate each other

because of like politics from from the 1850s. Floyd is in overall command, but he's not even at the fort. So Pillow, who's at the fort, starts building fortifications, putting guys in place. But Floyd doesn't even want to fight there. There's all this back and forth, all this back and forth. But finally, finally pillow basically gets his way because for some reason he's like persuasive and he can kind of get people to do what he wants so as that lawyer blood in him it's that lawyer blood so and that you know that that

rich persuasiveness um so as there's like union artillery heard on the on the horizon pillow rallies his men and says that the battle cry should be, quote, liberty or death. Ironic. Ironic, yeah. But now a crazy thing happens. Johnston decides, no, I haven't meddled quite enough. So he sends Floyd in person to command the fort. So once again, our man Pillow finds himself usurped by a higher ranking political general.

finds himself usurped by a higher ranking political general. So, um, basically what happens is Fort Donaldson is a much tougher nut to crack for the union than Fort Henry was. And they kind of grant basically surrounds it in a siege in a kind of a U shape. So the Cumberland river is like the open top part of the U and the union kind of surrounds the rest of the fort and the town. Um, the union tries another naval attack, but it doesn't work. They come too close with their, with their boat. So, so that didn't work. And so now we get like this, this brilliant idea on the part of pillow, which is to try to break out. So it's this grandiose plan that they're going to try to break the siege by attacking the extreme right of the Union line or the rebel left. But obviously, in order to do that, they're going to have to like pull troops all the way from from the rest of the line.

So they're going to have to weaken the other side of their line to have enough troops for a spearhead to try to break out. And the troops who break out will kind of try to hold the door open. So the rest of the rebel garrison can, you know, the rear guard can just follow them out right behind. So Pillow predicts that, quote, my success would roll the enemy's force and put him completely to route. And at 4 a.m., he starts leading this this attack. But it's you know, it's really icy because it's February. Is he leading it in person because he has a tendency to run away from shit? Oh, well, we will get to that. But at this point, he's really icy because it's February. Is he meeting it in person? Because he has a tendency to run away from shit. Oh, well, yeah, we'll get to that.

But yeah, he is at this point. He's in person. But, you know, everybody's miserable because it's like mid-February. It's snowy, you know, and because this plan was so new, like a lot of like the lower like colonels and lieutenants were either sick or they didn't get the message. So like communication is already breaking down. And now there's like this hilarious mix up, which is like, you know,

when you're like trying to load the family car and your parents are like arguing about whether to bring the cooler because half of the troops bring their baggage and their like extra rations with them, figuring like once we break out, we're not coming back to the fort. But Pillow has the idea that his men are going to fight, break out, then come back to get their stuff,

which obviously seems kind of preposterous. But that's exactly what happened. So like you got half the troops thinking we're going to come back, half the troops thinking, nope, this is it. We're going to make this. We're going to make this break. But despite all of this confusion, the rebels do kind of manage to catch the Union off guard. In fact, Grant was actually on board a ship visiting with his naval commander. So he's not even on the scene. And he admits, like, it never occurred to me that they would try this crazy breakout plan.

But they did. And the rebels actually do pretty well um even though it doesn't start till after daylight when the union should have known what was up they like totally overwhelmed the right side of the union line although pillow does still have time to pillow um he sent one brigade into an open field where they were immediately subjected to a crossfire so it's like our boy is doing okay but he still can't leave it all behind he still can't read a fucking map exactly exactly or like sea terrain lacks all he he's actively dodging learning but common senses exactly um and then there's another screw-up because pillow's plan had called for buckner to attack alongside him

but buckner just sat there never attacked so at the height of the battle, Pillow's got to ride back to find Buckner and say like, hey man, you're supposed to be attacking alongside with me. And yet still, despite all of this, the Union right just continues to melt away. And about like 11 a.m., like late morning, like the roads that the rebels need to escape are wide open they're under their control confederate officers are yelling the day is ours and then what happens our man pillow not only orders a halt he calls a retreat and tells everyone to go back inside the fort he retreated from his own victory at the height of success. So Buckner is out there and he's like, all I'm waiting for is artillery because I can just hold the open the road with artillery and let the army go right behind me. But, you know, that was the plan, you know, you know, but Pillow says, you know, he later writes, I called off further pursuit after seven and a half hours of continuous and bloody conflict.

suit after seven and a half hours of continuous and bloody conflict but of course the whole point of that bloody conflict was to do what they'd done to open the door and no pillow slams it shut himself so he basically has a successful plan and he foils it on his own it's like the only time in his entire life he succeeded at anything other than being friends with somebody and he just didn't know what to do he didn't know what to do like it's like when your dog finally catches a car right yeah or a squirrel and it's like now what the hell do i do um so buckner rides back and finds floyd who's like what the fuck because you know half of the army is now is escaping but now like pillows guys are like filtering back into the trenches so when floyd finally runs into pillow this is what he says. He yells at him,

general pillow, what have we been fighting for all day to get the road? And now that we've secured it, you're giving it up. Um, so Nathaniel Bedford forest is pissed. He writes that there were three separate roads that the army could have taken to escape. Um, you know, later on pillow, we'll try to like come up with some lame excuses saying that he, you know, there were union reinforcements coming or that the army was too tired, but nobody bought it. In fact, like one soldier said, kind of echoing what you just said, his head was turned with the victory he just gained. And he was too short sighted a fool to see that he threw it away unless we used it to escape. You know, you're fucking up and you're an asshole if the guy who founded the kkk is like this guy sucks exactly exactly um so once grant's back on

the scene he orders a counter-attack and by nightfall basically everybody's back where they've started in the morning and it's and it's all for not. And Grant, like in his book, makes you know, he doesn't throw shade at a lot of people, but he throws shade at pillow. He says in his book, I judge that with any force, no matter how small I could march up to with gunshot of any entrenchments pillow was given to hold. Holy shit. Yeah. So, you know, in the rebel camp, things get really testy. They're all arguing, you know, they don't know what to do. Pillow like kind of suggests like an evacuation plan across the river. But basically, they all

decide to wave the white flag and surrender. And now we get probably the most famous moment of Pillow's career, which has been like, immortalized. And it was at the time in like political cartoons and everything. So Floyd says, Look, I need to escape because if I'm caught, you know, I was the secretary of war before the war broke out. Like they're going to try me for treason, you know, which is what could have well been true. They all should have been tried for treason, but that's just my opinion. Exactly. So for some reason, Pillow's like, yeah, me too. He like totally latches onto this. He's like, yeah, no, I'm like the second most wanted man in the Confederacy. It's like, but why?

He's a fucking nobody. Yeah. Like, why are you like, you know, you're not the second most, you know, Jefferson Davis is maybe the second most wanted man in the Confederacy. Definitely. Yeah. Or first, you know, whichever. Or Lee or something. There is a thousand people in front of Pillow.

But Pillow's like, but he's running away. So I'm going to try to get on the act. So like Buckner, who, you know, although he's fighting for like is an old soldier and Buckner's like, look, no, I can't abandon my men. Like I owe them here to stay to stay here. So there's a witness who describes the scene as, quote, irresistibly ludicrous because Floyd turns control over to pillow and pillow immediately turns over to Buckner. So it's like passing a hot potato of like cowardice or, you know, not taking responsibility. Um, so pillow basically loads up his staff on a tiny boat at three in the morning and they paddle across the river to safety. And don't worry if you're wondering, his slaves and his luggage were eventually shipped to

him by steamboat. Of course. So everybody got out okay. So the next morning, you know, is another kind of famous moment in the Civil War because Grant asks for the fort's unconditional surrender. So that's his first nickname, you know, U.S. for unconditional surrender, you know, U.S. Grant. And so once the Federals, once Grant actually has control of the fort, you know, he goes up to talk to Buckner because they were old friends from the Mexican War.

And Buckner says, hey, man, you know, if I'd been in command, you wouldn't have gotten up to the fort as easily as you did. And Grant says, yeah, well, if you'd been in command, I wouldn't have tried. And there's also then this is a great line. So Buckner tells Grant that Pillow has escaped. And Buckner says he thought you'd rather get hold of him than any other man in the Southern Confederacy. And Grant says, oh, if I had got him, I'd let him go again. He'll do us more good commanding you, fellow. So again, more great shade from grant um so basically uh jefferson davis suspends him for quote grave errors and judgment in the military operations which resulted in the surrender of the army no not our boy pillow yep but guess what our boy davis flip-flops again because that's

what he constantly did and he gets one more command and it's the the third big moment and the final moment of of pillow's civil war career which is at stones river and if you know anything about like civil war generals like braxton brag um who i think they named a fort after is probably the least liked general on boat by both sides in the war he's cruel he's vain he's incompetent but he's in charge of this army everybody like long street won't talk to him um everybody hates braxton bragg except you'll never guess gideon pillow gideon pillow is his one defender because they're peas in a pod um because everybody hates them because everybody hates them so pillow shows up to like for his big moment an hour before like they're about to launch a huge assault so he has like no time you know even if he could read a

map you know to to look at the terrain or anything like that i've been walking for weeks this map is broken exactly um and and as one author puts itow was perhaps the last person anyone would have chosen to command a brigade in this division. And what happens next is that Pillow's commanding general finds him hiding behind a tree during the battle. And the commanding general, Breckenridge, is furious, curses him out. But that's, you know, our basically our lasting image of gideon pillow in the civil war is cowering behind a tree um after that you know it's like look we can't trust this guy they send him to push papers in the recruitment bureau he keeps begging for one shot hello became a recruiter recruiter he's a recruiter and you and guess what he was a great recruiter of course he was

every recruiter i ever like every recruiter ever And guess what? He was a great recruiter. Of fucking course he was. Yep, yep. Every recruiter I ever, like every recruiter I ever ran across in my time in the Army was a Gideon Pillow. He'd tell you all the amazing things he did, but at the same time, he barely fit in his fucking uniform. And was like freebasing Mountain Dew from his fucking desk. You hope it was Mountain Dew. Yeah. Yeah, no. So he's, you know, and everybody remarks like, oh, he finally found his calling.

His calling is lying to people. Who would have thought? But but he keeps begging. So finally, OK, towards the very end of the war, Sherman is now on the way to Atlanta, you know, gone with the wind time. And the Confederate general, Joe Johnston, is like, hey, man, just give me some cavalry so I can try to get in Sherman's rear and disrupt his communications. Give me Nathan Bedford Forrest. And he gets Pillow. So Pillow takes some cavalry and, you know, attacks some Union cavalry in Lafayette, Georgia. And the Union are kind of surprised. So they hole up in a courthouse. And Pillow, who's got like who outnumbers them like four to one is demands a surrender. And the Union are like, no, we're not going to surrender. So Pillow tries to storm the courthouse. It doesn't work. And like after the second or third attempt, the literal cavalry arrives, more Union reinforcements. They make him retreat. And so ends the combat career of Gideon Pillow.

Then after the war, he goes back into law with his old buddy, the governor of Tennessee, who first got him that job in the state militia. And he died in his 70s. So that's the story of Gideon Pillow. I'm starting to think that this whole Confederacy and Jefferson Davis was not so good at their jobs. Yeah. Little organizational problems, huh? Yeah. That's one of the things that – it's like a myth that kind of surrounds Civil War and maybe both sides in general.

It's like the Union had industry and they had numbers. But the South, they had the brilliant generals. Right. And they seem like a large collection of fucking dumbasses yeah i mean you know that's also that some of that is wrapped up in the lost cause mythology i mean you know you can certainly i mean you know you know robert e lee was the union's first choice you know kind of famously like you know before the war started that's that's who they wanted in fact they even conducted like a an interview with him

um you know where it was like super cagey because they didn't want to give away how many troops they had or where they were anything and obviously he turned them down he was a colonel at the time wasn't he he was never actually a general he was a he was a engineer you know he was widely respected for his engineering work um so he had worked, you know, on all different kinds of batteries and fortresses. And I mean, that was kind of what his, you know, I mean, he was famously kind of called the King of Spades when the war broke out because he had everybody in trench, you know, which was not really a thing that that people did, you know, was when the war first started. was when the war first started. They kind of had to learn that, whereas Robert E. Lee was kind of into that from the very beginning. So I would say that what you said,

that cliche about that the South had the dashing warriors and the North had the grinding industry is kind of, I think, a little bit simplistic. Yeah. Well, Matt, thank you so much for coming on. I know we've been trying to make this work for a few weeks now uh but thank you for coming on and uh being our civil war expert so don't sound like a fucking dumbass i don't sound like gideon pillow thank you so much for having me no

it was it was really fun i really enjoyed it so i i you know anytime you can talk about gideon pillow is is time well spent. I agree. And there's a wellspring of dumbasses in that war, and I'm definitely going to try to find more of them. Please do. I'm always happy to talk about them. So, Matt, go ahead and plug your pluggables, your Twitter account, whatever else you got. Yeah, I'll just plug the Twitter. It's Civil War Humor.

I'm also on Instagram if that is back up and running these days. But yeah, so it's civil war humor on Twitter and Instagram and yeah, join up and follow along. And sometimes it's long threads about a particular battle. Sometimes it's just, you know, me making fun of antiques roadshow and civil war memorabilia. I saw on there or something.

So, uh, but yeah, civil war, they had civil war memorabilia and antiques roadshow oh all the time yeah there's even like a civil war expert that like i kind of maybe yell at the tv every time he's every time he comes on i bet he's from the south isn't he he is indeed every every single fucking civil war expert i ever see anywhere from the south uh that's i'm i'm a yankee i'm trying to try

to shift that a little bit but um but yeah no they have you know usually it's like southern you know arms and armor kind of experts because a lot of it's that but they get you know they get all kinds of stuff like civil war letters and treasure troves of documents and maps and you know some of it's pretty cool to pass down through the family and, you know, they have no idea how much it's worth or, um, but yeah, really quick. I did last, the last time I made fun of that show was because a woman brought on, um, a signed copy of grants, uh, of the first edition of grants memoirs. Holy shit. And the civil war author of civil war expert pointed out that, well, you know, he actually died before that first edition came out. So how could he have signed it?

This was actually signed by Gideon Pillow. Shit! I know, if I look close, it says Leonidas. But yeah, thank you so much. This was so much fun to do. So I really enjoyed talking to you. Anytime. So yeah,

everybody follow him for a screaming antiques roadshow. You can, you can follow us at lions underscore by donate to the Patreon and you can get some free stuff. Well, I guess it's not free if you're paying for it, but you get more stuff and it helps us keep this operation up and running. See you guys next week.

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