N. B. Forrest Book - Looking for an objective/balanced book on this guy.

[samgrant]

As we are all aware, Nathan Bedford Forrest is either highly respected or highly dispised. Most would agree he was a dominant force.

Anyway, I'd like to find an objective and balanced book about this famous/notorious character if such a thing exists.

Can anyone help me in my quest?

[samgrant]

Please anybody?

[sockknitter]

I'm surprised nobody else has responded. Forrest is such an interesting character and often discussed. At any rate, here's what I can contribute from the one book I've read about him: A Battle From the Start copyrighted 1992 by Brian Steel Wills. Dr. Wills was born in Virginia, educated in Virginia and Georgia, and as of 2003 was chair of the department of history and philosophy at the University of Virginia.

I like the book so much I'm rereading it. Following is part of the Foreward by Emory M. Thomas, himself a respected author:

Brian Wills knows more about Forrest than any previous biographer. He has sought the scraps of Forrest’s record in county courthouses, newspapers, private correspondence, and oral tradition, and he offers here previously unknown information, especially about Forrest before and after the war. The true significance of Wills’s work, however, lies in what he does with the facts of Forrest’s life.

Wills takes Forrest seriously as a person and understands him as an offspring of the Southern frontier. Before Forrest was a soldier, he spent forty years scratching and clawing his way from backcountry oblivion to wealth and power in Memphis. Wills recites, indeed invigorates, the incidents of Forrest’s life and military career. He tells the old stories with a fresh voice.

Following Forrest to war, Wills watches him learn to be warrior. Then the action accelerates as Forrest rides to battle after campaign after raid. Wills never lets the narrative escape his analysis, however; he offers insight even while he and his reader canter with Forrest into combat.

At Fort Pillow, for example, Wills reveals Forrest out of control as his troopers vent blood lust on African-American Federal soldiers and white Tennessee Unionists. Yet Forrest himself had instilled the savagery that motivated the massacre.

In 1865 Forrest gave up because he and his horsemen were used up. Wills traces Forrest’s failures during the postwar period, fully implicates him in the infamy of the Ku Klux Klan, and illumines his attempt at redemption.

Having offered Forrest in context, Wills concludes by placing him in perspective as a Confederate general. The contrast with Robert E. Lee is important. The “conventional” war that Lee fought relegated Forrest to a secondary role. In a sense Forrest and other “freaks” played the sideshows, while Lee and commanders like him worked the center ring. But Lee and generals like him lost. Could Forrest have won?

He was a primitive in the mid-nineteenth century when warfare was evolving toward struggles between whole peoples, fought by massive armies in which relatively small bands of armed horsemen would seem unimportant. But no circumstance is inevitable simply because it happened; people choose, and in this case Jefferson Davis chose Lee’s way of warfare.

When “total war” continued to evolve, primitive behavior again became successful. Bedford Forrest may have seemed slightly out of step in the American Civil War; but he seems ideally suited for combat in Vietnam, Afghanistan, or Croatia. Our “modem” world appreciates the primitive. So again the question—couId Forrest have won?

Thanks to Brian Wills, we can see the whole Forrest and Forrest whole.

[JohnW in E.TN]

Brian Wills has spoken at several of our SCV meetings, and his knowledge of Forrest is astounding. He is also very friendly and down-to-earth.

I have the book on Forrest by Jack Hurst, but I found it very tedious and dry. I may give it another try in the future.

Regards,

John W.

[larry_cockerham]

I sense a little bias in Will's conclusion in the summary above. I've spent the last couple of years trying to understand Nathan Bedford Forrest. Here was a man who made his fortune from cotton and slaves. His fame came from his brilliance in battle. Two separate themes with very contrasting visions of a very complex man. He is positively worshiped today because of his leadership of men and dispised because of his position in a system that brought much discomfort to an entire segment of southern population. John Allan Wyeth's THAT DEVIL FORREST goes to considerable length to describe the conditions and some of his business activities in Memphis prior to the war. I believe it is impartial and probably closer to fact than many of the other works that attempt to overly praise or condemn him. That's where I would start. Nathan Forrest left two brothers on the battlefield and suffered more personal loss than a mere mortal could have been expected to endure. He, above all, was tough. The kind of guy one would want by one's side in a fight. His memory continues to tear a city apart today 140 years after the war and the mention of his name can bring cheers from an assembled group of civil war fanatics. Few men could make that claim.

[johan_steele]

I'll second several of the titles previously mentioned. These are the ones I've read that deal strictly w/ him: Wyeth's That Devil Forrest which may also be titled as I think they are the same book Life of General Nathan Bedford Thomas and add Nathan Bedford Forrest: a Biography by Jack Hurst, A Battle from the Start by Bruce Wills and Lonnie Maness An Untutored Genius: the Military Career of General Nathan Bedford Forrest.

All of those are farly even handed w/ the man and IMHO pretty enlightening books

[samgrant]

Here's a new one. By looking at the back cover one would get the idea that this is primarily about Forrest, and it may well be as the author did write a Bio of Forrest fairly recently.

Might it be a marketing ploy to sell a book about Grant and Forrest to fans of Grant, like me, who may not be so enamored by Forrest?

I'm not sure what to make of it!

http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0465...43#reader-link

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[EricJacobson]

The Myth of Natan Bedford Forrest by Caudill and Ashdown is among the best. No baloney, just the facts, and they let the reader decide about Forrest on their own. The section about Fort Pillow is fascinating. They conclude that Forrest never intended for any senseless killing, but that he probably didn't lose any sleep because of it.

[larry_cockerham]

I doubt anyone from any viewpoint could read any three of the books written about Nathan Bedford Forrest without being in awe of the man and of the experience he had before, during and after the war. His life is a remarkable tale.

[johan_steele]

Originally Posted by larry_cockerham

I doubt anyone from any viewpoint could read any three of the books written about Nathan Bedford Forrest without being in awe of the man and of the experience he had before, during and after the war. His life is a remarkable tale.

I could not agree more; I'm impressed w/ Forrest as a fighting man. Hampton is another CS General whom I read more about I respect more.