Pat and Tom Audiobook By Philip Leigh cover art

Pat and Tom

A Novel About Confederate Generals Pat Cleburne and Tom Hindman

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Pat and Tom

By: Philip Leigh
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About this listen

 Six years before the American Civil War, a pair of 27-year-old Helena, Arkansas residents remained in the town to care for victims of an 1855 yellow fever epidemic when nearly everyone else evacuated to save their own skins. One, Pat Cleburne, was a Protestant Irish immigrant who had earlier served in the British Army. The other, Tom Hindman, was a a Mexican War veteran. He was also a well-educated second son of a Mississippi Planter family who sought his fortune in Helena where good cotton lands were cheaper than in Mississippi.

The two became lawyers and best friends. Pat was Tom's best man at the latter's 1857 wedding. Since antebellum Helena was a backwoods town, each was also handy with a gun. In 1855 the two were attacked on the town's streets by a family of Tom's political opponents. Both Tom and Pat suffered gunshot wounds and one of the attackers was killed. Given the frontier spirit of the time and place, none of the participants were convicted of a crime.

When the Civil War came to Arkansas after Lincoln's call for 75,000 volunteers to force the original seven cotton states back into the Union, Pat was elected led the Yell Rifles, a Confederate company organized in Helena. Since Tom had been elected to the U.S. Congress, he had the greater influence to be enrolled into the Confederate Army as a regimental commander. By the time they fought in their first major battle at Shiloh in April 1862, each was leading an infantry brigade of several thousand men.

Tom was wounded but promoted to organize a new Army to defend Arkansas and other parts west of the Mississippi River. Pat remained with the Shiloh force that would become known as the Army of Tennessee. He would fight more battles in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Georgia until killed at the Battle of Franklin in November 1864. Tom would return to the Army of Tennessee in September 1863 where he would fight in Tennessee and Georgia.

In December 1863 Tom anonymously wrote an editorial for a Memphis newspaper, advocating that slaves be recruited as combat soldiers in exchange for their freedom. The next month, Pat wrote a "memorial," which he presented to the general officers of the Army of Tennessee advocating the same thing.

Although initially rejected by Confederate authorities at Richmond, six months later (July 1864) President Jefferson Davis told Northern peace emissaries, "We are not fighting for slavery. We are fighting for independence." In November 1864 he urged the Confederate Congress to purchase 40,000 slaves to serve as Army laborers to be granted freedom in exchange for their services. Although stating that the blacks were not yet needed as soldiers, he concluded with a trial balloon, “But should the alternative. . . be presented of subjugation or the employment of slaves as soldiers, there seems no reason to doubt our decision.”

Although he remained silent until asked his opinion by a Virginia legislator, in January 1865 Robert E. Lee wrote that volunteer slaves should be enlisted and granted freedom for their services "without delay." Congress finally passed an enabling Act in March 1865 about a month before Lee surrendered.

Two years after the war ended, Tom Hindman returned to Arkansas from exile in Mexico. After getting home he realized the state could not avoid Republican Rule but tired to get the Carpetbag government to be less harsh on ex-Confederates. After it was evident that his arguments were working, he was killed by unknown assassins on September 27, 1868. Biographical Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction War & Military War Civil War Mississippi
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