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Nathan Bedford Forrest

February 15, 2024

This article is about the Confederate general. For other uses, see Nathan Bedford Forrest (disambiguation).

Nathan Bedford Forrest (July 13, 1821 – October 29, 1877) was a Confederate Army general during the American Civil War and was later the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan from 1867 to 1869.

Nathan Bedford Forrest
Birth nameNathan Bedford Forrest
Nickname(s)"Old Bed"[1]
"Wizard of the Saddle"[2]
Born(1821-07-13)July 13, 1821
Chapel Hill, Tennessee, U.S.
DiedOctober 29, 1877(1877-10-29) (aged 56)
Memphis, Tennessee, U.S.
Buried
Columbia, Tennessee, U.S.
Allegiance Confederate States
Service/branch Confederate States Army
Years of service1861–1865
Rank Lieutenant General
Unit
  • White's Company "E"
  • Tennessee Mounted Rifles
  • (7th Tennessee Cavalry)
Battles/wars
Relations

Before the war, Forrest amassed substantial wealth as a cotton plantation owner, horse and cattle trader, real estate broker, and slave trader. In June 1861, he enlisted in the Confederate Army and became one of the few soldiers during the war to enlist as a private and be promoted to general without previous military training. An expert cavalry leader, Forrest was given command of a corps and established new doctrines for mobile forces, earning the nickname "The Wizard of the Saddle". He used his cavalry troops as mounted infantry and often deployed artillery as the lead in battle, thus helping to "revolutionize cavalry tactics".[3][4] "Forrest never failed to destroy the military reputation of the Federal commanders encountered by him" succinctly characterizes the perception held by opponents, reporters, and historians alike, of his martial tactical achievements.[5] While scholars generally acknowledge Forrest's skills and acumen as a cavalry leader and military strategist, he is a controversial figure in U.S. history for prewar slave trading, his role in the massacre of several hundred U.S. Army soldiers at Fort Pillow, a majority of them black, and his postwar leadership of the Klan.

In April 1864, in what has been called "one of the bleakest, saddest events of American military history",[6] troops under Forrest's command at the Battle of Fort Pillow massacred hundreds of surrendered troops, composed of black soldiers and white Tennessean Southern Unionists fighting for the United States. Forrest was blamed for the slaughter in the U.S. press, and this news may have strengthened the United States's resolve to win the war. Forrest's level of responsibility for the massacre is still debated by historians.[7]

Forrest, who was a Freemason,[8] joined the Ku Klux Klan in 1867 (two years after its founding) and was elected its first Grand Wizard. The group was a loose collection of local factions throughout the former Confederacy that used violence and the threat of violence to maintain white control over the newly enfranchised, formerly enslaved people. The Klan, with Forrest at the lead, suppressed the voting rights of blacks in the Southern United States through violence and intimidation during the elections of 1868. In 1869, Forrest expressed disillusionment with the lack of discipline in the white supremacist terrorist group across the South,[9] and issued a letter ordering the dissolution of the Ku Klux Klan as well as the destruction of its costumes; he then withdrew from the organization.[10] In the last years of his life, Forrest denied being a Klan member[11] and, disturbed by anti-black violence, made statements in support of racial harmony and black dignity.[12]

In June 2021, the remains of Forrest and his wife were exhumed from Health Sciences Park, where they had been buried for over 100 years, and where a monument of him once stood. They were later reburied in Columbia, Tennessee. In July 2021, Tennessee officials voted to move Forrest's bust from the State Capitol to the Tennessee State Museum.[13]

Early life and career edit

 
Nathan Bedford Forrest Boyhood Home, Chapel Hill, Tennessee (2021)

Nathan Bedford Forrest was born on July 13, 1821, to a poor settler family in a secluded frontier cabin near Chapel Hill hamlet, then part of Bedford County, Tennessee, but now in Marshall County.[14][15] Forrest was the first son of Mariam (Beck) and William Forrest.[15] His blacksmith father was of English descent, and most of his biographers state that his mother was of Scotch-Irish descent, but the Memphis Genealogical Society says that she was of English descent.[16] He and his twin sister, Fanny, were the two eldest of 12 children. Their great-grandfather, Shadrach Forrest, moved between 1730 and 1740 from Virginia to North Carolina, where his son and grandson were born; they moved to Tennessee in 1806.[15] Forrest's family lived in a log house (now preserved as the Nathan Bedford Forrest Boyhood Home) from 1830 to 1833.[17] John Allan Wyeth, who served in an Alabama regiment under Forrest, described it as a one-room building with a loft and no windows.[18] William Forrest worked as a blacksmith in Tennessee until 1834, when he moved with his family to Salem, Mississippi.[15][19] William died in 1837 and Forrest became the primary caretaker of the family at age 16.[15]

In 1841 Forrest went into business with his uncle Jonathan Forrest in Hernando, Mississippi. His uncle was killed there in 1845 during an argument with the Matlock brothers. In retaliation, Forrest shot and killed two of them with his two-shot pistol and wounded two others with a knife thrown to him. One of the wounded Matlock men survived and served under Forrest during the Civil War.[20] Forrest's early business ventures included a livery stable, a stagecoach line, and a brickyard.[21]

 
"N. B. Forrest—Before the War" from Andrew Nelson Lytle's Bedford Forrest and His Critter Company (1931)

Forrest was well known as a Memphis speculator and Mississippi gambler.[22] In 1858, Forrest was elected a Memphis city alderman as a Southern Democrat and served two consecutive terms.[23][24] In 1859, he bought two large cotton plantations in Coahoma County, Mississippi and a half-interest in another plantation in Arkansas;[25] by October 1860, he owned at least 3,345 acres in Mississippi.[26] He acquired several cotton plantations in the Delta region of West Tennessee.[15][27][15][28] By the time the American Civil War started in 1861, he had become one of the wealthiest men in the Southern United States, having amassed a "personal fortune that he claimed was worth $1.5 million".[29]

Forrest stood 6 feet 2 inches (1.88 m) in height and weighed about 180 pounds (82 kg).[30][31][32][33] He was noted as having a "striking and commanding presence" by U.S. Army Captain Lewis Hosea, an aide to Gen. James H. Wilson. Forrest rarely drank and abstained from tobacco use; he was often described as generally mild-mannered, but according to Hosea and other contemporaries who knew him, his demeanor changed drastically when provoked or angered.[34] He was known as a tireless rider in the saddle and a skilled swordsman.[35] Although he was not formally educated, according to Spaulding, Forrest was able to read and write clear and grammatical English, although he was a poor speller.[36]

Marriage and family edit

 
N. B. Forrest, his 15-year-old son W. M. Forrest, and his 25-year-old brother Jeffrey E. Forrest all enlisted in the Confederate States Army on the same day ("Capt. William M. Forrest With a Group of the Members of Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest's Staff" Memphis Commercial Appeal, February 9, 1908)

Forrest had twelve brothers and sisters; two of his eight brothers and three of his four sisters died of typhoid fever at an early age, all at about the same time.[37][38] He also contracted the disease, but survived; his father recovered but died from residual effects of the disease five years later when Bedford was 16. His mother, Miriam, then married James Horatio Luxton, of Marshall, Texas, in 1843 and gave birth to four more children.[39] In 1845, Forrest married Mary Ann Montgomery (1826–1893), the niece of a Presbyterian minister who was her legal guardian.[40] They had two children, William Montgomery Bedford Forrest llll (1846–1908), who enlisted at the age of 15 and served alongside his father in the war, and a daughter, Fanny (1849–1854), who died in childhood. There are also reports dating to 1864 that Forrest had two children with a young enslaved woman named Catharine.[41]

All of Forrest's younger brothers—in order, John N. Forrest, William H. Forrest, Aaron H. Forrest, Jesse A. Forrest, and Jeffrey E. Forrest—worked as slave traders with Bedford before the war.[42] All but John, who was a disabled veteran of the Mexican–American War, served as Confederate military officers in Tennessee and Mississippi during the American Civil War.[43] Forrest's son William M. Forrest served as his aide-de-camp,[44] and his half-brother Mat Luxton was a sergeant and scout in his cavalry.[45]

Forrest's grandson, Nathan Bedford Forrest II (1872–1931), became commander-in-chief of the Sons of Confederate Veterans[46] and a Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan in Georgia and secretary of the national organization.[47] A great-grandson, Nathan Bedford Forrest III (1905–1943), graduated from West Point and rose to the rank of brigadier general in the U.S. Army Air Corps; he was killed during a bombing raid over Nazi Germany in 1943, becoming the first American general to die in combat in the European theater during World War II.[48]

Slave trading edit

 
Forrest & Maples advertisement in the Memphis city directory
 
Reverse side of card advertising Forrest, Jones & Co. with handwritten note "sold Madison to Forrest"[49](Tennessee Virtual Archive)

Nathan Bedford Forrest—disparaged by Parson Brownlow in 1864 as a "a sin-hardened negro trader, and livery stable man of Memphis"—was a notable slave trader of the United States from 1851 to 1860. Forrest was considered one of the "big four"[50] "phenomenally large" traders of Memphis, which was the "first-class market" for slave trading in Tennessee.[51] He is believed to have sold thousands of slaves during his career and had profits of hundreds of thousands of dollars in 1850s currency.[42] Primarily based in Memphis, he was able to open a second storefront in Vicksburg in 1858.[42] During the American Civil War, Forrest cited his business experience in a written request for an independent command: "I have resided on the Mississippi for over twenty years, was for many years engaged in buying and selling negroes, and know the country perfectly well between Memphis and Vicksburg, and also am well acquainted with all the prominent planters in that region, as well as above Memphis."[42]

After initially working as an independent slave trader, he was first in partnership with Seaborne S. Jones, second in partnership with Byrd Hill (a more experienced manager of negro marts), third in partnership with Josiah Maples, then again a sole proprietor, and finally reunited with Jones.[42]

Beginning in the Forrest & Maples era, his business was headquartered at 87 Adams Street in Memphis, where several other slave traders had their slave pens and auction yards, thus making the area an efficient business cluster.[42] Forrest was traditionally said to have been trained by the principals of Bolton, Dickens & Co., a multimillion-dollar operation that traded in a dozen Southern cities, but recent research suggests this may be apocryphal.[42] In 1859, media coverage of Forrest's business spotlighted a particular product, an enslaved girl said to be the daughter of Frederick Douglass.[52][53] Researchers believe this was likely Anna Marie Bailey, a niece of Douglass.[42]

FRED DOUGLASS' DAUGHTER FOR SALE Among the servants offered for sale by a Mr. Forrest of Memphis, Tenn., is a girl who is known to be the daughter of the notorious Fred Douglass, the "free-nigger" Abolitionist.—She is said to be of the class known among the dealers as a "likely girl," and is a native of North Carolina.—She remembers her "parient" very vividly, having seen him during his last visit to the Old North State. The Memphis Avalanche suggests that as Fred is ample able to make the outlay he should either purchase his own flesh and blood from servitude, or cease his shrieks over an institution which possesses such untold horrors.

— Winchester (Tenn.) Home Journal, 1859[53]
 
The Memphis Commercial Appeal claimed in 1907 that this had been Forrest's slave pen,[54] but Forrest's jail was between Second and Third.[55] In 1862, the Daily Union Appeal described Forrest's jail as "a filthy den, and it would make any decent man sick to be there one night."[56]

In 1859, a federal investigation found that Forrest also sold 37 individuals illegally imported to the United States from Africa on the slave ship Wanderer.[42] Forrest, who advocated for the reopening of the transatlantic slave trade, later told an interviewer that he had been an initial investor in the Wanderer shipment.[42] In January 1860, the New York Times reported that the Forrest, Jones & Co. negro mart building in Memphis had both collapsed and then caught fire; two people died.[57] The firm's bills of sale for people, "amounting in the aggregate to US$400,000 (equivalent to about $13,028,150 in 2022)" were salvaged.[57] Forrest had recently moved from 87 Adams to 89 Adams, which allowed him to increase his holding capacity from a maximum of 300 slaves to a maximum of 500.[42] Forrest subsequently sold his interest in the business after the building catastrophe and reinvested the profit into plantations.[42] A marker was erected at the former site of Forrest's slave mart in downtown Memphis, on land currently owned by Calvary Episcopal Church, and was dedicated on April 4, 2018.[42]

American Civil War edit

Early cavalry command edit

After the Civil War broke out, Forrest returned to Tennessee from his Mississippi ventures and enlisted in the Confederate States Army (CSA) on June 14, 1861. He reported for training at Fort Wright near Randolph, Tennessee,[58] joining Captain Josiah White's cavalry company, the Tennessee Mounted Rifles (Seventh Tennessee Cavalry), as a private along with his youngest brother and 15-year-old son. Upon seeing how badly equipped the CSA was, Forrest offered to buy horses and equipment with his own money for a regiment of Tennessee volunteer soldiers.[28][59]

His superior officers and Governor of Tennessee Isham G. Harris were surprised that someone of Forrest's wealth and prominence had enlisted as a soldier, especially since significant planters were exempted from service. They commissioned him as a lieutenant colonel and authorized him to recruit and train a battalion of Confederate mounted rangers.[60] In October 1861, Forrest was given command of a regiment, the 3rd Tennessee Cavalry. Though Forrest had no prior formal military training or experience, he had exhibited leadership and soon proved he could successfully employ military tactics.[33][61]

Public debate surrounded Tennessee's decision to join the Confederacy, and both the Confederate and United States armies recruited soldiers from the state. Over 100,000 men from Tennessee served with the Confederacy, and over 31,000 served with the U.S. Army.[62] Forrest posted advertisements to join his regiment, with the slogan, "Let's have some fun and kill some Yankees!".[63] Forrest's command included his Escort Company (his "Special Forces"), for which he selected the best soldiers available. This unit, which varied in size from 40 to 90 men, constituted the elite of his cavalry.[64]

Sacramento and Fort Donelson edit

 
Col. Bedford Forrest carte de visite by Bingham & Brother's Gallery of Memphis (Steve and Mike Romano Collection, Military Images)

Forrest won praise for his performance under fire during an early victory in the Battle of Sacramento in Kentucky, the first in which he commanded troops in the field, where he routed a U.S. Army force by personally leading a cavalry charge that Brigadier General Charles Clark later commended.[65] Forrest distinguished himself further at the Battle of Fort Donelson in February 1862. After his cavalry captured a U.S. artillery battery, he broke out of a siege headed by Major General Ulysses S. Grant, rallying nearly 4,000 troops and leading them to escape across the Cumberland River.[66]

A few days after the Confederate surrender of Fort Donelson, with the fall of Nashville to U.S. forces imminent, Forrest took command of the city. All available carts and wagons were pressed into service to haul 600 boxes of army clothing, 250,000 pounds of bacon, and 40 wagon-loads of ammunition to the railroad depots, to be sent off to Chattanooga and Decatur.[67][68] Forrest arranged for heavy ordnance machinery, including a new cannon rifling machine and 14 cannons, as well as parts from the Nashville Armory, to be sent to Atlanta for use by the Confederate Army.[69]

Shiloh and Murfreesboro edit

A month later, Forrest was back in action at the Battle of Shiloh, fought April 6–7, 1862. After the U.S. victory, Forrest commanded a Confederate rear guard. In the battle of Fallen Timbers, he drove through the U.S. skirmish line. Not realizing that the rest of his men had halted their charge when they reached the full U.S. brigade, Forrest charged the brigade alone and soon found himself surrounded. He emptied his Colt Army revolvers into the swirling mass of U.S. Army soldiers and pulled out his saber, hacking, and slashing. A U.S. infantryman on the ground beside Forrest fired a musket ball at him with a point-blank shot, nearly knocking him out of the saddle. The ball went through Forrest's pelvis and lodged near his spine. A surgeon removed the musket ball a week later without anesthesia, which was unavailable.[37][70]

By early summer, Forrest commanded a new brigade of inexperienced cavalry regiments. He led them into Middle Tennessee in July under orders to launch a cavalry raid. On July 13, 1862, led them into the First Battle of Murfreesboro, as a result of which all of the U.S. units surrendered to Forrest. The Confederates destroyed much of the U.S. Army's supplies and railroad tracks in the area.[71]

West Tennessee raids edit

 
Gen. Bedford Forrest

Promoted on July 21, 1862, to brigadier general, Forrest was given command of a Confederate cavalry brigade.[72] In December 1862, Forrest's veteran troopers were reassigned by General Braxton Bragg to another officer despite his protest. Forrest had to recruit a new brigade of about 2,000 inexperienced men, most of whom lacked weapons.[73] Again, Bragg ordered a series of raids to disrupt the communications of the U.S. Army forces under Grant, which were threatening the city of Vicksburg, Mississippi. Forrest protested that sending such untrained men behind enemy lines was suicidal, but Bragg insisted, and Forrest obeyed his orders. In the ensuing raids, he was pursued by thousands of U.S. soldiers trying to locate his fast-moving forces. Avoiding attack by never staying in one place long, Forrest eventually led his troops during the spring and summer of 1864 on raids into west Tennessee, as far north as the banks of the Ohio River in southwest Kentucky and into north Mississippi.[74][75]

Forrest returned to his base in Mississippi with more men than he had started with. By then, all were fully armed with captured U.S. Army weapons. As a result, Grant was forced to revise and delay his Vicksburg campaign strategy. Newspaper correspondent Sylvanus Cadwallader, who traveled with Grant for three years during his campaigns, wrote that Forrest "was the only Confederate cavalryman of whom Grant stood in much dread".[76][77]

Dover, Brentwood, and Chattanooga edit

The U.S. Army gained military control of Tennessee in 1862 and occupied it for the duration of the war, having taken control of strategic cities and railroads. Forrest continued to lead his men in small-scale operations, including the Battle of Dover and the Battle of Brentwood until April 1863. The Confederate army dispatched him with a small force into the backcountry of northern Alabama and western Georgia to defend against an attack of 3,000 U.S. Army cavalrymen commanded by Colonel Abel Streight. Streight had orders to cut the Confederate railroad south of Chattanooga, Tennessee to seal off Bragg's supply line and force him to retreat into Georgia.[78] Forrest chased Streight's men for 16 days, harassing them all the way. Streight's goal changed from dismantling the railroad to escaping the pursuit. On May 3, Forrest caught up with Streight's unit east of Cedar Bluff, Alabama. Forrest had fewer men than the U.S. side but feigned having a larger force by repeatedly parading some around a hilltop until Streight was convinced to surrender his 1,500 or so exhausted troops (historians Kevin Dougherty and Keith S. Hebert say he had about 1,700 men).[79][80][81]

Day's Gap, Chickamauga, and Paducah edit

Not all of Forrest's exploits of individual combat involved enemy troops. Lieutenant Andrew Wills Gould, an artillery officer in Forrest's command, was being transferred, presumably because cannons under his command[82] were spiked (disabled) by the enemy[83] during the Battle of Day's Gap. On June 13, 1863, Gould confronted Forrest about his transfer, which escalated into a violent exchange. Gould shot Forrest in the left side,[84] and Forrest mortally stabbed Gould. Forrest was thought to have been fatally wounded by Gould, but he recovered and was ready to fight in the Chickamauga Campaign.[15]

Forrest served with the main army at the Battle of Chickamauga on September 18–20, 1863, in which he pursued the retreating U.S. Army and took hundreds of prisoners.[85] Like several others under Bragg's command, he urged an immediate follow-up attack to recapture Chattanooga, which had fallen a few weeks before. Bragg failed to do so, upon which Forrest was quoted as saying, "What does he fight battles for?"[86][87] The story that Forrest confronted and threatened the life of Bragg in the fall of 1863, following the battle of Chickamauga, and that Bragg transferred Forrest to command in Mississippi as a direct result, is now considered to be apocryphal.[88][89][90]

On December 4, 1863, Forrest was promoted to the rank of major general.[91] On March 25, 1864, Forrest's cavalry raided the town of Paducah, Kentucky in the Battle of Paducah, during which Forrest demanded the surrender of U.S. Colonel Stephen G. Hicks: "if I have to storm your works, you may expect no quarter." Hicks refused to comply with the ultimatum, and according to his subsequent report, Forrest's troops took a position and set up a battery of guns while a flag of truce was still up. As soon as they received the U.S. reply, they moved forward at the command of a junior officer, and the U.S. forces opened fire. The Confederates tried to storm the fort but were repulsed; they rallied and made two more attempts, both of which failed.[92][93][94]

Fort Pillow massacre edit

Main article: Battle of Fort Pillow
 
Woodblock engraving entitled "The Massacre at Fort Pillow" (Harper's Weekly, April 30, 1864)

Fort Pillow, located 40 miles (64 km) upriver from Memphis (near Henning, Tennessee), was initially constructed by Confederate general Gideon Johnson Pillow on the bluffs of the Mississippi River, and taken over by U.S. forces in 1862 after the Confederates had abandoned the fort.[95] The fort was defended by 557 U.S. Army troops, 295 white and 262 black, under U.S. Army Maj. L.F. Booth.[95]

On April 12, 1864, Forrest's men, under Brig. Gen. James Chalmers, attacked and recaptured Fort Pillow.[95] Booth and his adjutant were killed in the battle, leaving Fort Pillow under the command of Major William Bradford.[95] Forrest had reached the fort at 10:00 am after a hard ride from Mississippi,[95] during which two horses were shot out from under him.[95] By 3:30 pm, Forrest had concluded that the U.S. troops could not hold the fort; thus, he ordered a flag of truce raised and demanded that the fort be surrendered.[96] Bradford refused to surrender, believing his troops could escape to the U.S. Navy gunboat, USS New Era, on the Mississippi River.[96] Forrest's men immediately took over the fort, while U.S. Army soldiers retreated to the lower bluffs of the river, but the USS New Era did not come to their rescue.[96] What happened next became known as the Fort Pillow Massacre.[97] As the U.S. Army troops surrendered, Forrest's men opened fire, slaughtering black and white U.S. Army soldiers.[97][98][99] According to historians John Cimprich and Bruce Tap, although their numbers were roughly equal, two-thirds of the black U.S. Army soldiers were killed, while only a third of the whites were killed.[100][101] The atrocities at Fort Pillow continued throughout the night. Conflicting accounts of what occurred were given later.[102][103][104]

Forrest's Confederate forces were accused of subjecting captured U.S. Army soldiers to extreme brutality, with allegations of back-shooting soldiers who fled into the river, shooting wounded soldiers, burning men alive, nailing men to barrels and igniting them, crucifixion, and hacking men to death with sabers.[105] Forrest's men were alleged to have set fire to a U.S. barracks with wounded U.S. Army soldiers inside[106][107] In defense of their actions, Forrest's men insisted that the U.S. soldiers, although fleeing, kept their weapons and frequently turned to shoot, forcing the Confederates to keep firing in self-defense.[108] The rebels said the U.S. flag was still flying over the fort, which indicated that the force had not formally surrendered. A contemporary newspaper account from Jackson, Tennessee stated that "General Forrest begged them to surrender", but "not the first sign of surrender was ever given". Similar accounts were reported in many Confederate newspapers at the time.[109] These statements were contradicted by U.S. Army survivors and by the letter of Achilles Clark, a Confederate soldier with the 20th Tennessee Cavalry who graphically recounted a massacre. Clark wrote to his sisters immediately after the battle:

The slaughter was awful. Words cannot describe the scene. The poor deluded negroes would run up to our men fall upon their knees and with uplifted hands scream for mercy but they were ordered to their feet and then shot down. The white men fared but little better. Their fort turned out to be a great slaughter pen. Blood, human blood stood about in pools and brains could have been gathered up in any quantity.[110][111][112]

Following the cessation of hostilities, Forrest transferred the 14 most seriously wounded United States Colored Troops (USCT) to the U.S. steamer Silver Cloud.[113] The 226 U.S. Army troops taken prisoner at Fort Pillow were marched under guard to Holly Springs, Mississippi and then convoyed to Demopolis, Alabama. On April 21, Capt. John Goodwin, of Forrest's cavalry command, forwarded a dispatch listing the prisoners captured. The list included the names of 7 officers and 219 white enlisted soldiers. According to Richard L. Fuchs, "records concerning the fate of the black prisoners are either nonexistent or unreliable".[114] President Abraham Lincoln asked his cabinet for opinions as to how the United States should respond to the massacre.[115]

 
Union and Republican-aligned editorial cartoonist Thomas Nast often awarded Forrest "with an ironic Fort Pillow 'medal' when he skewered him in a dozen cartoons as a prominent white supremacy, Lost Cause symbol."[116]

At the time of the massacre, General Grant was no longer in Tennessee but had transferred to the east to command all U.S. troops. Grant wrote in his memoirs that Forrest, in his report of the battle, had "left out the part which shocks humanity to read".[117]

Because of the events at Fort Pillow, the U.S. public and press viewed Forrest as a war criminal. A Knoxville correspondent for the New York Tribune wrote that Forrest and his brothers were "slave drivers and woman whippers", while Forrest himself was described as "mean, vindictive, cruel, and unscrupulous".[118] The Confederate press steadfastly defended Forrest's reputation.[119][120]

According to a historian studying in the Cumberland River valley during the Civil War, "Fully aware of the significance of the large-scale recruitment of black troops, the Confederates did what they could to disrupt it...Forrest himself, operating in west Tennessee, chose to interpret his stunning victory over a racially mixed garrison at Fort Pillow in April as, in part, a warning about using black troops. He described the battle graphically, recounted exaggerated Union casualty figures, and noted, 'It is hoped that these facts will demonstrate to the Northern people that negro soldiers cannot cope with the Southerners.'"[121]

S.C. Gwynne writes, "Forrest's responsibility for the massacre has been actively debated for a century and a half. ... No direct evidence suggests that he ordered the shooting of surrendering or unarmed men, but to fully exonerate him from responsibility is also impossible".[7]

Brices Cross Roads and Tupelo edit

Main article: Battle of Brices Cross Roads
 
Battle of Brices Cross Roads

Forrest's most decisive victory came on June 10, 1864, when his 3,500-man force clashed with 8,500 men commanded by U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Samuel D. Sturgis at the Battle of Brices Crossroads in northeastern Mississippi.[122] Here, the mobility of the troops under his command and his superior tactics led to victory,[123][124] allowing him to continue harassing U.S. forces in southwestern Tennessee and northern Mississippi throughout the war.[125] Forrest set up a position for an attack to repulse a pursuing force commanded by Sturgis, who had been sent to impede Forrest from destroying U.S. Army supply lines and fortifications.[126] When Sturgis's Federal army came upon the crossroads, they collided with Forrest's cavalry.[127] Sturgis ordered his infantry to advance to the front line to counteract the cavalry. The infantry, tired, weary, and suffering under the heat, were quickly broken and sent into mass retreat. Forrest sent a full charge after the retreating army and captured 16 artillery pieces, 176 wagons, and 1,500 stands of small arms. In all, the maneuver cost Forrest 96 men killed and 396 wounded. The day was worse for U.S. troops, who suffered 223 killed, 394 wounded, and 1,623 missing. The losses were a deep blow to the black regiment under Sturgis's command. In the hasty retreat, they stripped off commemorative badges that read "Remember Fort Pillow" to avoid goading the Confederate force pursuing them.[128]

One month later, while serving under General Stephen D. Lee, Forrest experienced tactical defeat at the Battle of Tupelo in 1864.[129] Concerned about U.S. Army supply lines, Maj. Gen. Sherman sent a force under the command of Maj. Gen. Andrew J. Smith to deal with Forrest.[130] U.S. Army forces drove the Confederates from the field, and Forrest was wounded in the foot, but his forces were not wholly destroyed. He continued to oppose U.S. Army efforts in the West for the remainder of the war.

Tennessee Raids edit

 
"Forrest's Raid" sketched by George H. Ellsbury (Harper's Weekly, September 10, 1864)

Forrest led other raids that summer and fall, including a famous one into U.S. Army-held downtown Memphis in August 1864 (the Second Battle of Memphis)[citation needed] and another on a major U.S. Army supply depot at Johnsonville, Tennessee. On November 4, 1864, during the Battle of Johnsonville, the Confederates shelled the city, sinking three gunboats and nearly thirty other ships and destroying many tons of supplies.[131] During Hood's Tennessee Campaign, he fought alongside General John Bell Hood, the newest commander of the Confederate Army of Tennessee, in the Second Battle of Franklin on November 30.[132] Facing a disastrous defeat, Forrest argued bitterly with Hood (his superior officer) demanding permission to cross the Harpeth River and cut off the escape route of U.S. Army Maj. Gen. John M. Schofield's army.[133] He eventually attempted, but it was too late.

Murfreesboro, Nashville, and Selma edit

 
Map of the Franklin–Nashville campaign including troops commanded by Forrest

After his bloody defeat at Franklin, Hood continued to Nashville. Hood ordered Forrest to conduct an independent raid against the Murfreesboro garrison. After success in achieving the objectives specified by Hood, Forrest engaged U.S. forces near Murfreesboro on December 5, 1864. In what would be known as the Third Battle of Murfreesboro, a portion of Forrest's command broke and ran.[134] When Hood's battle-hardened Army of Tennessee, consisting of 40,000 men deployed in three infantry corps plus 10,000 to 15,000 cavalry, was all but destroyed on December 15–16, at the Battle of Nashville,[135] Forrest distinguished himself by commanding the Confederate rear guard in a series of actions that allowed what was left of the army to escape. For this, he would later be promoted to the rank of lieutenant general on March 2, 1865.[136] A portion of his command, now dismounted, was surprised and captured in their camp at Verona, Mississippi on December 25, 1864, during a raid of the Mobile and Ohio Railroad by a brigade of Brig. Gen. Benjamin Grierson's cavalry division.[137]

In the spring of 1865, Forrest led an unsuccessful defense of the state of Alabama against Wilson's Raid. His opponent, U.S. Army Brig. Gen. James H. Wilson, defeated Forrest at the Battle of Selma on April 2, 1865.[138] A week later, General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Grant in Virginia. When he received news of Lee's surrender, Forrest surrendered as well. On May 9, 1865, at Gainesville, Forrest read his farewell address to the men under his command, urging them to "submit to the powers to be, and to aid in restoring peace and establishing law and order throughout the land."[139]

War record and promotions edit

Postwar years and later life edit

Business ventures edit

 
"Memphis and vicinity" mapped during the American Civil War, including President's Island where Forrest's post-war farm was worked by convict labor

As a former enslaver and slave trader, Forrest experienced the abolition of slavery at the war's end as a major financial setback. During the war, he became interested in the area around Crowley's Ridge and took up civilian life in 1865 in Memphis, Tennessee. In 1866, Forrest and C.C. McCreanor contracted to finish the Memphis & Little Rock Railroad, including a right-of-way that passed over the ridge.[140] The ridgetop commissary he built as a provisioning store for the 1,000 Irish laborers hired to lay the rails became the nucleus of a town, which most residents called "Forrest's Town" and which was incorporated as Forrest City, Arkansas in 1870.[141]

The historian Court Carney writes that Forrest was not universally popular in the white Memphis community: he alienated many of the city's business people in his commercial dealings and was criticized for questionable business practices that caused him to default on debts.[142]

He later found employment at the Selma-based Marion & Memphis Railroad and eventually became the company president. He was not as successful in railroad promotion as in war, and, under his direction, the company went bankrupt. Nearly ruined as the result of this failure, Forrest spent his final days running an eight-hundred-acre farm on land he leased on President's Island in the Mississippi River, where he and his wife lived in a log cabin. There, with the labor of over a hundred prison convicts, he grew corn, potatoes, vegetables, and cotton profitably, but his health steadily declined.[143][144] In May 1877, Forrest's use of convict labor was described as indistinguishable from slavery, in its use of bloodhounds, shotgun-wielding guards, and corporal punishment.[145] Critics also argued it was unjust and exploitative: "The convict farmer has a financial interest in the conviction of as many persons as he may need...and the obsequious and corrupt myrmidons and magistrates of the law can readily supply the demand at a short notice in a country where the unprotected negro is left to steal or starve."[145]

 
State of Alabama, Selma, Marion, Memphis Railroad Company bonds, issued 1869, signed by N. B. Forrest

Offers his services to Sherman edit

During the Virginius Affair of 1873, some of Forrest's old Confederate friends were filibusters aboard the vessel; consequently, he wrote a letter to the then General-in-Chief of the United States Army William T. Sherman and offered his services in case a war were to break out between the United States and Spain. Sherman, who had recognized how formidable an opponent Forrest was in battle during the Civil War, replied after the crisis settled down. He thanked Forrest for the offer and stated that had war broken out, he would have considered it an honor to have served side by side with him.[146][147][148][149][150][151][152]

Ku Klux Klan leadership edit

Forrest was an early member of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), which was formed by six veterans of the Confederate Army in Pulaski, Tennessee, during the spring of 1866[153][154][155] and soon expanded throughout the state and beyond. Forrest became involved sometime in late 1866 or early 1867. A common report is that Forrest arrived in Nashville in April 1867 while the Klan was meeting at the Maxwell House Hotel, probably at the encouragement of a state Klan leader, former Confederate general George Gordon.[156] The organization had grown to the point that an experienced commander was needed, and Forrest was well-suited to assume the role. In Room 10 of the Maxwell, Forrest was sworn in as a member by John W. Morton.[157][158] Brian Steel Wills quotes two KKK members who identified Forrest as a Klan leader.[159] James R. Crowe stated, "After the order grew to large numbers we found it necessary to have someone of large experience to command. We chose General Forrest".[160] Another member wrote, "N. B. Forest of Confederate fame was at our head, and was known as the Grand Wizard. I heard him make a speech in one of our Dens".[159] The title "Grand Wizard" was chosen because General Forrest had been known as "The Wizard of the Saddle" during the war.[161] According to Jack Hurst's 1993 biography, "Two years after Appomattox, Forrest was reincarnated as grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. As the Klan's first national leader, he became the Lost Cause's avenging angel, galvanizing a loose collection of boyish secret social clubs into a reactionary instrument of terror still feared today."[162] Forrest was the Klan's first and only Grand Wizard, and he was active in recruitment for the Klan from 1867 to 1868.[163][164][165][166][167][168][169]

Following the war, the United States Congress began passing the Reconstruction Acts to specify conditions for the readmission of former Confederate States to the United States,[170][171][172] including ratification of the Fourteenth (1868), and Fifteenth (1870) Amendments to the United States Constitution. The Fourteenth addressed citizenship rights and equal protection of the laws for formerly enslaved people, while the Fifteenth specifically secured the voting rights of black men.[173] According to Wills, in the August 1867 state elections the Klan was relatively restrained in its actions. White Americans who made up the KKK hoped to persuade black voters that returning to their pre-war state of bondage was in their best interest. Forrest assisted in maintaining order. After these efforts failed, Klan violence and intimidation escalated and became widespread.[174] Author Andrew Ward, however, writes, "In the spring of 1867, Forrest and his dragoons launched a campaign of midnight parades; 'ghost' masquerades; and 'whipping' and even 'killing Negro voters and white Republicans, to scare blacks off voting and running for office'".[175] In 1868, "Klan organizers circulated printed rituals. General Forrest and his business partners were then promoting an insurance venture, and their travels facilitated the movement ."[176]

In an 1868 interview by a Cincinnati newspaper, Forrest claimed that the Klan had 40,000 members in Tennessee and 550,000 total members throughout the Southern United States.[177][178] He said he sympathized with them, but denied any formal connection, although he claimed he could muster thousands of men himself. He described the Klan as "a protective political military organization ... The members are sworn to recognize the government of the United States ... Its objects originally were protection against Loyal Leagues and the Grand Army of the Republic ...".[179][180] After only a year as Grand Wizard, in January 1869, faced with an ungovernable membership employing methods that seemed increasingly counterproductive, Forrest dissolved the Klan, ordered their costumes destroyed,[181] and withdrew from participation. His declaration had little effect, and few Klansmen destroyed their robes and hoods.[182]

In 1871, the U.S. Congressional Committee Report stated that "The natural tendency of all such organizations is to violence and crime, hence it was that Gen. Forrest and other men of influence by the exercise of their moral power, induced them to disband".

Democratic convention 1868 edit

Main article: 1868 Democratic National Convention
 
1868 carte de visite of Nathan Bedford Forrest taken by Mathew B. Brady in New York City at the time of the 1868 Democratic Convention (Steve and Mike Romano Collection, Military Images)

The Klan's activity infiltrated the Democratic Party's campaign for the presidential election of 1868. Prominent ex-Confederates, including Forrest, the Grand Wizard of the Klan, and South Carolina's Wade Hampton, attended as delegates at the 1868 Democratic Convention, held at Tammany Hall headquarters at 141 East 14th Street in New York City.[183] Forrest rode to the convention on a train that was stopped just outside of a small town along the way, when he was confronted by a well-known fighter shouting "d[amne]d butcher" and wanting to "thrash" him. When Forrest rose and approached the bully, his larger challenger's "purpose evaporated."[184] Former Governor of New York Horatio Seymour was nominated as the Democratic presidential candidate, while Forrest's friend, Francis Preston Blair Jr., was nominated as the Democratic vice presidential candidate, Seymour's running mate.[185] The Seymour–Blair Democratic ticket's campaign slogan was: "Our Ticket, Our Motto, This Is a White Man's Country; Let White Men Rule".[186] The Democratic Party platform denounced the Reconstruction Acts as unconstitutional, void, and revolutionary.[187] The party advocated the termination of the Freedman's Bureau and any government policy designed to aid blacks in the Southern United States.[187] These developments worked to the advantage of the Republicans, who focused on the Democratic Party's alleged disloyalty during and after the Civil War.[187]

Election of 1868 and Grant edit

 
Prominent Republican organizer George Ashburn was murdered in Georgia by the Ku Klux Klan on March 31, 1868.

During the presidential election of 1868, the Ku Klux Klan, under the leadership of Forrest, and other terrorist groups, used brutal violence and intimidation against blacks and Republican voters.[188][189] Forrest played a prominent role in the spread of the Klan in the Southern United States, meeting with racist whites in Atlanta several times between February and March 1868. Forrest probably organized a statewide Klan network in Georgia during these visits.[190] On March 31, the Klan struck, killing prominent Republican organizer George Ashburn in Columbus.[190]

The Republicans had nominated one of Forrest's battle adversaries, U.S. war hero Ulysses S. Grant, for the Presidency at their convention held in October. Klansmen took their orders from their former Confederate officers.[189] In Louisiana, 1,000 blacks were killed to suppress Republican voting. In Georgia, blacks and Republicans also faced a lot of violence. The Klan's violence was primarily designed to intimidate voters, targeting black and white supporters of the Republican Party.[190] The Klan's violent tactics backfired, as Grant, whose slogan was "Let us have peace", won the election and Republicans gained a majority in Congress.[188] Grant defeated Horatio Seymour, the Democratic presidential candidate, by a comfortable electoral margin, 214 to 80.[191] The popular vote was much closer: Grant received 3,013,365 (52.7%) votes, while Seymour received 2,708,744 (47.3%) votes.[191] Grant lost Georgia and Louisiana, where the violence and intimidation against blacks were most prominent.

Klan prosecution and Congressional testimony (1871) edit

Many in the United States, including President Grant, backed the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment, which gave voting rights to American men regardless of "race, color, or previous condition of servitude". Congress and Grant passed the Enforcement Acts from 1870 to 1871 to protect the "registration, voting, officeholding, or jury service" of African Americans. Under these laws enforced by Grant and the newly formed Department of Justice, there were over 5,000 indictments and 1,000 convictions of Klan members across the Southern United States.[188]

Forrest testified before the Congressional investigation of Klan activities on June 27, 1871. He denied membership, but his role in the KKK was beyond the scope of the investigating committee, which wrote: "Our design is not to connect General Forrest with this order (the reader may form his own conclusion upon this question)".[192] The committee also noted, "The natural tendency of all such organizations is to violence and crime; hence it was that General Forrest and other men of influence in the state, by the exercise of their moral power, induced them to disband".[193] George Cantor, a biographer of Confederate generals, wrote, "Forrest ducked and weaved, denying all knowledge, but admitted he knew some of the people involved. He sidestepped some questions and pleaded failure of memory on others. Afterwards, he admitted to 'gentlemanly lies'. He wanted nothing more to do with the Klan, but felt honor bound to protect former associates."[194]

Race and politics (1870s) edit

 
The lionization of Forrest was especially keen during the post-Reconstruction period now known as the nadir of American race relations ("When Forrest Came to Town" Memphis Commercial Appeal, June 14, 1908)

After the lynch mob murder of four black people who had been arrested for defending themselves in a brawl at a barbecue, Forrest wrote to Tennessee Governor John C. Brown in August 1874 volunteering to personally lead a posse to punish the "white marauders" responsible. Brown politely declined the offer.[146]

In January 1875, Forrest came to Nashville to work against the re-election of Andrew Johnson for Senate; four of the six other candidates being considered by the Tennessee Assembly were fellow former high officers in the Confederate Army, namely generals John C. Brown, William B. Bate, W. A. Quarles, and colonel John H. Savage. According to historian Fay W. Brabson, when Forrest arrived Johnson cunningly told him, "When the gods arrive, the half-gods depart; if the people really wanted to bestow honor where honor was due, they should support Forrest for the Senate instead of any one-horse general." Forrest was duly flattered and left town for Memphis that night, leaving the "lesser military contenders" to fight amongst themselves amidst a losing battle with Johnson.[195]

On July 5, 1875, Forrest gave a speech before the Independent Order of Pole-Bearers Association, a post-war organization of black Southerners advocating to improve black people's economic condition and gain equal rights for all citizens. At this, his last public appearance, he made what The New York Times described as a "friendly speech"[196][197] during which, when offered a bouquet by a young black woman, he accepted them,[198] thanked her and kissed her on the cheek. Forrest spoke in the encouragement of black advancement and endeavored to be a proponent for espousing peace and harmony between black and white Americans.[12]

In response to the Pole-Bearers speech, the Cavalry Survivors Association of Augusta, the first Confederate organization formed after the war, called a meeting in which Captain F. Edgeworth Eve gave a speech expressing strong disapproval of Forrest's remarks promoting inter-ethnic harmony, ridiculing his faculties and judgment and berating the woman who gave Forrest flowers as "a mulatto wench". The association voted unanimously to amend its constitution to expressly forbid publicly advocating for or hinting at any association of white women and girls as being in the same classes as "females of the negro race".[199] The Macon Weekly Telegraph newspaper also condemned Forrest for his speech, describing the event as "the recent disgusting exhibition of himself at the negro jamboree" and quoting part of a Charlotte Observer article, which read "We have infinitely more respect for Longstreet, who fraternizes with negro men on public occasions, with the pay for the treason to his race in his pocket, than with Forrest and [General] Pillow, who equalize with the negro women, with only 'futures' in payment".

Just a few months before his death, Forrest attended an African-American barbecue in Memphis.[149] Aiming to right his past wrongs, Forrest encouraged African Americans to "work, be industrious, live honestly and act truly", as well as declaring that "when you are oppressed, I'll come to your relief".[149]

Death edit

 
Marker at Memphis' historic Elmwood Cemetery, where a number of Forrest family members are buried
 
During his lifetime Forrest helped raise money for a Confederate monument at the cemetery

Forrest reportedly died from acute complications of diabetes at the Memphis home of his brother Jesse on October 29, 1877.[200] His eulogy was delivered by his recent spiritual mentor, former Confederate chaplain George Tucker Stainback, who declared in his eulogy: "Lieutenant-General Nathan Bedford Forrest, though dead, yet speaketh. His acts have photographed themselves upon the hearts of thousands, and will speak there forever."[201]

Forrest's funeral procession was over two miles long. The crowd of mourners was estimated to include 20,000 people.[149] According to Forrest biographer Jack Hurst, writers present at the public viewing of Forrest's body and the funeral procession noted many black citizens among them.[202]

Forrest was buried at Elmwood Cemetery in Memphis.[203] In 1904, the remains of Forrest and his wife Mary were disinterred from Elmwood and moved to a Memphis city park that was originally named Forrest Park in his honor but has since been renamed Health Sciences Park.[204]

On July 7, 2015, the Memphis City Council unanimously voted to remove the statue of Forrest from Health Sciences Park, and to return the remains of Forrest and his wife to Elmwood Cemetery.[205] However, on October 13, 2017, the Tennessee Historical Commission invoked the Tennessee Heritage Protection Act of 2013 and U.S. Public Law 85-425: Sec. 410 to overrule the city.[206] Consequently, Memphis sold the park land to Memphis Greenspace, a non-profit entity not subject to the Tennessee Heritage Protection Act, which immediately removed the monument as explained below.[207][208]

Historical reputation and legacy edit

Monuments to Nathan Bedford Forrest

Specific monuments edit

Many memorials have been erected to Forrest, especially in Tennessee and adjacent southern states. Forrest was elevated in Memphis—where he lived and died—to the status of folk hero. Historian Court Carney suggested that "embarrassed by their city's early capitulation during the Civil War, white Memphians desperately needed a hero and therefore crafted a distorted depiction of Forrest's role in the war."[142] Moreover, a "strong Forrest cult exists among fans of the Lost Cause."[209] Forrest's legacy as "one of the most controversial—and popular—icons of the war" still draws heated public debate.[210] As of 2007, Tennessee had 32 dedicated historical markers linked to Nathan Bedford Forrest, more than were dedicated to all three former Presidents associated with the state combined: Andrew Jackson, James K. Polk, and Andrew Johnson.[211] A Tennessee-based organization, the Sons of Confederate Veterans, posthumously awarded Forrest their Confederate Medal of Honor, created in 1977.[212]

Public schools: High schools named for Forrest were built in Chapel Hill, Tennessee and Jacksonville, Florida. The school in Jacksonville was named for Forrest in 1959 at the urging of the Daughters of the Confederacy because they were upset about the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision.[213] In 2008, the Duval County School Board voted 5–2 against a push to change the name of Nathan Bedford Forrest High School in Jacksonville.[214] In 2013, the board voted 7–0 to begin the process to rename the school.[214] The school was all white until Duval County schools were ordered to be desegregated in 1971,[215] but now more than half the student body is black.[213] After several public forums and discussions, Westside High School was unanimously approved in January 2014 as the school's new name. The Forrest Hill Academy high school in Atlanta, Georgia, which had been named for Forrest, was renamed the Hank Aaron New Beginnings Academy in April 2021 after the Atlanta Braves baseball star who had died less than three months prior.[216]

Middle Tennessee State University: In 1978, Middle Tennessee State University abandoned imagery it had formerly used (in 1951, the school's yearbook, The Midlander, featured the first appearance of Forrest's likeness as MTSU's official mascot) and MTSU president M. G. Scarlett removed the General's image from the university's official seal. The Blue Raiders' athletic mascot was changed to an ambiguous swash-buckler character called the "Blue Raider" to avoid association with Forrest or the Confederacy. The school unveiled its latest mascot, a winged horse named "Lightning" inspired by the mythological Pegasus, during halftime of a basketball game against rival Tennessee State University on January 17, 1998.[217] The ROTC building at MTSU had been named Forrest Hall to honor him in 1958, but the frieze depicting General Forrest on horseback that had adorned the side of the building was removed amid protests in 2006.[218] A significant push to change its name failed on February 16, 2018, when the governor-controlled Tennessee Historical Commission denied Middle Tennessee State University's petition to rename Forrest Hall.[219]

 
Commemorative scroll from the 11th reunion of the United Confederate Veterans in Memphis, May 1901


Mississippi license plate plan: A 2011 proposal by the Sons of Confederate Veterans to honor Forrest with a Mississippi license plate revived tensions and raised objections from Mississippi NAACP chapter president Derrick Johnson, who compared Forrest to Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.[220][210] The Mississippi NAACP petitioned Governor Haley Barbour to denounce the plates and prevent their distribution.[221] Barbour refused to denounce the honor. Instead, he noted that the state legislature would not likely approve the plate anyway.[222]

Forrest monument in Old Live Oak Cemetery, Selma, Alabama: In 2000, a monument to Forrest was unveiled in Selma, Alabama.[223] The monument to Forrest in the Confederate Circle section of Old Live Oak Cemetery in Selma, Alabama reads "Defender of Selma, Wizard of the Saddle, Untutored Genius, The first with the most. This monument stands as testament of our perpetual devotion and respect for Lieutenant General Nathan Bedford Forrest. CSA 1821–1877, one of the South's finest heroes. In honor of Gen. Forrest's unwavering defense of Selma, the great state of Alabama, and the Confederacy, this memorial is dedicated. DEO VINDICE".[224] The bust of Forrest was stolen from the cemetery monument in March 2012 and replaced in May 2015.[225][226]

Forrest Park, now Health Sciences Park, in Memphis: A memorial to him, the first Civil War memorial in Memphis, was erected in 1905 in a new Nathan Bedford Forrest Park. In 2005, Shelby County Commissioner Walter Bailey started an effort to move the statue over Forrest's grave and rename Forrest Park. Former Memphis Mayor Willie Herenton, who is black, blocked the move. In 2013, Forrest Park in Memphis was renamed the Health Sciences Park amid substantial controversy.[204] In light of the 2015 church shooting in Charleston, South Carolina, some Tennessee lawmakers advocated removing a bust of Forrest located in the state's Capitol building. Subsequently, then-Mayor A C Wharton urged that the statue of Forrest be removed from the Health Sciences Park and suggested that the remains of Forrest and his wife be relocated to their original burial site in nearby Elmwood Cemetery.[227] In a nearly unanimous vote on July 7, the Memphis City Council passed a resolution in favor of removing the statue and securing the couple's remains for transfer. The Tennessee Historical Commission denied removal on October 21, 2016, under the authority granted it by the Tennessee Heritage Protection Act of 2013, which prevents cities and counties from relocating, removing, renaming, or otherwise disturbing without permission war memorials on public property.[228] The City Council then voted on December 20, 2017, to sell Health Sciences Park to Memphis Greenspace, a new non-profit corporation not subject to the Heritage Protection Act, which removed the statue and another of Jefferson Davis that same evening.[207][208] The Sons of Confederate Veterans threatened a lawsuit against the city. On April 18, 2018, the Tennessee House of Representatives punished Memphis by cutting $250,000 (~$288,396 in 2022) in appropriations for the city's bicentennial celebration.[229] On June 3, 2021, the remains of Forrest and his wife were exhumed from their burial place in the park, where they had been for over a century, to be reburied in Columbia, Tennessee. The exhumation and reburial were the results of a campaign that began after the Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017. The effort was spearheaded by Shelby County Commissioner Tami Sawyer, an educator and Memphis native who founded a group called Take 'Em Down 901 to advocate for the removal of Confederate iconography.[230] After the Forrests' remains were removed from Memphis, they were reportedly buried in Munford, Tennessee[231] until their reburial in Columbia in September 2021 by the Sons of Confederate Veterans.[232]

Nathan Bedford Forrest Day: The Tennessee legislature established July 13 as "Nathan Bedford Forrest Day".[233] As of 2019, Nathan Bedford Forrest Day was still observed in Tennessee, though some Democrats in the state had attempted to change the law, which required Tennessee's governor to sign a proclamation honoring the holiday.[234][235] However, since that time, Governor Bill Lee's administration introduced a bill—passed by the Tennessee legislature on June 10, 2020—which released the governor from the former requirement that he proclaim that observance each year and a spokesperson for Governor Lee confirmed that he would not be signing a Forrest Day proclamation in July 2020.[236] In June 2020, after black members of the Tennessee House of Representatives unsuccessfully asked it to eliminate a state celebration of Forrest, Representative Cameron Sexton opined: "I don't think anybody here is truly racist. I think people may make insensitive comments."[237]

Nathan Bedford Forrest bust: A bust sculpted by Jane Baxendale is on display at the Tennessee State Capitol building in Nashville.[238] Brett Joseph Forrest, a direct descendant of Nathan, spoke in support of the bust's removal.[239][240] In 2021 Sexton voted against the removal of the bust of Forrest from the Tennessee State Capitol and into the Tennessee State Museum, but only one other legislator agreed with him, and the bust was removed.[241] Sexton said that he believed the removal of the bust "aligns ... with the teaching of communism."[241]

Other monuments and memorials:

Military doctrines edit

Forrest is considered one of the Civil War's most brilliant tacticians by the historian Spencer C. Tucker.[250] Forrest fought by simple rules; he maintained that "war means fighting and fighting means killing" and the way to win was "to get there first with the most men".[251] U.S. Army General William Tecumseh Sherman called him "that devil Forrest" in wartime communications with Ulysses S. Grant and considered him "the most remarkable man our civil war produced on either side".[252][253][4]

Forrest became well known for his early use of maneuver tactics as applied to a mobile horse cavalry deployment.[254] He grasped the doctrines of mobile warfare[255] that would eventually become prevalent in the 20th century. Paramount in his strategy was fast movement, even if it meant pushing his horses at a killing pace, to constantly harass the enemy during raids by disrupting their supply trains and communications with the destruction of railroad tracks and the cutting of telegraph lines, as he wheeled around his opponent's flank. The Civil War scholar Bruce Catton writes:

Forrest ... used his horsemen as a modern general would use motorized infantry. He liked horses because he liked fast movement, and his mounted men could get from here to there much faster than any infantry could; but when they reached the field they usually tied their horses to trees and fought on foot, and they were as good as the very best infantry.[256]

Forrest is often erroneously quoted as saying his strategy was "to git thar fustest with the mostest". Now often recast as "Getting there firstest with the mostest",[257] this misquote first appeared in a New York Tribune article written to provide colorful comments in reaction to European interest in Civil War generals. The aphorism was addressed and corrected as "Ma'am, I got there first with the most men" by a New York Times story in 1918.[258] Though it was a novel and succinct condensation of the military principles of mass and maneuver, Bruce Catton writes of the spurious quote:

Do not, under any circumstances whatever, quote Forrest as saying "fustest" and "mostest". He did not say it that way, and nobody who knows anything about him imagines that he did.[259]

Fort Pillow edit

 
U.S. media pulled out all the stops attacking Forrest after Fort Pillow; for example, this unsigned article from correspondent in East Tennessee described Forrest as "sallow visaged" with "black, snaky eyes" (Chicago Tribune, May 4, 1864)
 
After Fort Pillow, U.S. Maj. Gen. David S. Stanley published hearsay describing Forrest's execution of a prisoner of war from Pennsylvania,[260] and a news illustrator (almost certainly Thomas Nast) included "Gen. Forrest shooting a free mulatto" in an image about alleged Confederate war crimes (Harper's Weekly, May 21, 1864)

Modern historians generally believe that Forrest's attack on Fort Pillow was a massacre, noting high casualty rates and the rebels targeting black soldiers.[261] Forrest's claim that the Fort Pillow massacre was an invention of U.S. reporters is contradicted by letters written by Confederate soldiers to their own families, which described extreme brutality on the part of Confederate troops.[112] It was the Confederacy's publicly stated position that formerly enslaved people firing on whites would be killed on the spot, along with Southern whites that fought for the Union, whom the Confederacy considered traitors. According to this analysis, Forrest's troops were carrying out Confederate policy. The historical record does not support his repeated denials that he knew a massacre was taking place or that he even knew a massacre had occurred at all. Consequently, his role at Fort Pillow was a stigmatizing one for him the rest of his life, both professionally and personally,[262][263] and contributed to his business problems after the war.

Historians have differed in their interpretations of the events at Fort Pillow. Richard L. Fuchs, author of An Unerring Fire, concluded:

The affair at Fort Pillow was simply an orgy of death, a mass lynching to satisfy the basest of conduct—intentional murder—for the vilest of reasons—racism and personal enmity.[264]

Andrew Ward downplays the controversy:

Whether the massacre was premeditated or spontaneous does not address the more fundamental question of whether a massacre took place ... it certainly did, in every dictionary sense of the word.[265]

John Cimprich states:

The new paradigm in social attitudes and the fuller use of available evidence has favored a massacre interpretation ... Debate over the memory of this incident formed a part of sectional and racial conflicts for many years after the war, but the reinterpretation of the event during the last thirty years offers some hope that society can move beyond past intolerance.[266]

The site is now a Tennessee State Historic Park.[267]

Grant himself described Forrest as "a brave and intrepid cavalry general" while noting that Forrest sent a dispatch on the Fort Pillow Massacre "in which he left out the part which shocks humanity to read".[268]

In popular culture edit

In the 1990 PBS documentary The Civil War by Ken Burns, historian Shelby Foote states in Episode 7 that the Civil War produced two "authentic geniuses": Abraham Lincoln and Nathan Bedford Forrest. When he expressed his opinion to one of General Forrest's granddaughters, she replied after a pause, "You know, we never thought much of Mr. Lincoln in my family".[269] Foote also made Forrest a major character in his novel Shiloh, which used numerous first-person stories to illustrate a detailed timeline and account of the battle.[270][271]

Tom Hanks's title character in the film Forrest Gump remarks in one scene that his mother named him after Nathan Bedford Forrest and "we was related to him in some way". The following scene satirically depicts Hanks as Forrest in a Ku Klux Klan outfit, donning a hood and being superimposed into scenes of the Klan from The Birth of a Nation.

See also edit

References edit

Notes

  1. ^ Wright, John D. (2001), The Language of the Civil War, Greenwood Publishing Group, p. 210, ISBN 978-1573561358
  2. ^ Wright 2001, p. 326
  3. ^ A.W.R. Hawkins III; Paul G. Pierpaoli Jr.; Spencer C. Tucker (2014). "Forrest, Nathan Bedford (1821–1877)". In Tucker, Spencer C. (ed.). 500 Great Military Leaders [2 volumes]. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 978-1-59884-758-1.
  4. ^ a b Stephen Z. Starr (2007). The Union Cavalry in the Civil War: The War in the West, 1861–1865. LSU Press. p. 48. ISBN 978-0-8071-3293-7. ...Nathan Bedford Forrest, whom his superiors did not recognize for the military genius he was until it was too late...
  5. ^ Clement Anselm Evans (1899). Confederate Military History. Vol. 8. Atlanta, Ga.: Confederate Publishing Co. p. 243. Retrieved December 19, 2023 – via HathiTrust.
  6. ^ David J Eicher (2002). The Longest Night: A Military History of the Civil War. Simon and Schuster. pp. 657–. ISBN 978-0-7432-1846-7.
  7. ^ a b Gwynne, S. C. (2020). Hymns of the Republic: The Story of the Final Year of the American Civil War. Simon and Schuster. p. 332. ISBN 978-1-5011-1623-0. Forrest's responsibility for the massacre has been actively debated for a century and a half. Forrest spent much time after the war trying to clear his name. No direct evidence suggests that he ordered the shooting of surrendering or unarmed men, but to fully exonerate him from responsibility is also impossible.
  8. ^ Tabbert, Mark A. (2006). American Freemasons: Three Centuries of Building Communities. NYU Press. p. 83. ISBN 9780814783023.
  9. ^ J. Michael Martinez (2012). Terrorist Attacks on American Soil From the Civil War Era to the Present. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 193. ISBN 978-1-4422-0324-2. Although Forrest repudiated the group's activities after less than two years, he transformed the budding terrorist organization into an effective mechanism for promoting white supremacy in the Old South.
  10. ^ James Michael Martinez (2007). Carpetbaggers, Cavalry, and the Ku Klux Klan: Exposing the Invisible Empire During Reconstruction. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 21. ISBN 978-0-7425-5078-0.
  11. ^ Chester L. Quarles (1999). The Ku Klux Klan and Related American Racialist and Antisemitic Organizations: A History and Analysis. McFarland. p. 28. ISBN 978-0-7864-0647-0.
  12. ^ a b "Memphis daily appeal. (Memphis, Tenn.) 1847–1886, July 06, 1875, Image 1", Library of Congress, Chronicling America, National Endowment for the Humanities, August 4, 2008, ISSN 2166-1898, retrieved August 23, 2017
  13. ^ Aya Elamroussi; Rebekah Riess (July 23, 2021). "Tennessee to remove bust of Ku Klux Klan leader Nathan Bedford Forrest from state Capitol". CNN. from the original on July 23, 2021.
  14. ^ Bennett Henderson Young (1914). Confederate Wizards of the Saddle: Being Reminiscences and Observations of One who Rode with Morgan. Boston, Massachusetts: Chapple Publishing Company, Limited. p. 126.
  15. ^ a b c d e f g h Spaulding 1931, p. 532.
  16. ^ Ansearchin' News. Memphis Genealogical Society. 1996. p. 39. It is time to publish the truth about Miriam Beck Forrest and her family. They were of English origin and came from Pennsylvania and North Carolina. Miriam's parents, John Emasy Beck and his wife, Frances Watts, were among the earlier settlers of Bedford Co., Tenn. John Emasy's grandfather was Jeffrey Beck, born in Bucks Co., Pa., to Edward and Sarah Beck and moved via Virginia to North Carolina.
  17. ^ "National Register of Historic Places Inventory – Nomination Form: Nathan Bedford Forrest Boyhood Home". National Park Service. United States Department of the Interior. Retrieved December 1, 2017.
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Bibliography

Main article: Bibliography of Nathan Bedford Forrest
Books
Online
  • "Grant, Reconstruction and the KKK". pbs.org. American Experience. 2018. Retrieved April 15, 2018.

Further reading

  • Bearss, Edwin C. (1979), Forrest at Brice's Cross Roads and in North Mississippi in 1864, Dayton, OH: Press of Morningside Bookshop
  • Bearss, Ed, ed. (July 1, 2005), Unpublished remarks to Gettysburg College, Civil War Institute
  • Bradshaw, Wayne (2009), The Civil War Diary of William R. Dyer: A Member of Forrest's Escort, BookSurge Publishing, ISBN 978-1-4392-3772-4
  • Carney, Court (2001), "The Contested Image of Nathan Bedford Forrest", Journal of Southern History, 67 (3): 601–630, doi:10.2307/3070019, JSTOR 3070019
  • Dupuy, Trevor N.; Johnson, Curt; Bongard, David L. (1992), Harper Encyclopedia of Military Biography (1st ed.), Castle Books, ISBN 978-0-7858-0437-6
  • Foner, Eric (1988), Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution 1863–1877, HarperCollins, ISBN 978-0-06-015851-4
  • Harcourt, Edward John (2005), "Who Were the Pale Faces? New Perspectives on the Tennessee Ku Klux", Civil War History, 51 (1): 23–66, doi:10.1353/cwh.2005.0011, S2CID 143866721
  • Henry, Robert Selph (1944), First with the Most
  • Horn, Stanley F. (1939), Invisible Empire: The Story of the Ku Klux Klan, 1866–1871, Montclair, NJ: Patterson Smith Publishing Corporation
  • Lytle, Andrew Nelson (2002) [1931], Bedford Forrest and His Critter Company (Reprint ed.), Ivan R. Dee, ISBN 978-1-879941-09-0
  • Scales, John R. (2017). The Battles and Campaigns of Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest, 1861–1865. El Dorado Hills, CA: Savas Beatie. ISBN 978-1-61121-284-6.
  • Silkenat, David. Raising the White Flag: How Surrender Defined the American Civil War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2019. ISBN 978-1-4696-4972-6.
  • Tap, Bruce (June 1996), "'These Devils Are Not Fit to Live on God's Earth': War Crimes and the Committee on the Conduct of the War, 1864–1865", Civil War History, XLII (2): 116–32, doi:10.1353/cwh.1996.0051, S2CID 144484122 – on Ft Pillow.
  • Warner, Ezra J. (1959), Generals in Gray: Lives of the Confederate Commanders, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, ISBN 978-0-8071-0823-9
  • Williams, Edward F. (1969), Fustest with the mostest; the military career of Tennessee's greatest Confederate, Lieutenant General Nathan Bedford Forrest Memphis, Distributed by Southern Books
  • Wills, Brian Steel (1992). The Confederacy's Greatest Cavalryman: Nathan Bedford Forrest. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas. ISBN 0-7006-0885-0.

External links edit

 
Wikisource has original text related to this article:
Interview with Nathan Bedford Forrest
  • Animated History of The Campaigns of Nathan Bedford Forrest August 25, 2012, at the Wayback Machine at civilwaranimated.com
  • General Nathan Bedford Forrest Historical Society

February 15, 2024
nathan, bedford, forrest, this, article, about, confederate, general, other, uses, disambiguation, july, 1821, october, 1877, confederate, army, general, during, american, civil, later, first, grand, wizard, klux, klan, from, 1867, 1869, birth, namenickname, w. This article is about the Confederate general For other uses see Nathan Bedford Forrest disambiguation Nathan Bedford Forrest July 13 1821 October 29 1877 was a Confederate Army general during the American Civil War and was later the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan from 1867 to 1869 Nathan Bedford ForrestBirth nameNathan Bedford ForrestNickname s Old Bed 1 Wizard of the Saddle 2 Born 1821 07 13 July 13 1821Chapel Hill Tennessee U S DiedOctober 29 1877 1877 10 29 aged 56 Memphis Tennessee U S BuriedColumbia Tennessee U S Allegiance Confederate StatesService wbr branch Confederate States ArmyYears of service1861 1865RankLieutenant GeneralUnitWhite s Company E Tennessee Mounted Rifles 7th Tennessee Cavalry Battles warsAmerican Civil War Battle of Fort Donelson Battle of Shiloh First Battle of Murfreesboro Streight s Raid Battle of Chickamauga Battle of Fort Pillow Battle of Brices Cross Roads Battle of Tupelo Second Battle of Memphis Third Battle of Murfreesboro Battle of Nashville Wilson s RaidRelationsNathan Forrest II grandson Nathan Forrest III great grandson Before the war Forrest amassed substantial wealth as a cotton plantation owner horse and cattle trader real estate broker and slave trader In June 1861 he enlisted in the Confederate Army and became one of the few soldiers during the war to enlist as a private and be promoted to general without previous military training An expert cavalry leader Forrest was given command of a corps and established new doctrines for mobile forces earning the nickname The Wizard of the Saddle He used his cavalry troops as mounted infantry and often deployed artillery as the lead in battle thus helping to revolutionize cavalry tactics 3 4 Forrest never failed to destroy the military reputation of the Federal commanders encountered by him succinctly characterizes the perception held by opponents reporters and historians alike of his martial tactical achievements 5 While scholars generally acknowledge Forrest s skills and acumen as a cavalry leader and military strategist he is a controversial figure in U S history for prewar slave trading his role in the massacre of several hundred U S Army soldiers at Fort Pillow a majority of them black and his postwar leadership of the Klan In April 1864 in what has been called one of the bleakest saddest events of American military history 6 troops under Forrest s command at the Battle of Fort Pillow massacred hundreds of surrendered troops composed of black soldiers and white Tennessean Southern Unionists fighting for the United States Forrest was blamed for the slaughter in the U S press and this news may have strengthened the United States s resolve to win the war Forrest s level of responsibility for the massacre is still debated by historians 7 Forrest who was a Freemason 8 joined the Ku Klux Klan in 1867 two years after its founding and was elected its first Grand Wizard The group was a loose collection of local factions throughout the former Confederacy that used violence and the threat of violence to maintain white control over the newly enfranchised formerly enslaved people The Klan with Forrest at the lead suppressed the voting rights of blacks in the Southern United States through violence and intimidation during the elections of 1868 In 1869 Forrest expressed disillusionment with the lack of discipline in the white supremacist terrorist group across the South 9 and issued a letter ordering the dissolution of the Ku Klux Klan as well as the destruction of its costumes he then withdrew from the organization 10 In the last years of his life Forrest denied being a Klan member 11 and disturbed by anti black violence made statements in support of racial harmony and black dignity 12 In June 2021 the remains of Forrest and his wife were exhumed from Health Sciences Park where they had been buried for over 100 years and where a monument of him once stood They were later reburied in Columbia Tennessee In July 2021 Tennessee officials voted to move Forrest s bust from the State Capitol to the Tennessee State Museum 13 Contents 1 Early life and career 2 Marriage and family 3 Slave trading 4 American Civil War 4 1 Early cavalry command 4 2 Sacramento and Fort Donelson 4 3 Shiloh and Murfreesboro 4 4 West Tennessee raids 4 5 Dover Brentwood and Chattanooga 4 6 Day s Gap Chickamauga and Paducah 4 7 Fort Pillow massacre 4 8 Brices Cross Roads and Tupelo 4 9 Tennessee Raids 4 10 Murfreesboro Nashville and Selma 4 11 War record and promotions 5 Postwar years and later life 5 1 Business ventures 5 2 Offers his services to Sherman 5 3 Ku Klux Klan leadership 5 3 1 Democratic convention 1868 5 3 2 Election of 1868 and Grant 5 3 3 Klan prosecution and Congressional testimony 1871 5 3 4 Race and politics 1870s 5 4 Death 6 Historical reputation and legacy 6 1 Specific monuments 6 2 Military doctrines 6 3 Fort Pillow 6 4 In popular culture 7 See also 8 References 9 External linksEarly life and career edit nbsp Nathan Bedford Forrest Boyhood Home Chapel Hill Tennessee 2021 Nathan Bedford Forrest was born on July 13 1821 to a poor settler family in a secluded frontier cabin near Chapel Hill hamlet then part of Bedford County Tennessee but now in Marshall County 14 15 Forrest was the first son of Mariam Beck and William Forrest 15 His blacksmith father was of English descent and most of his biographers state that his mother was of Scotch Irish descent but the Memphis Genealogical Society says that she was of English descent 16 He and his twin sister Fanny were the two eldest of 12 children Their great grandfather Shadrach Forrest moved between 1730 and 1740 from Virginia to North Carolina where his son and grandson were born they moved to Tennessee in 1806 15 Forrest s family lived in a log house now preserved as the Nathan Bedford Forrest Boyhood Home from 1830 to 1833 17 John Allan Wyeth who served in an Alabama regiment under Forrest described it as a one room building with a loft and no windows 18 William Forrest worked as a blacksmith in Tennessee until 1834 when he moved with his family to Salem Mississippi 15 19 William died in 1837 and Forrest became the primary caretaker of the family at age 16 15 In 1841 Forrest went into business with his uncle Jonathan Forrest in Hernando Mississippi His uncle was killed there in 1845 during an argument with the Matlock brothers In retaliation Forrest shot and killed two of them with his two shot pistol and wounded two others with a knife thrown to him One of the wounded Matlock men survived and served under Forrest during the Civil War 20 Forrest s early business ventures included a livery stable a stagecoach line and a brickyard 21 nbsp N B Forrest Before the War from Andrew Nelson Lytle s Bedford Forrest and His Critter Company 1931 Forrest was well known as a Memphis speculator and Mississippi gambler 22 In 1858 Forrest was elected a Memphis city alderman as a Southern Democrat and served two consecutive terms 23 24 In 1859 he bought two large cotton plantations in Coahoma County Mississippi and a half interest in another plantation in Arkansas 25 by October 1860 he owned at least 3 345 acres in Mississippi 26 He acquired several cotton plantations in the Delta region of West Tennessee 15 27 15 28 By the time the American Civil War started in 1861 he had become one of the wealthiest men in the Southern United States having amassed a personal fortune that he claimed was worth 1 5 million 29 Forrest stood 6 feet 2 inches 1 88 m in height and weighed about 180 pounds 82 kg 30 31 32 33 He was noted as having a striking and commanding presence by U S Army Captain Lewis Hosea an aide to Gen James H Wilson Forrest rarely drank and abstained from tobacco use he was often described as generally mild mannered but according to Hosea and other contemporaries who knew him his demeanor changed drastically when provoked or angered 34 He was known as a tireless rider in the saddle and a skilled swordsman 35 Although he was not formally educated according to Spaulding Forrest was able to read and write clear and grammatical English although he was a poor speller 36 Marriage and family edit nbsp N B Forrest his 15 year old son W M Forrest and his 25 year old brother Jeffrey E Forrest all enlisted in the Confederate States Army on the same day Capt William M Forrest With a Group of the Members of Gen Nathan Bedford Forrest s Staff Memphis Commercial Appeal February 9 1908 Forrest had twelve brothers and sisters two of his eight brothers and three of his four sisters died of typhoid fever at an early age all at about the same time 37 38 He also contracted the disease but survived his father recovered but died from residual effects of the disease five years later when Bedford was 16 His mother Miriam then married James Horatio Luxton of Marshall Texas in 1843 and gave birth to four more children 39 In 1845 Forrest married Mary Ann Montgomery 1826 1893 the niece of a Presbyterian minister who was her legal guardian 40 They had two children William Montgomery Bedford Forrest llll 1846 1908 who enlisted at the age of 15 and served alongside his father in the war and a daughter Fanny 1849 1854 who died in childhood There are also reports dating to 1864 that Forrest had two children with a young enslaved woman named Catharine 41 All of Forrest s younger brothers in order John N Forrest William H Forrest Aaron H Forrest Jesse A Forrest and Jeffrey E Forrest worked as slave traders with Bedford before the war 42 All but John who was a disabled veteran of the Mexican American War served as Confederate military officers in Tennessee and Mississippi during the American Civil War 43 Forrest s son William M Forrest served as his aide de camp 44 and his half brother Mat Luxton was a sergeant and scout in his cavalry 45 Forrest s grandson Nathan Bedford Forrest II 1872 1931 became commander in chief of the Sons of Confederate Veterans 46 and a Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan in Georgia and secretary of the national organization 47 A great grandson Nathan Bedford Forrest III 1905 1943 graduated from West Point and rose to the rank of brigadier general in the U S Army Air Corps he was killed during a bombing raid over Nazi Germany in 1943 becoming the first American general to die in combat in the European theater during World War II 48 Slave trading edit nbsp Forrest amp Maples advertisement in the Memphis city directory nbsp Reverse side of card advertising Forrest Jones amp Co with handwritten note sold Madison to Forrest 49 Tennessee Virtual Archive Nathan Bedford Forrest disparaged by Parson Brownlow in 1864 as a a sin hardened negro trader and livery stable man of Memphis was a notable slave trader of the United States from 1851 to 1860 Forrest was considered one of the big four 50 phenomenally large traders of Memphis which was the first class market for slave trading in Tennessee 51 He is believed to have sold thousands of slaves during his career and had profits of hundreds of thousands of dollars in 1850s currency 42 Primarily based in Memphis he was able to open a second storefront in Vicksburg in 1858 42 During the American Civil War Forrest cited his business experience in a written request for an independent command I have resided on the Mississippi for over twenty years was for many years engaged in buying and selling negroes and know the country perfectly well between Memphis and Vicksburg and also am well acquainted with all the prominent planters in that region as well as above Memphis 42 After initially working as an independent slave trader he was first in partnership with Seaborne S Jones second in partnership with Byrd Hill a more experienced manager of negro marts third in partnership with Josiah Maples then again a sole proprietor and finally reunited with Jones 42 Beginning in the Forrest amp Maples era his business was headquartered at 87 Adams Street in Memphis where several other slave traders had their slave pens and auction yards thus making the area an efficient business cluster 42 Forrest was traditionally said to have been trained by the principals of Bolton Dickens amp Co a multimillion dollar operation that traded in a dozen Southern cities but recent research suggests this may be apocryphal 42 In 1859 media coverage of Forrest s business spotlighted a particular product an enslaved girl said to be the daughter of Frederick Douglass 52 53 Researchers believe this was likely Anna Marie Bailey a niece of Douglass 42 FRED DOUGLASS DAUGHTER FOR SALE Among the servants offered for sale by a Mr Forrest of Memphis Tenn is a girl who is known to be the daughter of the notorious Fred Douglass the free nigger Abolitionist She is said to be of the class known among the dealers as a likely girl and is a native of North Carolina She remembers her parient very vividly having seen him during his last visit to the Old North State The Memphis Avalanche suggests that as Fred is ample able to make the outlay he should either purchase his own flesh and blood from servitude or cease his shrieks over an institution which possesses such untold horrors Winchester Tenn Home Journal 1859 53 nbsp The Memphis Commercial Appeal claimed in 1907 that this had been Forrest s slave pen 54 but Forrest s jail was between Second and Third 55 In 1862 the Daily Union Appeal described Forrest s jail as a filthy den and it would make any decent man sick to be there one night 56 In 1859 a federal investigation found that Forrest also sold 37 individuals illegally imported to the United States from Africa on the slave ship Wanderer 42 Forrest who advocated for the reopening of the transatlantic slave trade later told an interviewer that he had been an initial investor in the Wanderer shipment 42 In January 1860 the New York Times reported that the Forrest Jones amp Co negro mart building in Memphis had both collapsed and then caught fire two people died 57 The firm s bills of sale for people amounting in the aggregate to US 400 000 equivalent to about 13 028 150 in 2022 were salvaged 57 Forrest had recently moved from 87 Adams to 89 Adams which allowed him to increase his holding capacity from a maximum of 300 slaves to a maximum of 500 42 Forrest subsequently sold his interest in the business after the building catastrophe and reinvested the profit into plantations 42 A marker was erected at the former site of Forrest s slave mart in downtown Memphis on land currently owned by Calvary Episcopal Church and was dedicated on April 4 2018 42 American Civil War editEarly cavalry command edit After the Civil War broke out Forrest returned to Tennessee from his Mississippi ventures and enlisted in the Confederate States Army CSA on June 14 1861 He reported for training at Fort Wright near Randolph Tennessee 58 joining Captain Josiah White s cavalry company the Tennessee Mounted Rifles Seventh Tennessee Cavalry as a private along with his youngest brother and 15 year old son Upon seeing how badly equipped the CSA was Forrest offered to buy horses and equipment with his own money for a regiment of Tennessee volunteer soldiers 28 59 His superior officers and Governor of Tennessee Isham G Harris were surprised that someone of Forrest s wealth and prominence had enlisted as a soldier especially since significant planters were exempted from service They commissioned him as a lieutenant colonel and authorized him to recruit and train a battalion of Confederate mounted rangers 60 In October 1861 Forrest was given command of a regiment the 3rd Tennessee Cavalry Though Forrest had no prior formal military training or experience he had exhibited leadership and soon proved he could successfully employ military tactics 33 61 Public debate surrounded Tennessee s decision to join the Confederacy and both the Confederate and United States armies recruited soldiers from the state Over 100 000 men from Tennessee served with the Confederacy and over 31 000 served with the U S Army 62 Forrest posted advertisements to join his regiment with the slogan Let s have some fun and kill some Yankees 63 Forrest s command included his Escort Company his Special Forces for which he selected the best soldiers available This unit which varied in size from 40 to 90 men constituted the elite of his cavalry 64 Sacramento and Fort Donelson edit nbsp Col Bedford Forrest carte de visite by Bingham amp Brother s Gallery of Memphis Steve and Mike Romano Collection Military Images Forrest won praise for his performance under fire during an early victory in the Battle of Sacramento in Kentucky the first in which he commanded troops in the field where he routed a U S Army force by personally leading a cavalry charge that Brigadier General Charles Clark later commended 65 Forrest distinguished himself further at the Battle of Fort Donelson in February 1862 After his cavalry captured a U S artillery battery he broke out of a siege headed by Major General Ulysses S Grant rallying nearly 4 000 troops and leading them to escape across the Cumberland River 66 A few days after the Confederate surrender of Fort Donelson with the fall of Nashville to U S forces imminent Forrest took command of the city All available carts and wagons were pressed into service to haul 600 boxes of army clothing 250 000 pounds of bacon and 40 wagon loads of ammunition to the railroad depots to be sent off to Chattanooga and Decatur 67 68 Forrest arranged for heavy ordnance machinery including a new cannon rifling machine and 14 cannons as well as parts from the Nashville Armory to be sent to Atlanta for use by the Confederate Army 69 Shiloh and Murfreesboro edit A month later Forrest was back in action at the Battle of Shiloh fought April 6 7 1862 After the U S victory Forrest commanded a Confederate rear guard In the battle of Fallen Timbers he drove through the U S skirmish line Not realizing that the rest of his men had halted their charge when they reached the full U S brigade Forrest charged the brigade alone and soon found himself surrounded He emptied his Colt Army revolvers into the swirling mass of U S Army soldiers and pulled out his saber hacking and slashing A U S infantryman on the ground beside Forrest fired a musket ball at him with a point blank shot nearly knocking him out of the saddle The ball went through Forrest s pelvis and lodged near his spine A surgeon removed the musket ball a week later without anesthesia which was unavailable 37 70 By early summer Forrest commanded a new brigade of inexperienced cavalry regiments He led them into Middle Tennessee in July under orders to launch a cavalry raid On July 13 1862 led them into the First Battle of Murfreesboro as a result of which all of the U S units surrendered to Forrest The Confederates destroyed much of the U S Army s supplies and railroad tracks in the area 71 West Tennessee raids edit nbsp Gen Bedford ForrestPromoted on July 21 1862 to brigadier general Forrest was given command of a Confederate cavalry brigade 72 In December 1862 Forrest s veteran troopers were reassigned by General Braxton Bragg to another officer despite his protest Forrest had to recruit a new brigade of about 2 000 inexperienced men most of whom lacked weapons 73 Again Bragg ordered a series of raids to disrupt the communications of the U S Army forces under Grant which were threatening the city of Vicksburg Mississippi Forrest protested that sending such untrained men behind enemy lines was suicidal but Bragg insisted and Forrest obeyed his orders In the ensuing raids he was pursued by thousands of U S soldiers trying to locate his fast moving forces Avoiding attack by never staying in one place long Forrest eventually led his troops during the spring and summer of 1864 on raids into west Tennessee as far north as the banks of the Ohio River in southwest Kentucky and into north Mississippi 74 75 Forrest returned to his base in Mississippi with more men than he had started with By then all were fully armed with captured U S Army weapons As a result Grant was forced to revise and delay his Vicksburg campaign strategy Newspaper correspondent Sylvanus Cadwallader who traveled with Grant for three years during his campaigns wrote that Forrest was the only Confederate cavalryman of whom Grant stood in much dread 76 77 Dover Brentwood and Chattanooga edit The U S Army gained military control of Tennessee in 1862 and occupied it for the duration of the war having taken control of strategic cities and railroads Forrest continued to lead his men in small scale operations including the Battle of Dover and the Battle of Brentwood until April 1863 The Confederate army dispatched him with a small force into the backcountry of northern Alabama and western Georgia to defend against an attack of 3 000 U S Army cavalrymen commanded by Colonel Abel Streight Streight had orders to cut the Confederate railroad south of Chattanooga Tennessee to seal off Bragg s supply line and force him to retreat into Georgia 78 Forrest chased Streight s men for 16 days harassing them all the way Streight s goal changed from dismantling the railroad to escaping the pursuit On May 3 Forrest caught up with Streight s unit east of Cedar Bluff Alabama Forrest had fewer men than the U S side but feigned having a larger force by repeatedly parading some around a hilltop until Streight was convinced to surrender his 1 500 or so exhausted troops historians Kevin Dougherty and Keith S Hebert say he had about 1 700 men 79 80 81 Day s Gap Chickamauga and Paducah edit Not all of Forrest s exploits of individual combat involved enemy troops Lieutenant Andrew Wills Gould an artillery officer in Forrest s command was being transferred presumably because cannons under his command 82 were spiked disabled by the enemy 83 during the Battle of Day s Gap On June 13 1863 Gould confronted Forrest about his transfer which escalated into a violent exchange Gould shot Forrest in the left side 84 and Forrest mortally stabbed Gould Forrest was thought to have been fatally wounded by Gould but he recovered and was ready to fight in the Chickamauga Campaign 15 Forrest served with the main army at the Battle of Chickamauga on September 18 20 1863 in which he pursued the retreating U S Army and took hundreds of prisoners 85 Like several others under Bragg s command he urged an immediate follow up attack to recapture Chattanooga which had fallen a few weeks before Bragg failed to do so upon which Forrest was quoted as saying What does he fight battles for 86 87 The story that Forrest confronted and threatened the life of Bragg in the fall of 1863 following the battle of Chickamauga and that Bragg transferred Forrest to command in Mississippi as a direct result is now considered to be apocryphal 88 89 90 On December 4 1863 Forrest was promoted to the rank of major general 91 On March 25 1864 Forrest s cavalry raided the town of Paducah Kentucky in the Battle of Paducah during which Forrest demanded the surrender of U S Colonel Stephen G Hicks if I have to storm your works you may expect no quarter Hicks refused to comply with the ultimatum and according to his subsequent report Forrest s troops took a position and set up a battery of guns while a flag of truce was still up As soon as they received the U S reply they moved forward at the command of a junior officer and the U S forces opened fire The Confederates tried to storm the fort but were repulsed they rallied and made two more attempts both of which failed 92 93 94 Fort Pillow massacre edit Main article Battle of Fort Pillow nbsp Woodblock engraving entitled The Massacre at Fort Pillow Harper s Weekly April 30 1864 Fort Pillow located 40 miles 64 km upriver from Memphis near Henning Tennessee was initially constructed by Confederate general Gideon Johnson Pillow on the bluffs of the Mississippi River and taken over by U S forces in 1862 after the Confederates had abandoned the fort 95 The fort was defended by 557 U S Army troops 295 white and 262 black under U S Army Maj L F Booth 95 On April 12 1864 Forrest s men under Brig Gen James Chalmers attacked and recaptured Fort Pillow 95 Booth and his adjutant were killed in the battle leaving Fort Pillow under the command of Major William Bradford 95 Forrest had reached the fort at 10 00 am after a hard ride from Mississippi 95 during which two horses were shot out from under him 95 By 3 30 pm Forrest had concluded that the U S troops could not hold the fort thus he ordered a flag of truce raised and demanded that the fort be surrendered 96 Bradford refused to surrender believing his troops could escape to the U S Navy gunboat USS New Era on the Mississippi River 96 Forrest s men immediately took over the fort while U S Army soldiers retreated to the lower bluffs of the river but the USS New Era did not come to their rescue 96 What happened next became known as the Fort Pillow Massacre 97 As the U S Army troops surrendered Forrest s men opened fire slaughtering black and white U S Army soldiers 97 98 99 According to historians John Cimprich and Bruce Tap although their numbers were roughly equal two thirds of the black U S Army soldiers were killed while only a third of the whites were killed 100 101 The atrocities at Fort Pillow continued throughout the night Conflicting accounts of what occurred were given later 102 103 104 Forrest s Confederate forces were accused of subjecting captured U S Army soldiers to extreme brutality with allegations of back shooting soldiers who fled into the river shooting wounded soldiers burning men alive nailing men to barrels and igniting them crucifixion and hacking men to death with sabers 105 Forrest s men were alleged to have set fire to a U S barracks with wounded U S Army soldiers inside 106 107 In defense of their actions Forrest s men insisted that the U S soldiers although fleeing kept their weapons and frequently turned to shoot forcing the Confederates to keep firing in self defense 108 The rebels said the U S flag was still flying over the fort which indicated that the force had not formally surrendered A contemporary newspaper account from Jackson Tennessee stated that General Forrest begged them to surrender but not the first sign of surrender was ever given Similar accounts were reported in many Confederate newspapers at the time 109 These statements were contradicted by U S Army survivors and by the letter of Achilles Clark a Confederate soldier with the 20th Tennessee Cavalry who graphically recounted a massacre Clark wrote to his sisters immediately after the battle The slaughter was awful Words cannot describe the scene The poor deluded negroes would run up to our men fall upon their knees and with uplifted hands scream for mercy but they were ordered to their feet and then shot down The white men fared but little better Their fort turned out to be a great slaughter pen Blood human blood stood about in pools and brains could have been gathered up in any quantity 110 111 112 Following the cessation of hostilities Forrest transferred the 14 most seriously wounded United States Colored Troops USCT to the U S steamer Silver Cloud 113 The 226 U S Army troops taken prisoner at Fort Pillow were marched under guard to Holly Springs Mississippi and then convoyed to Demopolis Alabama On April 21 Capt John Goodwin of Forrest s cavalry command forwarded a dispatch listing the prisoners captured The list included the names of 7 officers and 219 white enlisted soldiers According to Richard L Fuchs records concerning the fate of the black prisoners are either nonexistent or unreliable 114 President Abraham Lincoln asked his cabinet for opinions as to how the United States should respond to the massacre 115 nbsp Union and Republican aligned editorial cartoonist Thomas Nast often awarded Forrest with an ironic Fort Pillow medal when he skewered him in a dozen cartoons as a prominent white supremacy Lost Cause symbol 116 At the time of the massacre General Grant was no longer in Tennessee but had transferred to the east to command all U S troops Grant wrote in his memoirs that Forrest in his report of the battle had left out the part which shocks humanity to read 117 Because of the events at Fort Pillow the U S public and press viewed Forrest as a war criminal A Knoxville correspondent for the New York Tribune wrote that Forrest and his brothers were slave drivers and woman whippers while Forrest himself was described as mean vindictive cruel and unscrupulous 118 The Confederate press steadfastly defended Forrest s reputation 119 120 According to a historian studying in the Cumberland River valley during the Civil War Fully aware of the significance of the large scale recruitment of black troops the Confederates did what they could to disrupt it Forrest himself operating in west Tennessee chose to interpret his stunning victory over a racially mixed garrison at Fort Pillow in April as in part a warning about using black troops He described the battle graphically recounted exaggerated Union casualty figures and noted It is hoped that these facts will demonstrate to the Northern people that negro soldiers cannot cope with the Southerners 121 S C Gwynne writes Forrest s responsibility for the massacre has been actively debated for a century and a half No direct evidence suggests that he ordered the shooting of surrendering or unarmed men but to fully exonerate him from responsibility is also impossible 7 Brices Cross Roads and Tupelo edit Main article Battle of Brices Cross Roads nbsp Battle of Brices Cross RoadsForrest s most decisive victory came on June 10 1864 when his 3 500 man force clashed with 8 500 men commanded by U S Army Brig Gen Samuel D Sturgis at the Battle of Brices Crossroads in northeastern Mississippi 122 Here the mobility of the troops under his command and his superior tactics led to victory 123 124 allowing him to continue harassing U S forces in southwestern Tennessee and northern Mississippi throughout the war 125 Forrest set up a position for an attack to repulse a pursuing force commanded by Sturgis who had been sent to impede Forrest from destroying U S Army supply lines and fortifications 126 When Sturgis s Federal army came upon the crossroads they collided with Forrest s cavalry 127 Sturgis ordered his infantry to advance to the front line to counteract the cavalry The infantry tired weary and suffering under the heat were quickly broken and sent into mass retreat Forrest sent a full charge after the retreating army and captured 16 artillery pieces 176 wagons and 1 500 stands of small arms In all the maneuver cost Forrest 96 men killed and 396 wounded The day was worse for U S troops who suffered 223 killed 394 wounded and 1 623 missing The losses were a deep blow to the black regiment under Sturgis s command In the hasty retreat they stripped off commemorative badges that read Remember Fort Pillow to avoid goading the Confederate force pursuing them 128 One month later while serving under General Stephen D Lee Forrest experienced tactical defeat at the Battle of Tupelo in 1864 129 Concerned about U S Army supply lines Maj Gen Sherman sent a force under the command of Maj Gen Andrew J Smith to deal with Forrest 130 U S Army forces drove the Confederates from the field and Forrest was wounded in the foot but his forces were not wholly destroyed He continued to oppose U S Army efforts in the West for the remainder of the war Tennessee Raids edit nbsp Forrest s Raid sketched by George H Ellsbury Harper s Weekly September 10 1864 Forrest led other raids that summer and fall including a famous one into U S Army held downtown Memphis in August 1864 the Second Battle of Memphis citation needed and another on a major U S Army supply depot at Johnsonville Tennessee On November 4 1864 during the Battle of Johnsonville the Confederates shelled the city sinking three gunboats and nearly thirty other ships and destroying many tons of supplies 131 During Hood s Tennessee Campaign he fought alongside General John Bell Hood the newest commander of the Confederate Army of Tennessee in the Second Battle of Franklin on November 30 132 Facing a disastrous defeat Forrest argued bitterly with Hood his superior officer demanding permission to cross the Harpeth River and cut off the escape route of U S Army Maj Gen John M Schofield s army 133 He eventually attempted but it was too late Murfreesboro Nashville and Selma edit nbsp Map of the Franklin Nashville campaign including troops commanded by ForrestAfter his bloody defeat at Franklin Hood continued to Nashville Hood ordered Forrest to conduct an independent raid against the Murfreesboro garrison After success in achieving the objectives specified by Hood Forrest engaged U S forces near Murfreesboro on December 5 1864 In what would be known as the Third Battle of Murfreesboro a portion of Forrest s command broke and ran 134 When Hood s battle hardened Army of Tennessee consisting of 40 000 men deployed in three infantry corps plus 10 000 to 15 000 cavalry was all but destroyed on December 15 16 at the Battle of Nashville 135 Forrest distinguished himself by commanding the Confederate rear guard in a series of actions that allowed what was left of the army to escape For this he would later be promoted to the rank of lieutenant general on March 2 1865 136 A portion of his command now dismounted was surprised and captured in their camp at Verona Mississippi on December 25 1864 during a raid of the Mobile and Ohio Railroad by a brigade of Brig Gen Benjamin Grierson s cavalry division 137 In the spring of 1865 Forrest led an unsuccessful defense of the state of Alabama against Wilson s Raid His opponent U S Army Brig Gen James H Wilson defeated Forrest at the Battle of Selma on April 2 1865 138 A week later General Robert E Lee surrendered to Grant in Virginia When he received news of Lee s surrender Forrest surrendered as well On May 9 1865 at Gainesville Forrest read his farewell address to the men under his command urging them to submit to the powers to be and to aid in restoring peace and establishing law and order throughout the land 139 War record and promotions edit Enlisted as private July 1861 White s Company E Tennessee Mounted Rifles Commissioned as lieutenant colonel October 1861 3rd Tennessee Cavalry Promoted to colonel February 1862 Battle of Fort Donelson February 12 16 1862 Wounded at Battle of Shiloh April 6 8 1862 Promoted to brigadier general July 21 1862 First Battle of Murfreesboro July 1862 Raids in Tennessee Kentucky and Mississippi early December 1862 early January 1863 Battle of Day s Gap April 30 May 2 1863 Assigned to command Forrest s Cavalry Corps May 1863 Battle of Chickamauga September 18 20 1863 Promoted to major general December 4 1863 Battle of Paducah March 25 1864 Battle of Fort Pillow April 12 1864 Battle of Brices Crossroads June 10 1864 Battle of Tupelo July 14 15 1864 Raids in Tennessee August October 1864 Battle of Spring Hill November 29 1864 Battle of Franklin November 30 1864 Third Battle of Murfreesboro December 5 7 1864 Battle of Nashville December 15 16 1864 Promoted to lieutenant general February 28 1865 72 Battle of Selma April 2 1865 Farewell address to his troops May 9 1865Postwar years and later life editBusiness ventures edit nbsp Memphis and vicinity mapped during the American Civil War including President s Island where Forrest s post war farm was worked by convict laborAs a former enslaver and slave trader Forrest experienced the abolition of slavery at the war s end as a major financial setback During the war he became interested in the area around Crowley s Ridge and took up civilian life in 1865 in Memphis Tennessee In 1866 Forrest and C C McCreanor contracted to finish the Memphis amp Little Rock Railroad including a right of way that passed over the ridge 140 The ridgetop commissary he built as a provisioning store for the 1 000 Irish laborers hired to lay the rails became the nucleus of a town which most residents called Forrest s Town and which was incorporated as Forrest City Arkansas in 1870 141 The historian Court Carney writes that Forrest was not universally popular in the white Memphis community he alienated many of the city s business people in his commercial dealings and was criticized for questionable business practices that caused him to default on debts 142 He later found employment at the Selma based Marion amp Memphis Railroad and eventually became the company president He was not as successful in railroad promotion as in war and under his direction the company went bankrupt Nearly ruined as the result of this failure Forrest spent his final days running an eight hundred acre farm on land he leased on President s Island in the Mississippi River where he and his wife lived in a log cabin There with the labor of over a hundred prison convicts he grew corn potatoes vegetables and cotton profitably but his health steadily declined 143 144 In May 1877 Forrest s use of convict labor was described as indistinguishable from slavery in its use of bloodhounds shotgun wielding guards and corporal punishment 145 Critics also argued it was unjust and exploitative The convict farmer has a financial interest in the conviction of as many persons as he may need and the obsequious and corrupt myrmidons and magistrates of the law can readily supply the demand at a short notice in a country where the unprotected negro is left to steal or starve 145 nbsp State of Alabama Selma Marion Memphis Railroad Company bonds issued 1869 signed by N B ForrestOffers his services to Sherman edit During the Virginius Affair of 1873 some of Forrest s old Confederate friends were filibusters aboard the vessel consequently he wrote a letter to the then General in Chief of the United States Army William T Sherman and offered his services in case a war were to break out between the United States and Spain Sherman who had recognized how formidable an opponent Forrest was in battle during the Civil War replied after the crisis settled down He thanked Forrest for the offer and stated that had war broken out he would have considered it an honor to have served side by side with him 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 Ku Klux Klan leadership edit Forrest was an early member of the Ku Klux Klan KKK which was formed by six veterans of the Confederate Army in Pulaski Tennessee during the spring of 1866 153 154 155 and soon expanded throughout the state and beyond Forrest became involved sometime in late 1866 or early 1867 A common report is that Forrest arrived in Nashville in April 1867 while the Klan was meeting at the Maxwell House Hotel probably at the encouragement of a state Klan leader former Confederate general George Gordon 156 The organization had grown to the point that an experienced commander was needed and Forrest was well suited to assume the role In Room 10 of the Maxwell Forrest was sworn in as a member by John W Morton 157 158 Brian Steel Wills quotes two KKK members who identified Forrest as a Klan leader 159 James R Crowe stated After the order grew to large numbers we found it necessary to have someone of large experience to command We chose General Forrest 160 Another member wrote N B Forest of Confederate fame was at our head and was known as the Grand Wizard I heard him make a speech in one of our Dens 159 The title Grand Wizard was chosen because General Forrest had been known as The Wizard of the Saddle during the war 161 According to Jack Hurst s 1993 biography Two years after Appomattox Forrest was reincarnated as grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan As the Klan s first national leader he became the Lost Cause s avenging angel galvanizing a loose collection of boyish secret social clubs into a reactionary instrument of terror still feared today 162 Forrest was the Klan s first and only Grand Wizard and he was active in recruitment for the Klan from 1867 to 1868 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 Following the war the United States Congress began passing the Reconstruction Acts to specify conditions for the readmission of former Confederate States to the United States 170 171 172 including ratification of the Fourteenth 1868 and Fifteenth 1870 Amendments to the United States Constitution The Fourteenth addressed citizenship rights and equal protection of the laws for formerly enslaved people while the Fifteenth specifically secured the voting rights of black men 173 According to Wills in the August 1867 state elections the Klan was relatively restrained in its actions White Americans who made up the KKK hoped to persuade black voters that returning to their pre war state of bondage was in their best interest Forrest assisted in maintaining order After these efforts failed Klan violence and intimidation escalated and became widespread 174 Author Andrew Ward however writes In the spring of 1867 Forrest and his dragoons launched a campaign of midnight parades ghost masquerades and whipping and even killing Negro voters and white Republicans to scare blacks off voting and running for office 175 In 1868 Klan organizers circulated printed rituals General Forrest and his business partners were then promoting an insurance venture and their travels facilitated the movement 176 In an 1868 interview by a Cincinnati newspaper Forrest claimed that the Klan had 40 000 members in Tennessee and 550 000 total members throughout the Southern United States 177 178 He said he sympathized with them but denied any formal connection although he claimed he could muster thousands of men himself He described the Klan as a protective political military organization The members are sworn to recognize the government of the United States Its objects originally were protection against Loyal Leagues and the Grand Army of the Republic 179 180 After only a year as Grand Wizard in January 1869 faced with an ungovernable membership employing methods that seemed increasingly counterproductive Forrest dissolved the Klan ordered their costumes destroyed 181 and withdrew from participation His declaration had little effect and few Klansmen destroyed their robes and hoods 182 In 1871 the U S Congressional Committee Report stated that The natural tendency of all such organizations is to violence and crime hence it was that Gen Forrest and other men of influence by the exercise of their moral power induced them to disband Democratic convention 1868 edit Main article 1868 Democratic National Convention nbsp 1868 carte de visite of Nathan Bedford Forrest taken by Mathew B Brady in New York City at the time of the 1868 Democratic Convention Steve and Mike Romano Collection Military Images The Klan s activity infiltrated the Democratic Party s campaign for the presidential election of 1868 Prominent ex Confederates including Forrest the Grand Wizard of the Klan and South Carolina s Wade Hampton attended as delegates at the 1868 Democratic Convention held at Tammany Hall headquarters at 141 East 14th Street in New York City 183 Forrest rode to the convention on a train that was stopped just outside of a small town along the way when he was confronted by a well known fighter shouting d amne d butcher and wanting to thrash him When Forrest rose and approached the bully his larger challenger s purpose evaporated 184 Former Governor of New York Horatio Seymour was nominated as the Democratic presidential candidate while Forrest s friend Francis Preston Blair Jr was nominated as the Democratic vice presidential candidate Seymour s running mate 185 The Seymour Blair Democratic ticket s campaign slogan was Our Ticket Our Motto This Is a White Man s Country Let White Men Rule 186 The Democratic Party platform denounced the Reconstruction Acts as unconstitutional void and revolutionary 187 The party advocated the termination of the Freedman s Bureau and any government policy designed to aid blacks in the Southern United States 187 These developments worked to the advantage of the Republicans who focused on the Democratic Party s alleged disloyalty during and after the Civil War 187 Election of 1868 and Grant edit nbsp Prominent Republican organizer George Ashburn was murdered in Georgia by the Ku Klux Klan on March 31 1868 During the presidential election of 1868 the Ku Klux Klan under the leadership of Forrest and other terrorist groups used brutal violence and intimidation against blacks and Republican voters 188 189 Forrest played a prominent role in the spread of the Klan in the Southern United States meeting with racist whites in Atlanta several times between February and March 1868 Forrest probably organized a statewide Klan network in Georgia during these visits 190 On March 31 the Klan struck killing prominent Republican organizer George Ashburn in Columbus 190 The Republicans had nominated one of Forrest s battle adversaries U S war hero Ulysses S Grant for the Presidency at their convention held in October Klansmen took their orders from their former Confederate officers 189 In Louisiana 1 000 blacks were killed to suppress Republican voting In Georgia blacks and Republicans also faced a lot of violence The Klan s violence was primarily designed to intimidate voters targeting black and white supporters of the Republican Party 190 The Klan s violent tactics backfired as Grant whose slogan was Let us have peace won the election and Republicans gained a majority in Congress 188 Grant defeated Horatio Seymour the Democratic presidential candidate by a comfortable electoral margin 214 to 80 191 The popular vote was much closer Grant received 3 013 365 52 7 votes while Seymour received 2 708 744 47 3 votes 191 Grant lost Georgia and Louisiana where the violence and intimidation against blacks were most prominent Klan prosecution and Congressional testimony 1871 edit Many in the United States including President Grant backed the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment which gave voting rights to American men regardless of race color or previous condition of servitude Congress and Grant passed the Enforcement Acts from 1870 to 1871 to protect the registration voting officeholding or jury service of African Americans Under these laws enforced by Grant and the newly formed Department of Justice there were over 5 000 indictments and 1 000 convictions of Klan members across the Southern United States 188 Forrest testified before the Congressional investigation of Klan activities on June 27 1871 He denied membership but his role in the KKK was beyond the scope of the investigating committee which wrote Our design is not to connect General Forrest with this order the reader may form his own conclusion upon this question 192 The committee also noted The natural tendency of all such organizations is to violence and crime hence it was that General Forrest and other men of influence in the state by the exercise of their moral power induced them to disband 193 George Cantor a biographer of Confederate generals wrote Forrest ducked and weaved denying all knowledge but admitted he knew some of the people involved He sidestepped some questions and pleaded failure of memory on others Afterwards he admitted to gentlemanly lies He wanted nothing more to do with the Klan but felt honor bound to protect former associates 194 Race and politics 1870s edit nbsp The lionization of Forrest was especially keen during the post Reconstruction period now known as the nadir of American race relations When Forrest Came to Town Memphis Commercial Appeal June 14 1908 After the lynch mob murder of four black people who had been arrested for defending themselves in a brawl at a barbecue Forrest wrote to Tennessee Governor John C Brown in August 1874 volunteering to personally lead a posse to punish the white marauders responsible Brown politely declined the offer 146 In January 1875 Forrest came to Nashville to work against the re election of Andrew Johnson for Senate four of the six other candidates being considered by the Tennessee Assembly were fellow former high officers in the Confederate Army namely generals John C Brown William B Bate W A Quarles and colonel John H Savage According to historian Fay W Brabson when Forrest arrived Johnson cunningly told him When the gods arrive the half gods depart if the people really wanted to bestow honor where honor was due they should support Forrest for the Senate instead of any one horse general Forrest was duly flattered and left town for Memphis that night leaving the lesser military contenders to fight amongst themselves amidst a losing battle with Johnson 195 On July 5 1875 Forrest gave a speech before the Independent Order of Pole Bearers Association a post war organization of black Southerners advocating to improve black people s economic condition and gain equal rights for all citizens At this his last public appearance he made what The New York Times described as a friendly speech 196 197 during which when offered a bouquet by a young black woman he accepted them 198 thanked her and kissed her on the cheek Forrest spoke in the encouragement of black advancement and endeavored to be a proponent for espousing peace and harmony between black and white Americans 12 In response to the Pole Bearers speech the Cavalry Survivors Association of Augusta the first Confederate organization formed after the war called a meeting in which Captain F Edgeworth Eve gave a speech expressing strong disapproval of Forrest s remarks promoting inter ethnic harmony ridiculing his faculties and judgment and berating the woman who gave Forrest flowers as a mulatto wench The association voted unanimously to amend its constitution to expressly forbid publicly advocating for or hinting at any association of white women and girls as being in the same classes as females of the negro race 199 The Macon Weekly Telegraph newspaper also condemned Forrest for his speech describing the event as the recent disgusting exhibition of himself at the negro jamboree and quoting part of a Charlotte Observer article which read We have infinitely more respect for Longstreet who fraternizes with negro men on public occasions with the pay for the treason to his race in his pocket than with Forrest and General Pillow who equalize with the negro women with only futures in payment Just a few months before his death Forrest attended an African American barbecue in Memphis 149 Aiming to right his past wrongs Forrest encouraged African Americans to work be industrious live honestly and act truly as well as declaring that when you are oppressed I ll come to your relief 149 Death edit nbsp Marker at Memphis historic Elmwood Cemetery where a number of Forrest family members are buried nbsp During his lifetime Forrest helped raise money for a Confederate monument at the cemeteryForrest reportedly died from acute complications of diabetes at the Memphis home of his brother Jesse on October 29 1877 200 His eulogy was delivered by his recent spiritual mentor former Confederate chaplain George Tucker Stainback who declared in his eulogy Lieutenant General Nathan Bedford Forrest though dead yet speaketh His acts have photographed themselves upon the hearts of thousands and will speak there forever 201 Forrest s funeral procession was over two miles long The crowd of mourners was estimated to include 20 000 people 149 According to Forrest biographer Jack Hurst writers present at the public viewing of Forrest s body and the funeral procession noted many black citizens among them 202 Forrest was buried at Elmwood Cemetery in Memphis 203 In 1904 the remains of Forrest and his wife Mary were disinterred from Elmwood and moved to a Memphis city park that was originally named Forrest Park in his honor but has since been renamed Health Sciences Park 204 On July 7 2015 the Memphis City Council unanimously voted to remove the statue of Forrest from Health Sciences Park and to return the remains of Forrest and his wife to Elmwood Cemetery 205 However on October 13 2017 the Tennessee Historical Commission invoked the Tennessee Heritage Protection Act of 2013 and U S Public Law 85 425 Sec 410 to overrule the city 206 Consequently Memphis sold the park land to Memphis Greenspace a non profit entity not subject to the Tennessee Heritage Protection Act which immediately removed the monument as explained below 207 208 Historical reputation and legacy editMonuments to Nathan Bedford Forrest nbsp Bronze bust of Forrest at Nathan Bedford Forrest State Park nbsp Nathan Bedford Forrest monument in Myrtle Hill Cemetery Rome Georgia nbsp Statue of Nathan Bedford Forrest removed from Health Sciences Park December 20 2017 Specific monuments edit Many memorials have been erected to Forrest especially in Tennessee and adjacent southern states Forrest was elevated in Memphis where he lived and died to the status of folk hero Historian Court Carney suggested that embarrassed by their city s early capitulation during the Civil War white Memphians desperately needed a hero and therefore crafted a distorted depiction of Forrest s role in the war 142 Moreover a strong Forrest cult exists among fans of the Lost Cause 209 Forrest s legacy as one of the most controversial and popular icons of the war still draws heated public debate 210 As of 2007 update Tennessee had 32 dedicated historical markers linked to Nathan Bedford Forrest more than were dedicated to all three former Presidents associated with the state combined Andrew Jackson James K Polk and Andrew Johnson 211 A Tennessee based organization the Sons of Confederate Veterans posthumously awarded Forrest their Confederate Medal of Honor created in 1977 212 Public schools High schools named for Forrest were built in Chapel Hill Tennessee and Jacksonville Florida The school in Jacksonville was named for Forrest in 1959 at the urging of the Daughters of the Confederacy because they were upset about the 1954 Brown v Board of Education decision 213 In 2008 the Duval County School Board voted 5 2 against a push to change the name of Nathan Bedford Forrest High School in Jacksonville 214 In 2013 the board voted 7 0 to begin the process to rename the school 214 The school was all white until Duval County schools were ordered to be desegregated in 1971 215 but now more than half the student body is black 213 After several public forums and discussions Westside High School was unanimously approved in January 2014 as the school s new name The Forrest Hill Academy high school in Atlanta Georgia which had been named for Forrest was renamed the Hank Aaron New Beginnings Academy in April 2021 after the Atlanta Braves baseball star who had died less than three months prior 216 Middle Tennessee State University In 1978 Middle Tennessee State University abandoned imagery it had formerly used in 1951 the school s yearbook The Midlander featured the first appearance of Forrest s likeness as MTSU s official mascot and MTSU president M G Scarlett removed the General s image from the university s official seal The Blue Raiders athletic mascot was changed to an ambiguous swash buckler character called the Blue Raider to avoid association with Forrest or the Confederacy The school unveiled its latest mascot a winged horse named Lightning inspired by the mythological Pegasus during halftime of a basketball game against rival Tennessee State University on January 17 1998 217 The ROTC building at MTSU had been named Forrest Hall to honor him in 1958 but the frieze depicting General Forrest on horseback that had adorned the side of the building was removed amid protests in 2006 218 A significant push to change its name failed on February 16 2018 when the governor controlled Tennessee Historical Commission denied Middle Tennessee State University s petition to rename Forrest Hall 219 nbsp Commemorative scroll from the 11th reunion of the United Confederate Veterans in Memphis May 1901Mississippi license plate plan A 2011 proposal by the Sons of Confederate Veterans to honor Forrest with a Mississippi license plate revived tensions and raised objections from Mississippi NAACP chapter president Derrick Johnson who compared Forrest to Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein 220 210 The Mississippi NAACP petitioned Governor Haley Barbour to denounce the plates and prevent their distribution 221 Barbour refused to denounce the honor Instead he noted that the state legislature would not likely approve the plate anyway 222 Forrest monument in Old Live Oak Cemetery Selma Alabama In 2000 a monument to Forrest was unveiled in Selma Alabama 223 The monument to Forrest in the Confederate Circle section of Old Live Oak Cemetery in Selma Alabama reads Defender of Selma Wizard of the Saddle Untutored Genius The first with the most This monument stands as testament of our perpetual devotion and respect for Lieutenant General Nathan Bedford Forrest CSA 1821 1877 one of the South s finest heroes In honor of Gen Forrest s unwavering defense of Selma the great state of Alabama and the Confederacy this memorial is dedicated DEO VINDICE 224 The bust of Forrest was stolen from the cemetery monument in March 2012 and replaced in May 2015 225 226 Forrest Park now Health Sciences Park in Memphis A memorial to him the first Civil War memorial in Memphis was erected in 1905 in a new Nathan Bedford Forrest Park In 2005 Shelby County Commissioner Walter Bailey started an effort to move the statue over Forrest s grave and rename Forrest Park Former Memphis Mayor Willie Herenton who is black blocked the move In 2013 Forrest Park in Memphis was renamed the Health Sciences Park amid substantial controversy 204 In light of the 2015 church shooting in Charleston South Carolina some Tennessee lawmakers advocated removing a bust of Forrest located in the state s Capitol building Subsequently then Mayor A C Wharton urged that the statue of Forrest be removed from the Health Sciences Park and suggested that the remains of Forrest and his wife be relocated to their original burial site in nearby Elmwood Cemetery 227 In a nearly unanimous vote on July 7 the Memphis City Council passed a resolution in favor of removing the statue and securing the couple s remains for transfer The Tennessee Historical Commission denied removal on October 21 2016 under the authority granted it by the Tennessee Heritage Protection Act of 2013 which prevents cities and counties from relocating removing renaming or otherwise disturbing without permission war memorials on public property 228 The City Council then voted on December 20 2017 to sell Health Sciences Park to Memphis Greenspace a new non profit corporation not subject to the Heritage Protection Act which removed the statue and another of Jefferson Davis that same evening 207 208 The Sons of Confederate Veterans threatened a lawsuit against the city On April 18 2018 the Tennessee House of Representatives punished Memphis by cutting 250 000 288 396 in 2022 in appropriations for the city s bicentennial celebration 229 On June 3 2021 the remains of Forrest and his wife were exhumed from their burial place in the park where they had been for over a century to be reburied in Columbia Tennessee The exhumation and reburial were the results of a campaign that began after the Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville Virginia in 2017 The effort was spearheaded by Shelby County Commissioner Tami Sawyer an educator and Memphis native who founded a group called Take Em Down 901 to advocate for the removal of Confederate iconography 230 After the Forrests remains were removed from Memphis they were reportedly buried in Munford Tennessee 231 until their reburial in Columbia in September 2021 by the Sons of Confederate Veterans 232 Nathan Bedford Forrest Day The Tennessee legislature established July 13 as Nathan Bedford Forrest Day 233 As of 2019 Nathan Bedford Forrest Day was still observed in Tennessee though some Democrats in the state had attempted to change the law which required Tennessee s governor to sign a proclamation honoring the holiday 234 235 However since that time Governor Bill Lee s administration introduced a bill passed by the Tennessee legislature on June 10 2020 which released the governor from the former requirement that he proclaim that observance each year and a spokesperson for Governor Lee confirmed that he would not be signing a Forrest Day proclamation in July 2020 236 In June 2020 after black members of the Tennessee House of Representatives unsuccessfully asked it to eliminate a state celebration of Forrest Representative Cameron Sexton opined I don t think anybody here is truly racist I think people may make insensitive comments 237 Nathan Bedford Forrest bust A bust sculpted by Jane Baxendale is on display at the Tennessee State Capitol building in Nashville 238 Brett Joseph Forrest a direct descendant of Nathan spoke in support of the bust s removal 239 240 In 2021 Sexton voted against the removal of the bust of Forrest from the Tennessee State Capitol and into the Tennessee State Museum but only one other legislator agreed with him and the bust was removed 241 Sexton said that he believed the removal of the bust aligns with the teaching of communism 241 Other monuments and memorials Forrest County Mississippi is named after him as is Forrest City Arkansas Obelisks in his memory were placed at his birthplace in Chapel Hill Tennessee and at Nathan Bedford Forrest State Park near Camden 242 A monument to Forrest at a corner of Veterans Plaza in Rome Georgia was erected by the United Daughters of the Confederacy in 1909 to honor his bravery for defending Rome from U S Army Colonel Abel Streight and his cavalry 243 The World War II Army base Camp Forrest in Tullahoma Tennessee was named after him 244 It is now the site of the Arnold Engineering Development Center 245 The Nathan Bedford Forrest Statue in Nashville was particularly notable for its idiosyncratic depiction of Forrest on horseback In August 2000 a road on Fort Bliss named for Forrest decades earlier was renamed for former post commander Richard T Cassidy 246 247 248 In 2023 Forrest Street in Alexandria Virginia named after Forrest has been proposed by local legislators for renaming 249 Military doctrines edit Forrest is considered one of the Civil War s most brilliant tacticians by the historian Spencer C Tucker 250 Forrest fought by simple rules he maintained that war means fighting and fighting means killing and the way to win was to get there first with the most men 251 U S Army General William Tecumseh Sherman called him that devil Forrest in wartime communications with Ulysses S Grant and considered him the most remarkable man our civil war produced on either side 252 253 4 Forrest became well known for his early use of maneuver tactics as applied to a mobile horse cavalry deployment 254 He grasped the doctrines of mobile warfare 255 that would eventually become prevalent in the 20th century Paramount in his strategy was fast movement even if it meant pushing his horses at a killing pace to constantly harass the enemy during raids by disrupting their supply trains and communications with the destruction of railroad tracks and the cutting of telegraph lines as he wheeled around his opponent s flank The Civil War scholar Bruce Catton writes Forrest used his horsemen as a modern general would use motorized infantry He liked horses because he liked fast movement and his mounted men could get from here to there much faster than any infantry could but when they reached the field they usually tied their horses to trees and fought on foot and they were as good as the very best infantry 256 Forrest is often erroneously quoted as saying his strategy was to git thar fustest with the mostest Now often recast as Getting there firstest with the mostest 257 this misquote first appeared in a New York Tribune article written to provide colorful comments in reaction to European interest in Civil War generals The aphorism was addressed and corrected as Ma am I got there first with the most men by a New York Times story in 1918 258 Though it was a novel and succinct condensation of the military principles of mass and maneuver Bruce Catton writes of the spurious quote Do not under any circumstances whatever quote Forrest as saying fustest and mostest He did not say it that way and nobody who knows anything about him imagines that he did 259 Fort Pillow edit nbsp U S media pulled out all the stops attacking Forrest after Fort Pillow for example this unsigned article from correspondent in East Tennessee described Forrest as sallow visaged with black snaky eyes Chicago Tribune May 4 1864 nbsp After Fort Pillow U S Maj Gen David S Stanley published hearsay describing Forrest s execution of a prisoner of war from Pennsylvania 260 and a news illustrator almost certainly Thomas Nast included Gen Forrest shooting a free mulatto in an image about alleged Confederate war crimes Harper s Weekly May 21 1864 Modern historians generally believe that Forrest s attack on Fort Pillow was a massacre noting high casualty rates and the rebels targeting black soldiers 261 Forrest s claim that the Fort Pillow massacre was an invention of U S reporters is contradicted by letters written by Confederate soldiers to their own families which described extreme brutality on the part of Confederate troops 112 It was the Confederacy s publicly stated position that formerly enslaved people firing on whites would be killed on the spot along with Southern whites that fought for the Union whom the Confederacy considered traitors According to this analysis Forrest s troops were carrying out Confederate policy The historical record does not support his repeated denials that he knew a massacre was taking place or that he even knew a massacre had occurred at all Consequently his role at Fort Pillow was a stigmatizing one for him the rest of his life both professionally and personally 262 263 and contributed to his business problems after the war Historians have differed in their interpretations of the events at Fort Pillow Richard L Fuchs author of An Unerring Fire concluded The affair at Fort Pillow was simply an orgy of death a mass lynching to satisfy the basest of conduct intentional murder for the vilest of reasons racism and personal enmity 264 Andrew Ward downplays the controversy Whether the massacre was premeditated or spontaneous does not address the more fundamental question of whether a massacre took place it certainly did in every dictionary sense of the word 265 John Cimprich states The new paradigm in social attitudes and the fuller use of available evidence has favored a massacre interpretation Debate over the memory of this incident formed a part of sectional and racial conflicts for many years after the war but the reinterpretation of the event during the last thirty years offers some hope that society can move beyond past intolerance 266 The site is now a Tennessee State Historic Park 267 Grant himself described Forrest as a brave and intrepid cavalry general while noting that Forrest sent a dispatch on the Fort Pillow Massacre in which he left out the part which shocks humanity to read 268 In popular culture edit In the 1990 PBS documentary The Civil War by Ken Burns historian Shelby Foote states in Episode 7 that the Civil War produced two authentic geniuses Abraham Lincoln and Nathan Bedford Forrest When he expressed his opinion to one of General Forrest s granddaughters she replied after a pause You know we never thought much of Mr Lincoln in my family 269 Foote also made Forrest a major character in his novel Shiloh which used numerous first person stories to illustrate a detailed timeline and account of the battle 270 271 Tom Hanks s title character in the film Forrest Gump remarks in one scene that his mother named him after Nathan Bedford Forrest and we was related to him in some way The following scene satirically depicts Hanks as Forrest in a Ku Klux Klan outfit donning a hood and being superimposed into scenes of the Klan from The Birth of a Nation See also edit nbsp American Civil War portal nbsp United States portal nbsp Biography portalCavalry in the American Civil War Leaders of the Ku Klux Klan List of American Civil War generals Confederate Nathan Bedford Forrest bust in the Tennessee General Assembly building Emma Sansom Removal of Confederate monuments and memorials List of American slave traders History of Memphis TennesseeReferences editNotes Wright John D 2001 The Language of the Civil War Greenwood Publishing Group p 210 ISBN 978 1573561358 Wright 2001 p 326 A W R Hawkins III Paul G Pierpaoli Jr Spencer C Tucker 2014 Forrest Nathan Bedford 1821 1877 In Tucker Spencer C ed 500 Great Military Leaders 2 volumes ABC CLIO ISBN 978 1 59884 758 1 a b Stephen Z Starr 2007 The Union Cavalry in the Civil War The War in the West 1861 1865 LSU Press p 48 ISBN 978 0 8071 3293 7 Nathan Bedford Forrest whom his superiors did not recognize for the military genius he was until it was too late Clement Anselm Evans 1899 Confederate Military History Vol 8 Atlanta Ga Confederate Publishing Co p 243 Retrieved December 19 2023 via HathiTrust David J Eicher 2002 The Longest Night A Military History of the Civil War Simon and Schuster pp 657 ISBN 978 0 7432 1846 7 a b Gwynne S C 2020 Hymns of the Republic The Story of the Final Year of the American Civil War Simon and Schuster p 332 ISBN 978 1 5011 1623 0 Forrest s responsibility for the massacre has been actively debated for a century and a half Forrest spent much time after the war trying to clear his name No direct evidence suggests that he ordered the shooting of surrendering or unarmed men but to fully exonerate him from responsibility is also impossible Tabbert Mark A 2006 American Freemasons Three Centuries of Building Communities NYU Press p 83 ISBN 9780814783023 J Michael Martinez 2012 Terrorist Attacks on American Soil From the Civil War Era to the Present Rowman amp Littlefield p 193 ISBN 978 1 4422 0324 2 Although Forrest repudiated the group s activities after less than two years he transformed the budding terrorist organization into an effective mechanism for promoting white supremacy in the Old South James Michael Martinez 2007 Carpetbaggers Cavalry and the Ku Klux Klan Exposing the Invisible Empire During Reconstruction Rowman amp Littlefield p 21 ISBN 978 0 7425 5078 0 Chester L Quarles 1999 The Ku Klux Klan and Related American Racialist and Antisemitic Organizations A History and Analysis McFarland p 28 ISBN 978 0 7864 0647 0 a b Memphis daily appeal Memphis Tenn 1847 1886 July 06 1875 Image 1 Library of Congress Chronicling America National Endowment for the Humanities August 4 2008 ISSN 2166 1898 retrieved August 23 2017 Aya Elamroussi Rebekah Riess July 23 2021 Tennessee to remove bust of Ku Klux Klan leader Nathan Bedford Forrest from state Capitol CNN Archived from the original on July 23 2021 Bennett Henderson Young 1914 Confederate Wizards of the Saddle Being Reminiscences and Observations of One who Rode with Morgan Boston Massachusetts Chapple Publishing Company Limited p 126 a b c d e f g h Spaulding 1931 p 532 Ansearchin News Memphis Genealogical Society 1996 p 39 It is time to publish the truth about Miriam Beck Forrest and her family They were of English origin and came from Pennsylvania and North Carolina Miriam s parents John Emasy Beck and his wife Frances Watts were among the earlier settlers of Bedford Co Tenn John Emasy s grandfather was Jeffrey Beck born in Bucks Co Pa to Edward and Sarah Beck and moved via Virginia to North Carolina National Register of Historic Places Inventory Nomination Form Nathan Bedford Forrest Boyhood Home National Park Service United States Department of the Interior Retrieved December 1 2017 John Allan Wyeth 1989 1959 That Devil Forrest Life of General Nathan Bedford Forrest LSU Press p 1 ISBN 978 0 8071 1578 7 The cabin which was his mother s home claimed no more than eighteen by twenty feet of earth to rest upon with a single room below and half room or loft overhead One end of this building was almost entirely given up to the broad fireplace while near the middle of each side swung on wooden hinges a door There was no need of a window for light and air found ready access through the doorways and cracks and down through the wide chimney A pane of glass was a luxury as yet unknown to this primitive life Around and near the house was a cleared patch of land containing several acres enclosed with a straight stake fence of cedar rails and by short cross fences divided into a yard immediately about the cabin rearward of this a garden and a young orchard of peach apple pear and plum trees Elkins Ashley June 4 2000 HED Surprisingly scenic djournal com Gitlin Marty 2009 The Ku Klux Klan A Guide to an American Subculture ABC CLIO p 66 ISBN 978 0313365768 Huebner Timothy S December 27 2017 Confronting the true history of Forrest the slave trader Opinion The Knoxville News Sentinel pp 15A Retrieved July 19 2023 Ward 2006 p 31 Brian Steel Wills 2014 The River Was Dyed with Blood Nathan Bedford Forrest and Fort Pillow University of Oklahoma Press p 35 ISBN 978 0 8061 4604 1 Domestic slave trade site Inmotionaame org archived from the original on March 20 2012 retrieved October 9 2012 James Harvey Mathes 1902 General Forrest D Appleton and Company p 16 Hurst 2011 p 64 Hurst 1993 p 57 a b Alan Axelrod 2011 Generals South Generals North The Commanders of the Civil War Reconsidered Rowman amp Littlefield p 84 ISBN 978 0 7627 7488 3 Winik Jay 2002 April 1865 The Month That Saved America Harper Perennial p 176 ISBN 978 0060930882 Wesley W Yale Isaac Davis White Hasso von Manteuffel 1970 Alternative to Armageddon The Peace Potential of Lightning War Rutgers University Press ISBN 978 0813506661 Browning 2004 p 8 D Reid Ross 2008 Lincoln s Veteran Volunteers Win the War The Hudson Valley s Ross Brothers and the Union s Fight for Emancipation SUNY Press p 276 ISBN 978 0 7914 7641 3 a b James R Knight 2014 Hood s Tennessee Campaign The Desperate Venture of a Desperate Man Arcadia Publishing Incorporated p 27 ISBN 978 1 62585 130 7 James Pickett Jones 2015 Yankee Blitzkrieg Wilson s Raid through Alabama and Georgia University Press of Kentucky p 41 ISBN 978 0 8131 6164 8 Claude Gentry 1972 General Nathan Bedford Forrest The Boy and the Man Magnolia Publishers p 48 Spaulding 1931 p 533 a b Jack D Welsh M D 1999 Medical Histories of Confederate Generals Kent State University Press p 70 ISBN 978 0 87338 649 4 Hurst 1993 p 20 Samuel W Mitcham 2016 Bust Hell Wide Open The Life of Nathan Bedford Forrest Regnery Publishing p 13 ISBN 978 1 62157 600 6 Paul Ashdown Edward Caudill 2006 The Myth of Nathan Bedford Forrest Rowman amp Littlefield p 10 ISBN 978 0 7425 4301 0 Hurst 1993 pp 36 37 a b c d e f g h i j k l m Huebner Timothy S March 2023 Taking Profits Making Myths The Slave Trading Career of Nathan Bedford Forrest Civil War History 69 1 42 75 doi 10 1353 cwh 2023 0009 ISSN 1533 6271 S2CID 256599213 Wyeth pp 6 8 Wyeth pp 120 Special to The Examiner January 4 2023 Preserving historic Camp Family Cemetery Navasota Examiner Retrieved December 17 2023 Confederate Veteran Magazine Sons of Confederate Veterans 2003 p 59 Ashdown Caudill 2006 p 187 Hurst 2011 p 387 Business card advertising Forrest Jones amp Co as Dealers in Slaves 1859 1860 William Hicks Jackson 1834 1903 Papers 1766 1978 I K 6 Box 1 Folder 10 41940 Tennessee State Library and Archives Tennessee Virtual Archive https teva contentdm oclc org digital collection p15138coll18 id 1072 accessed 2023 12 07 Mooney Chase C 1957 Slavery in Tennessee Bloomington Indiana University Press p 50 ISBN 978 0 8371 5522 7 via HathiTrust Bancroft 2023 p 249 Phillips Betsy February 25 2016 Nathan Bedford Forrest and Douglass Daughter Nashville Scene Retrieved July 13 2023 a b Fred Douglass Daughter for Sale The Home Journal January 20 1859 p 1 Retrieved July 13 2023 The Old Negro Mart The Commercial Appeal January 27 1907 p 48 Retrieved December 1 2023 Hurst 1993 p 37 Are we to have a new jail Daily Union Appeal August 16 1862 p 3 Retrieved December 1 2023 a b A Double Catastrophe in Memphis A NEGRO MARKET AND A NEWSPAPER OFFICE IN RUINS The New York Times January 19 1860 ISSN 0362 4331 Retrieved May 4 2023 James R Chalmers 1878 Lieutenant General N B Forrest and His Campaigns In R A Brock ed Southern Historical Society Papers Vol 7 Virginia Historical Society p 455 Kevin Dougherty 2015 The Vicksburg Campaign Strategy Battles and Key Figures McFarland p 62 ISBN 978 0 7864 9797 3 Robert M Browning 2004 Forrest The Confederacy s Relentless Warrior Potomac Books Inc pp 9 10 ISBN 978 1 57488 624 5 Morton John Watson 1909 The Artillery of Nathan Bedford Forrest s Cavalry the Wizard of the Saddle Publishing house of the M E Church South Smith amp Lamar agents p 1 ISBN 978 1560130086 Randolph Harrison McKim 1912 The Numerical Strength of the Confederate Army Neale Publishing Company p 59 Mitcham 2016 p 26 Mitcham 2016 p 151 Davison 2016 pp 36 41 Jack Hurst 2008 Men of Fire Grant Forrest and the Campaign That Decided the Civil War Basic Books pp 252 254 ISBN 978 0 465 00847 6 Thomas Jordan J P Pryor 1868 The Campaigns of Lieut Gen N B Forrest and of Forrest s Cavalry Blelock amp Company p 104 ISBN 978 0722292792 Stanley F Horn 1993 The Army of Tennessee University of Oklahoma Press p 103 ISBN 978 0 8061 2565 7 Walter T Durham 1985 Nashville the Occupied City The First Seventeen Months February 16 1862 to June 30 1863 Tennessee Historical Society p 37 Timothy T Isbell 2007 Shiloh and Corinth Sentinels of Stone Univ Press of Mississippi p 108 ISBN 978 1 61703 435 0 Boatner III 1988 p 289 a b Eicher amp Eicher 2001 p 240 Robert C Jones 2017 Alabama and the Civil War A History amp Guide Arcadia Publishing Incorporated p 13 ISBN 978 1 4396 6075 1 Axelrod 2011 p 86 G Lee Millar 2018 Forrest Stories Humor of Bedford Forrest and His Cavalry AuthorHouse p 60 ISBN 978 1546235569 Earl S Miers 1984 The Web of Victory Grant at Vicksburg LSU Press p 53 ISBN 978 0 8071 1199 4 Mitcham 2016 p 10 Alan Conway 1966 Reconstruction of Georgia University of Minnesota Press p 4 ISBN 978 0 8166 0392 3 Keith S Hebert October 30 2007 Streight s Raid Encyclopedia of Alabama Alabama Humanities Foundation Archived from the original on July 12 2015 Retrieved March 18 2018 Kevin Dougherty 2015 The Vicksburg Campaign Strategy Battles and Key Figures McFarland p 80 ISBN 978 0 7864 9797 3 Brandon H Beck 2016 Streight s Foiled Raid on the Western amp Atlantic Railroad Emma Sansom s Courage and Nathan Bedford Forrest s Pursuit Arcadia Publishing Incorporated pp 76 ISBN 978 1 62585 355 4 Hurst 2011 p 119 Hurst 2011 p 120 Hurst 2011 pp 127 128 Axelrod 2011 p 87 Ashdown Caudill 2006 p 24 David Powell 2016 The Chickamauga Campaign Barren Victory The Retreat into Chattanooga the Confederate Pursuit and the Aftermath of the Battle September 21 to October 20 1863 Savas Beatie p 34 ISBN 978 1 61121 329 4 David Powell 2010 Failure in the Saddle Nathan Bedford Forrest Joe Wheeler and the Confederate Cavalry in the Chickamauga Campaign Savas Beatie pp 320 321 ISBN 978 1 61121 056 9 Lawrence Lee Hewitt March 2014 Civil War Myths Mistakes and Fabrications Haversacks and Saddlebags 27 3 50 57 Neither Bragg nor Forrest ever mentioned the incident nor does it appear in Jordan and Pryor s The Campaigns of Lieut Gen N B Forrest 1868 The story originated with Dr James Cowan Forrest s chief surgeon in Wyeth s Life of General Nathan Bedford Forrest 1899 Cowan claimed to have followed Forrest into Bragg s tent making him the only eyewitness and the only one of the three still alive when his tale was printed Castel Albert Wyeth John Allan 1989 Foreword That Devil Forrest Life of General Nathan Bedford Forrest Baton Rouge Louisiana State University Press ISBN 978 0 8071 1578 7 Eicher amp Eicher 2001 p 809 United States War Dept 1891 The War of the Rebellion A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies U S Government Printing Office p 547 Tap 2013 p 45 Davison 2016 p 219 a b c d e f Buhk 2012 p 139 a b c Buhk 2012 p 140 a b Buhk 2012 p 141 United States War Dept 1891 The War of the Rebellion A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies U S Government Printing Office pp 610 John Cimprich Robert C Mainfort December 1982 Fort Pillow Revisited New Evidence about an Old Controversy Civil War History 28 4 293 306 doi 10 1353 cwh 1982 0009 S2CID 145324569 permanent dead link John Cimprich 2011 Fort Pillow a Civil War Massacre and Public Memory Louisiana State University Press p lxviii ISBN 978 0 8071 3949 3 Bruce Tap 2013 The Fort Pillow Massacre North South and the Status of African Americans in the Civil War Era Routledge p 113 ISBN 978 1 136 17390 5 The Fort Pillow Massacre Report of the Committee on the Conduct of the War All Previous Reports Fully Confirmed The Horrors and Cruelties of the Scene Intensified Report of the Sub committee The New York Times May 6 1864 Retrieved March 5 2018 Unsigned wire reports April 16 1864 The Black Flag Horrible Massacre by the Rebels Fort Pillow Captured After a Desperate Fight Four Hundred of the Garrison Brutally Murdered Wounded and Unarmed Men Bayoneted and Their Bodies Burned White and Black Indiscriminately Butchered Devilish Atrocities of the Insatiate Fiends The New York Times Included in Sheehan Dean p 49 Eicher 2001 p 240 Buhk 2012 p 142 United States War Dept 1891 The War of the Rebellion A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies U S Government Printing Office p 570 Jordon General Thomas Pryor J P 1868 The Campaigns Of General Nathan Bedford Forrest And Of Forrest s Cavalry pp 430 435 Bailey 1985 p 25 Cimprich amp Mainfort 1982 pp 293 306 John Cimprich 2011 Fort Pillow a Civil War Massacre and Public Memory LSU Press p lxiv ISBN 978 0 8071 3918 9 George S Burkhardt 2013 Confederate Rage Yankee Wrath No Quarter in the Civil War SIU Press p 110 ISBN 978 0 8093 8954 4 a b Clark 1985 pp 24 25 Stewart Charles W 1914 Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion Series I Volume 26 Washington DC Government Printing Office p 234 I hereby acknowledge to have received from Major General Forrest 2 first and 1 second lieutenants 43 white privates and 14 negroes Richard L Fuchs 2001 An Unerring Fire The Massacre at Fort Pillow Stackpole Books p 140 ISBN 978 0 8117 1824 0 Lincoln Abraham May 3 1864 Abraham Lincoln to Cabinet Tuesday May 03 1864 Fort Pillow massacre Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress retrieved July 11 2015 Adler John 2022 America s Most Influential Journalist and Premier Political Cartoonist The Life Times and Legacy of Thomas Nast Sarasota Fla Harpweek LLC p 213 ISBN 978 0 578 29454 4 Ulysses Simpson Grant 1895 Personal Memoirs of U S Grant Sampson Low p 417 These troops fought bravely but were overpowered I will leave Forrest in his dispatches to tell what he did with them The river was dyed he says with the blood of the slaughtered for two hundred yards The approximate loss was upward of five hundred killed but few of the officers escaping My loss was about twenty killed It is hoped that these facts will demonstrate to the Northern people that negro soldiers cannot cope with Southerners Subsequently Forrest made a report in which he left out the part which shocks humanity to read Davison amp Foxx 2007 p 253 sfn error no target CITEREFDavisonFoxx2007 help Ashdown Caudill 2006 p 91 Paul Ashdown Edward Caudill 2008 What Can We Say of Such a Hero In David B Sachsman S Kittrell Rushing Roy Morris eds Words at War The Civil War and American Journalism Purdue University Press pp 323 325 ISBN 978 1 55753 494 1 Gildrie Richard P 1990 Guerrilla Warfare in the Lower Cumberland River Valley 1862 1865 Tennessee Historical Quarterly 49 3 161 176 ISSN 0040 3261 Bruce S Allardice Lawrence Lee Hewitt 2015 Kentuckians in Gray Confederate Generals and Field Officers of the Bluegrass State University Press of Kentucky p 53 ISBN 978 0 8131 5987 4 Kevin Dougherty 2010 Weapons of Mississippi Univ Press of Mississippi p 86 ISBN 978 1 60473 452 2 Michael B Ballard 2011 The Civil War in Mississippi Major Campaigns and Battles Univ Press of Mississippi p 245 ISBN 978 1 62674 417 2 William L Barney 2011 The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Civil War Oxford University Press p 188 ISBN 978 0 19 989024 8 Westley F Busbee Jr 2014 Mississippi A History Wiley p 144 ISBN 978 1 118 75592 1 Landers Colonel Howard Lee 1928 Battle of Brice s Cross Roads Mississippi June 10 1864 Washington DC Historical Section Army War College Brian Steel Wills 1993 A Battle from the Start The life of Nathan Bedford Forrest HarperPerennial p 215 ISBN 978 0 06 092445 4 Terry L Jones 2009 The American Civil War McGraw Hill p 565 ISBN 978 0 07 302204 8 William S Burns 2004 The Battle of Tupelo In Peter Cozzens Robert I Girardi eds The New Annals of the Civil War Stackpole Books p 387 ISBN 978 0 8117 4645 8 Michael Thomas Smith 2014 The 1864 Franklin Nashville Campaign The Finishing Stroke ABC CLIO p 28 ISBN 978 0 313 39235 1 Spencer C Tucker 2014 Battles That Changed American History 100 of the Greatest Victories and Defeats ABC CLIO p 168 ISBN 978 1 4408 2862 1 James R Knight 2014 Hood s Tennessee Campaign The Desperate Venture of a Desperate Man Arcadia Publishing Incorporated p 56 ISBN 978 1 62585 130 7 Mark Lardas 2017 Nashville 1864 From the Tennessee to the Cumberland Bloomsbury Publishing p 74 ISBN 978 1 4728 1983 3 Benson Bobrick 2010 The Battle of Nashville Random House Children s Books pp 81 100 ISBN 978 0 375 84887 2 Thomas A Head 1885 Campaigns and Battles of the Sixteenth Regiment Tennessee Volunteers in the War Between the States With Incidental Sketches of the Part Performed by Other Tennessee Troops in the Same War 1861 1865 Cumberland Presbyterian publishing house p 453 James Moore 1881 A Complete History of the Great Rebellion Or The Civil War in the United States 1861 1865 Comprising a Full and Impartial Account of the Various Battles Bombardments Skirmishes Etc which Took Place on Land and Water the Whole Embracing a Complete History of the War for the Union also Biographical Sketches of the Principal Actors in the Great Drama W S Burlock p 473 David J Eicher 2002 The Longest Night A Military History of the Civil War Simon and Schuster p 837 ISBN 978 0 7432 1846 7 Davison 2016 p 405 Mitcham 2016 p 193 Mike Polston 2018 Forrest City St Francis County Encyclopedia of Arkansas www encyclopediaofarkansas net The Central Arkansas Library System Archived from the original on November 5 2017 a b Carney Court August 2001 The Contested Image of Nathan Bedford Forrest The Journal of Southern History 67 3 601 630 doi 10 2307 3070019 JSTOR 3070019 Ashdown Caudill 2006 p 163 Hurst 2011 p 374 a b Convict Labor in Georgia and Tennessee The Daily Memphis Avalanche May 16 1877 p 2 Retrieved August 15 2023 via Newspapers com a b Davison 2016 pp 474 475 Robert Selph Henry 1991 First with the Most Forrest Mallard Press p 456 ISBN 978 0 7924 5605 6 William C Davis Brian C Pohanka Don Troiani 1997 Civil War Journal The leaders Rutledge Hill Press p 391 ISBN 978 1 55853 437 7 Because of his role in the Confederacy Forrest was stripped of his rights as a U S citizen In the summer of 1868 those rights were restored and he was pardoned by President Andrew Johnson a b c d Wilmer L Jones 2006 Generals in Blue and Gray Davis s Generals Stackpole Books pp 175 176 ISBN 978 1 4617 5105 2 Andrew Johnson 1990 The Papers of Andrew Johnson May August 1865 Univ of Tennessee Press p 331 ISBN 978 0 87049 613 4 Brian Steel Wills 1992 A Battle From the Start The Life of Nathan Bedford Forrest HarperCollins p 347 ISBN 978 0 06 016832 2 On July 17 1868 Forrest finally received a pardon from the president for which he told an audience I am truly thankful Andrew Ward 2006 River Run Red The Fort Pillow Massacre in the American Civil War Penguin Publishing Group pp 412 413 ISBN 978 1 4406 4929 5 Wyn Craig Wade 1998 The Fiery Cross The Ku Klux Klan in America Oxford University Press p 32 ISBN 978 0 19 512357 9 Michael Newton 2014 White Robes and Burning Crosses A History of the Ku Klux Klan from 1866 McFarland p 5 ISBN 978 0 7864 7774 6 Elaine Frantz Parsons 2015 Ku Klux The Birth of the Klan during Reconstruction University of North Carolina Press p 30 ISBN 978 1 4696 2543 0 Newton 2014 p 11 John W Morton Passes Away in Shelby The Tennessean November 21 1914 pp 1 2 Retrieved September 25 2016 via Newspapers com To Captain Morton came the peculiar distinction of having organized that branch of the Ku Klux Klan which operated in Nashville and the adjacent territory but a more signal honor was his when he performed the ceremonies which initiated Gen Nathan Bedford Forrest into the mysterious ranks of the Ku Klux Klan Hurst 1993 pp 284 285 a b Brian Steel Wills 1993 A Battle from the Start The Life of Nathan Bedford Forrest HarperPerennial p 336 ISBN 978 0 06 092445 4 Chester L Quarles 1999 The Ku Klux Klan and Related American Racialist and Antisemitic Organizations A History and Analysis McFarland p 42 ISBN 978 0 7864 0647 0 Jack Hurst 2011 Nathan Bedford Forrest A Biography Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group p 287 ISBN 978 0 307 78914 3 The next order of business was the naming of a leader and the designation of his title Nominations were solicited The Wizard of the Saddle General Nathan Bedford Forrest a voice from the back of the room called out The nominee was elected quickly and in keeping with the off the cuff impulsiveness of the early Klan was designated grand wizard of the Invisible Empire Hurst 1993 p 6 Newton 2014 p 11 Robert M Browning 2004 Forrest The Confederacy s Relentless Warrior Potomac Books Inc p 15 ISBN 978 1 57488 624 5 James Michael Martinez 2007 Carpetbaggers Cavalry and the Ku Klux Klan Exposing the Invisible Empire During Reconstruction Rowman amp Littlefield p 18 ISBN 978 0 7425 5078 0 Browning 2004 p 99 Don Philpott 2016 Critical Government Documents on Law and Order Bernan Press p 52 ISBN 978 1 59888 784 6 John Watson Morton 1909 The Artillery of Nathan Bedford Forrest s Cavalry the Wizard of the Saddle Publishing house of the M E Church South Smith amp Lamar agents p 345 Phelan Ben January 16 2009 Gen Nathan Bedford Forrest and the KKK pbs org archived from the original on February 20 2009 John Hope Franklin 1995 Reconstruction After the Civil War Second ed University of Chicago Press p 129 ISBN 978 0 226 26079 2 Glenna R Schroeder Lein Richard Zuczek 2001 Andrew Johnson A Biographical Companion ABC CLIO p 195 ISBN 978 1 57607 030 7 Mark Wahlgren Summers 2014 The Ordeal of the Reunion A New History of Reconstruction University of North Carolina Press pp 90 91 ISBN 978 1 4696 1758 9 Alexander Tsesis 2010 The Promises of Liberty The History and Contemporary Relevance of the Thirteenth Amendment Columbia University Press p 88 ISBN 978 0 231 52013 3 Wills 1993 p 338 Ward 2005 p 386 Fitzgerald M W 2017 Reconstruction in Alabama From Civil War to Redemption in the Cotton South Baton Rouge Louisiana State University Press p 181 Marty Gitlin 2009 The Ku Klux Klan A Guide to an American Subculture ABC CLIO p 6 ISBN 978 0 313 36576 8 Susan Campbell Bartoletti 2014 They Called Themselves the K K K The Birth of an American Terrorist Group Houghton Mifflin Harcourt p 138 ISBN 978 0 547 48803 5 Richard Nelson Current 1992 Lincoln s Loyalists Union Soldiers from the Confederacy University Press of New England p 207 ISBN 978 1 55553 124 9 Davison 2016 p 451 Tures John A July 6 2015 General Nathan Bedford Forrest Versus the Ku Klux Klan HuffPost retrieved August 23 2017 Wyn Craig Wade 1998 The Fiery Cross The Ku Klux Klan in America Oxford University Press p 59 ISBN 978 0 19 512357 9 Newton 2014 p 12 Calhoun p 46sfnm error no target CITEREFCalhoun help Hurst Jack 2011 Nathan Bedford Forrest A Biography Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group p 300 ISBN 978 0 307 78914 3 Newton 2014 p 12 Newton amp 2014 s p 12 sfn error no target CITEREFNewton2014 s help a b c Calhoun 2017 p 46 a b c Grant Reconstruction and the KKK 2018 a b Chernow 2017 p 588 a b c Bryant 2002 a b Calhoun 2017 p 55 United States Congress Joint Select Committee on the Condition of Affairs in the Late Insurrectionary States 1872 Report of the Joint Select Committee to Inquire Into the Condition of Affairs in the Late Insurrectionary States So Far as Regards the Execution of the Laws and Safety of the Lives and Property of the Citizens of the United States and Testimony Taken Report of the Joint committee Views of the minority and Journal of the Select committee April 20 1871 Feb 19 1872 U S Government Printing Office p 14 When it is considered that the origin designs mysteries and ritual of the order are made secrets that the assumption of its regalia or the revelation of any of its secrets even by an expelled member or of its purposes by a member will be visited by the extreme penalty of the law the difficulty of procuring testimony upon this point may be appreciated and the denials of the purposes of membership in and even the existence of the order should all be considered in the light of these provisions This contrast might be pursued further but our design is not to connect General Forrest with this order the reader may form his own conclusion upon this question but to trace its development and from its acts and consequences gather the designs which are locked up under such penalties Select Committee Poland amp Scott 1872 p 463 sfn error no target CITEREFSelect CommitteePolandScott1872 help George Cantor 2000 Confederate Generals Life Portraits Taylor Trade Pub p 78 ISBN 978 0 87833 179 6 Brabson Fay Warrington 1972 Andrew Johnson a life in pursuit of the right course 1808 1875 the seventeenth President of the United States Durham N C Seeman Printery p 258 Lewis Michael Serbu Jacqueline 1999 Kommemorating the Ku Klux Klan The Sociological Quarterly 40 139 158 doi 10 1111 j 1533 8525 1999 tb02361 x On This Day Death of General Forrest The New York Times October 30 1877 John Richard Stephens 2012 Commanding the Storm Civil War Battles in the Words of the Generals Who Fought Them Lyons Press p 319 ISBN 978 0 7627 9002 9 Ex Confederates Meeting of Cavalry Survivor s Association PDF Augusta Georgia Chronicle July 31 1875 retrieved July 13 2015 Welsh 1999 p 72 Ashdown Caudill 2006 p 64 Hurst Jack 2011 Nathan Bedford Forrest A Biography Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group p 9 ISBN 978 0 307 78914 3 Foote 1974 p 1052 a b Sainz Adrian Memphis renames 3 parks that honored Confederacy retrieved February 6 2013 Eryn Taylor Shay Arthur July 7 2015 Council begins process of removing Nathan Bedford Forrest s remains News Channel 3 WREG Archived from the original on April 23 2019 Retrieved September 3 2019 Tennessee Heritage Protection Act www tn gov Tennessee Department of Environment amp Conservation Archived from the original on April 12 2018 Retrieved April 14 2018 a b Memphis removes Confederate statues from Downtown parks Memphis Commercial Appeal December 21 2017 a b Barbash Fred December 21 2017 Memphis to Jefferson Davis Na na na na hey hey goodbye Washington Post Retrieved December 21 2017 Black flag over Dixie racial atrocities and reprisals in the Civil War Internet Archive Carbondale Southern Illinois University Press 2004 p 13 ISBN 978 0 8093 2546 7 a href Template Cite book html title Template Cite book cite book a CS1 maint others link a b Jonsson Patrik February 11 2011 KKK leader on specialty license plates Plan in Mississippi raises hackles Christian Science Monitor Retrieved March 8 2018 Loewen James W 2007 Lies Across America What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong Simon and Schuster p 237 ISBN 978 0743296298 Confederate soldiers have their own medal of honor News Leader AP April 26 2014 a b Lawinski Jennifer May 18 2015 Florida High School Keeps KKK Founder s Name Fox News Archived from the original on June 18 2013 a b Florida School Board Votes To Remove Name Of Civil War General Tied To Ku Klux Business Insider November 9 2013 retrieved November 10 2013 Mims v Duval County School Board 329 F Supp 123 United States District Court M D Florida Jacksonville Division June 23 1971 Inabinett Mark April 13 2021 Hank Aaron replaces Confederate general in school name AL com Advance Local Media Retrieved April 13 2021 Forrest Hall The Evolution of Middle Tennessee s Mascot mtsusidelines com Sidelines March 21 2016 Archived from the original on April 7 2018 J R Lind August 24 2017 Forrest Hall Name Change Decision Delayed La Vergne Smyrna Tennessee Patch Patch Media Archived from the original on December 24 2017 Adam Tamburin February 16 2018 Commission denies MTSU s request to change the name of Forrest Hall The Tennessean USA Today Network Tennessee Retrieved April 15 2018 Proposed Mississippi License Plate Would Honor Early KKK Leader Fox News February 10 2011 Group Wants KKK Founder Gen Nathan Bedford Forrest on License Plate ABC News February 10 2011 Haley Barbour Won t Denounce Proposal Honoring Confederate General Early KKK Leader CBS News February 16 2011 archived from the original on August 25 2012 retrieved August 19 2012 Cox 2012 Dell Upton 2015 What Can and Can t be Said Race Uplift and Monument Building in the Contemporary South Yale University Press p 34 ISBN 978 0 300 21175 7 Cox Dale August 23 2012 Nathan Bedford Forrest Monument Selma Alabama Exploresouthernhistory com archived from the original on March 24 2013 retrieved October 9 2012 Edgemon Erin March 26 2015 Nathan Bedford Forrest bust back in Alabama cemetery al com retrieved June 29 2018 Brown George June 25 2015 Mayor Wharton Remove Nathan Bedford Forrest statue and body from park WREG com retrieved August 23 2017 Nathan Bedford Forrest statue won t be relocated Knoxville News Sentinel October 21 2016 retrieved August 23 2017 J R Lind April 18 2018 Tennessee House Punishes Memphis For Confederate Statue Removal Memphis TN Patch Patch Media Archived from the original on April 18 2018 Retrieved September 3 2019 Shammas Brittany June 3 2021 Memphis is digging up the remains of a Confederate general who led the early KKK The Washington Post Day Echo September 20 2021 Exclusive Were General Nathan Bedford Forrest and his wife buried in Munford Covington Leader Retrieved November 12 2021 Sons of Confederate Veterans Put to Rest for Eternity Gen Nathan Bedford in Columbia Tennessee Tennessee Star September 19 2021 Retrieved November 12 2021 Tennessee Code Annotated 15 2 101 LexisNexis 1971 retrieved March 3 2018 Allison Natalie July 12 2019 Gov Bill Lee Signs Nathan Bedford Forrest Day Proclamation Is Not Considering Law Change The Tennessean Retrieved July 12 2019 Pitofsky Marina July 12 2019 Tennessee Governor Slammed Online for Signing Confederate General Proclamation The Hill Retrieved July 12 2019 Allison Natalie June 10 2020 Tennessee Gov Bill Lee will no longer proclaim Nathan Bedford Forrest Day after legislature passes bill The Tennessean Retrieved June 29 2020 Allison Joel Ebert and Natalie June 14 2020 We re sick of it Black Tennessee lawmakers say of long simmering racial insensitivity at the Capitol The Tennessean Bust of Lieutenant General Nathan Bedford Forrest Is Unveiled The United Daughters of the Confederacy Magazine 41 43 250 1978 The sculptress of the bust Mrs Loura Jane Herndon Baxendale wife of Compatriot Albert H Baxendale Jr had also earlier made available a small bust of the general in limited edition Camp 28 had engaged the services of the eminent Karkadoulias Bronze Art Foundry of Cincinnati Ohio to cast the bust for the Capitol Nikki Junewicz June 23 2020 I support it Nathan Bedford Forrest descendant weighs in on removal of Capitol bust WZTV Brett Forrest June 20 2020 Nathan Bedford Forrest s descendant Move the bust from Tennessee s Capitol Featured letter Tennessean a b Tennessee to remove bust of Ku Klux Klan leader Nathan Bedford Forrest from state Capitol CNN July 23 2021 Archived from the original on January 31 2022 Retrieved January 31 2022 James Loewen 2010 Lies Across America What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong New Press p 258 ISBN 978 1 59558 676 6 George Magruder Battey 1922 A History of Rome and Floyd County State of Georgia United States of America Including Numerous Incidents of More Than Local Interest 1540 1922 Webb and Vary Company p 381 Gregory A Daddis 2002 Fighting in the Great Crusade An 8th Infantry Artillery Officer in World War II LSU Press p 89 ISBN 978 0 8071 2757 5 Arnold Engineering Development Center Arnold Air Force Base Tennessee An Air Force Materiel Command Test Facility PDF arnold af mil U S Air Force Archived from the original PDF on December 29 2009 Retrieved April 15 2018 Confederate general s name removed from Army s road Deseret News August 1 2000 archived from the original on October 31 2014 retrieved October 21 2014 Long Trish June 5 2010 Soldier turned down film job to fight die in Korea El Paso Times Archived from the original on October 21 2014 Forrest Road was renamed Cassidy Road in honor of Lt Gen Richard T Cassidy who commanded Fort Bliss from 1968 to 1971 Gate Schedule El Paso Herald Post El Paso TX p 8 February 22 1975 the gate station established on Forrest road is another step in the implementation of a phased traffic control and security program announced last month at Fort Bliss The Forrest road site was selected for the first of the several gate stations Alexandria proposes replacing Confederate street names NBC Washington October 13 2023 Archived from the original on October 14 2023 Retrieved October 14 2023 A W R Hawkins III Paul G Pierpaoli Jr Spencer C Tucker 2014 Forrest Nathan Bedford 1821 1877 In Spencer C Tucker ed 500 Great Military Leaders ABC CLIO p 244 ISBN 978 1 59884 758 1 Jack Hurst 2011 Nathan Bedford Forrest A Biography Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group p 247 ISBN 978 0 307 78914 3 George Derby James Terry White 1900 The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography J T White Company p 38 Sherman called him the most remarkable man the civil war produced on either side He had a genius for strategy which was original and to me incomprehensible John C Fredriksen 2001 America s Military Adversaries From Colonial Times to the Present ABC CLIO p 164 ISBN 978 1 57607 603 3 Sanders John R August 17 1994 Operational Leadership of Nathan Bedford Forrest PDF Newport R I Naval War College archived PDF from the original on February 19 2017 retrieved February 7 2017 Heidler David Stephen Heidler Jeanne T Coles David J eds 2002 Encyclopedia of the American Civil War A Political Social and Military History W W Norton amp Company p 722 ISBN 978 0 393 04758 5 Catton 1971 p 160 Dillon Francis H for example George Mason University retrieved October 9 2012 Times New York 1918 Forrest PDF retrieved October 10 2012 Catton 1971 pp 160 61 The Rebel Forrest a Cold Blooded Murderer Buffalo Weekly Express May 10 1864 p 1 Retrieved December 24 2023 Buhk 2012 p 147 John Cimprich 2011 Fort Pillow a Civil War Massacre and Public Memory LSU Press p xciv ISBN 978 0 8071 3918 9 Bruce Tap 2013 The Fort Pillow Massacre North South and the Status of African Americans in the Civil War Era Routledge p 103 ISBN 978 1 136 17390 5 Richard L Fuchs 2001 An Unerring Fire The Massacre at Fort Pillow Stackpole Books p 14 ISBN 978 0 8117 1824 0 Andrew Ward 2006 River Run Red The Fort Pillow Massacre in the American Civil War Penguin Publishing Group p 227 ISBN 978 1 4406 4929 5 John Cimprich 2011 Fort Pillow a Civil War Massacre and Public Memory LSU Press pp cxvii ISBN 978 0 8071 3918 9 Darren L Smith Penny J Hoffman Dawn Bokenkamp Toth 2001 Parks Directory of the United States Omnigraphics p 685 ISBN 978 0 7808 0440 1 Ulysses Simpson Grant 1895 Personal Memoirs of U S Grant Sampson Low p 411 Carter William C 1989 Conversations with Shelby Foote Jackson Mississippi University Press of Mississippi ISBN 978 0 87805 385 8 Dorothy Abbott 1985 Mississippi Writers Reflections of Childhood and Youth Univ Press of Mississippi p 26 ISBN 978 0 87805 232 5 Lynda G Adamson 2002 Thematic Guide to the American Novel Greenwood Press p 222 ISBN 978 0 313 31194 9 Bibliography Main article Bibliography of Nathan Bedford Forrest Books dd Bailey Ronald H 1985 Battles for Atlanta Sherman Moves East Time Life Books ISBN 978 0 8094 4773 2 Bancroft Frederic 2023 1931 Slave Trading in the Old South Southern Classics Series Introduction by Michael Tadman University of South Carolina Press ISBN 978 1 64336 427 8 Boatner III Mark M 1988 1959 The Civil War Dictionary New York McKay ISBN 978 0 8129 1726 0 Bryant Jonathan M October 3 2002 Ku Klux Klan in the Reconstruction Era georgiaencyclopedia org Georgia Southern University Buhk Tobin T 2012 True Crime in the Civil War Cases of Murder Treason Counterfeiting Massacre Plunder amp Abuse Mechanicsville PA Stackpole Books ISBN 978 0 8117 1019 0 Calhoun Charles W 2017 The Presidency of Ulysses S Grant Lawrence KS University Press of Kansas ISBN 978 0700624843 Catton Bruce 1971 The Civil War American Heritage Press New York LCCN 77 119671 Cimprich John Mainfort Robert C Jr eds Winter 1982 Fort Pillow Revisited New Evidence About An Old Controversy Civil War History 4 Chernow Ron 2017 Grant New York Penguin Press ISBN 978 1 5942 0487 6 Clark Achilles V June 1985 Pomeroy Dan E ed A Letter of Account Civil War Times Illustrated 24 4 24 25 Eicher John H Eicher David J 2001 Civil War High Commands Stanford University Press ISBN 978 0 8047 3641 1 Foote Shelby 1963 The Civil War A Narrative II Fredericksburg to Meridian Random House ISBN 978 0 394 74621 0 Foote Shelby 1974 The Civil War A Narrative III Red River to Appomattox Random House ISBN 978 0 394 74622 7 Hurst Jack 1993 Nathan Bedford Forrest A Biography New York Knopf ISBN 978 0394551890 Newton Michael 2014 White Robes and Burning Crosses A History of the Ku Klux Klan from 1866 Jefferson NC McFarland ISBN 978 0 7864 7774 6 Sherman William T 1990 Memoirs of General W T Sherman Library of America ISBN 978 0940450653 Silkenat David Raising the White Flag How Surrender Defined the American Civil War Chapel Hill University of North Carolina Press 2019 ISBN 978 1 4696 4972 6 Spaulding Thomas M 1931 Forrest Nathan Bedford in Allen Johnson Dumas Malone eds Dictionary of American Biography vol 6 New York Charles Scribner s Sons pp 532 533 Ward Andrew 2005 River Run Red The Fort Pillow Massacre in the American Civil War Viking Penguin Wills Brian Steel 1992 A Battle from the Start The Life of Nathan Bedford Forrest New York HarperCollins ISBN 978 0 06 092445 4 Wyeth John Allan 1989 1899 That Devil Forrest Louisiana State University PressOnline dd Grant Reconstruction and the KKK pbs org American Experience 2018 Retrieved April 15 2018 Further reading Bearss Edwin C 1979 Forrest at Brice s Cross Roads and in North Mississippi in 1864 Dayton OH Press of Morningside Bookshop Bearss Ed ed July 1 2005 Unpublished remarks to Gettysburg College Civil War Institute Bradshaw Wayne 2009 The Civil War Diary of William R Dyer A Member of Forrest s Escort BookSurge Publishing ISBN 978 1 4392 3772 4 Carney Court 2001 The Contested Image of Nathan Bedford Forrest Journal of Southern History 67 3 601 630 doi 10 2307 3070019 JSTOR 3070019 Dupuy Trevor N Johnson Curt Bongard David L 1992 Harper Encyclopedia of Military Biography 1st ed Castle Books ISBN 978 0 7858 0437 6 Foner Eric 1988 Reconstruction America s Unfinished Revolution 1863 1877 HarperCollins ISBN 978 0 06 015851 4 Harcourt Edward John 2005 Who Were the Pale Faces New Perspectives on the Tennessee Ku Klux Civil War History 51 1 23 66 doi 10 1353 cwh 2005 0011 S2CID 143866721 Henry Robert Selph 1944 First with the Most Horn Stanley F 1939 Invisible Empire The Story of the Ku Klux Klan 1866 1871 Montclair NJ Patterson Smith Publishing Corporation Lytle Andrew Nelson 2002 1931 Bedford Forrest and His Critter Company Reprint ed Ivan R Dee ISBN 978 1 879941 09 0 Scales John R 2017 The Battles and Campaigns of Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest 1861 1865 El Dorado Hills CA Savas Beatie ISBN 978 1 61121 284 6 Silkenat David Raising the White Flag How Surrender Defined the American Civil War Chapel Hill University of North Carolina Press 2019 ISBN 978 1 4696 4972 6 Tap Bruce June 1996 These Devils Are Not Fit to Live on God s Earth War Crimes and the Committee on the Conduct of the War 1864 1865 Civil War History XLII 2 116 32 doi 10 1353 cwh 1996 0051 S2CID 144484122 on Ft Pillow Warner Ezra J 1959 Generals in Gray Lives of the Confederate Commanders Baton Rouge Louisiana State University Press ISBN 978 0 8071 0823 9 Williams Edward F 1969 Fustest with the mostest the military career of Tennessee s greatest Confederate Lieutenant General Nathan Bedford Forrest Memphis Distributed by Southern Books Wills Brian Steel 1992 The Confederacy s Greatest Cavalryman Nathan Bedford Forrest Lawrence University Press of Kansas ISBN 0 7006 0885 0 External links editNathan Bedford Forrest at Wikipedia s sister projects nbsp Media from Commons nbsp Quotations from Wikiquote nbsp Texts from Wikisource nbsp Data from Wikidata nbsp Wikisource has original text related to this article Interview with Nathan Bedford Forrest Animated History of The Campaigns of Nathan Bedford Forrest Archived August 25 2012 at the Wayback Machine at civilwaranimated com General Nathan Bedford Forrest Historical Society Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Nathan Bedford Forrest amp oldid 1206127009, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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