Background
He was born on June 8, 1806 in Williamson County, Tennessee, United States, son of Gideon and Anne (Payne) Pillow.
(This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)
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He was born on June 8, 1806 in Williamson County, Tennessee, United States, son of Gideon and Anne (Payne) Pillow.
He graduated from the University of Nashville in 1827.
After studies he became a shrewd and successful, but not a profoundly learned, criminal lawyer in Columbia, Tennessee, with James K. Polk for some time as his partner. Pillow held no civil office of any importance and took openly no very prominent part in political affairs, but he delighted in under-cover political manipulations, in which he considered himself adept. He claimed for himself the major responsibility for the nomination of Polk for the presidency in 1844, though this claim was disputed by others.
In 1852 he took an important part in negotiations that resulted in the nomination of Franklin Pierce, and in this year and four years later he intrigued unsuccessfully to secure his own nomination for the vice-presidency. Pillow's claim to notoriety, however, is not based on his activities as a politician, but on his career as a vain, ambitious, quarrelsome, and unsuccessful soldier. Despite his lack of military training or experience, President Polk appointed him a brigadier-general of volunteers in 1846, for service in the war with Mexico, and subsequently advanced him to a major-generalship.
After a brief and inactive period of service on the Rio Grande under General Taylor, he was transferred to General Scott's army and took part in the campaign that resulted in the capture of Mexico City. He fought at Vera Cruz, Cerro Gordo, Contreras, and Chapultepec, and was twice wounded. He considered himself Polk's special representative and maintained a confidential correspondence with him.
He quarreled violently with Gen. Winfield Scott, who charged him with the authorship of a letter, signed "Leonidas, " in the New Orleans Daily Delta of September 10, 1847, in which Pillow's military activities at Contreras were praised and those of Scott belittled. The charges were examined by two successive courts of inquiry who decided that no further proceedings should be taken against Pillow.
When war began, he was appointed senior major-general of Tennessee's provisional army. When his troops were transferred to Confederate service, he was greatly chagrined that he was not continued in command of them, but he accepted a brigadier-generalship in the Confederate army. He fought at the battle of Belmont, Missouri, November 7, 1861, and was second in command at Fort Donelson.
He proposed that the weary and closely beset army holding this important position of defense attempt to cut its way through Grant's superior forces, but other officers counseled surrender. When Gen. John B. Floyd then relinquished command, Pillow passed it to Gen. Simon B. Buckner, and he and Floyd made good their escape before the surrender was effected (February 1862). He was suspended from command for some months (March-August 1862) and the Confederate secretary of war, George W. Randolph, held him guilty of "grave errors of judgment in the military operations which resulted in the surrender of the army" but found no reason "to question his courage and loyalty". He protested bitterly, threatened to resign; and during the remainder of the war was given no important command.
For some years after the war he practised law in Memphis, with Isham G. Harris as his partner. He died in Helena, Arkansas.
(This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)
On the question of secession, Pillow's position was conservative. He took a prominent part in the Southern Convention which met in Nashville in June and November 1850, and opposed the proposals of extremists from the Lower South. In 1860 he was a Douglas Democrat, and he refused to view the election of Lincoln as in itself a justification of disunion, proposing to save the Union by compromise. When war began, however, he gave his support to the cause of the South.
Quotes from others about the person
James K. Polk considered Pillow "a gallant and highly meritorious officer".
In his memoirs, Scott wrote that Pillow was "amiable and possessed of some acuteness, but the only person I have ever known who was wholly indifferent in the choice between truth and falsehood, honesty and dishonesty: - ever as ready to attain an end by the one as the other, and habitually boastful of acts of cleverness at the total sacrifice of moral character. "
He married Mary Martin, and they had ten children.