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To give the "Devil" his due, if Forrest hadn't disobeyed orders at Fort Donaldson and escaped with his command intact(along with a number of CS infantry who "hitched a ride" with the horsemen), he wouldn't even be a footnote. There's a lot to be said for a little insubordination.
I think he wasn't technically disobeying orders, but even if someone had told him to lay down his arms at Donaldson, what are the odds he would have?
General Forrest covered himself pretty well in the official record. His memory and witness, probably assisted by some aides to be sure, is probably little or no more biased than many of his counterparts. He was a man of considerable principle and principal who paid a price for participation in the civil war that few others could have survived.
He was a man of considerable principle and principal who paid a price for participation in the civil war that few others could have survived.
I really like that. He did not only offer his fortune (totally earned by him, whether or not you agree with dealing in slaves) but his time, son, horses, drivers, and more. After the war, according to Wills, he urged his followers to be good U.S. citizens. He died at a relatively young age most likely as a result of all the bullet wounds he attracted. One thing he might not have been good at, if offered an opportunity, was to be two-faced, or am I ignorant?
Gen. Forrest's reputation as a man of principle would have ruled-out any "two face" attitude. This seems to be the one things Forrest disdained entirely.
I fully realize that you aren't encompassing this precept but I offer this:
Gen. Forrest takes an un-warranted, bad rap by some contemporary folk upon his joining the KKK. Comparing the KKK of Forrest's day wth the KKK of today results in an ENTIRELY bogus slant upon history. Political Correctness of today holds absolutely no value in attempting a receiption of true history. Forrest's region was virtually under no protection from the law immediately after cessation of formal hostilities. The U.S. Government failed miserably in protecting it's citizens during this phase. Forrest's principles as a civlian prompted him to restore law and order and restore peace to ALL people in his area. His principles also prompted him to disband the organization after radical factions began totally distorting it's function. He was emphatically not two-faced. Gen. Forrest is found a fine Military leader/fighter and an exemplary citizen if contemporary students simply remove the political correctness while probing N.B. Forrest's life.
Let us in the process not get Lt. General Nathan B. Forrest I confused with his grandson Nathan B. Forrest II who was in fact the grand wizard of the klan in Georgia during the 1920s and is the one who should be and probably was kicked in the butt a few times. Rob is right about the General, such was not in his character. He was hauled before Congress and was exhonerated without benefit of political pull to say the least. While reading these folks should also check out Lt. General Nathan B. Forrest III who died while on a bombing mission over Germany (like his great grandfather, a man of substance). My message to political correctness would be: "Don't cuss my general until you at least have your facts straight!"
To give the "Devil" his due, if Forrest hadn't disobeyed orders at Fort Donaldson and escaped with his command intact(along with a number of CS infantry who "hitched a ride" with the horsemen), he wouldn't even be a footnote. There's a lot to be said for a little insubordination.
I think he wasn't technically disobeying orders, but even if someone had told him to lay down his arms at Donaldson, what are the odds he would have?
Forrest got permission to leave, so he wasn't disobeying orders at all when he escaped from Fort Donelson.
Gen. Forrest takes an un-warranted, bad rap by some contemporary folk upon his joining the KKK. Comparing the KKK of Forrest's day wth the KKK of today results in an ENTIRELY bogus slant upon history. Political Correctness of today holds absolutely no value in attempting a receiption of true history. Forrest's region was virtually under no protection from the law immediately after cessation of formal hostilities. The U.S. Government failed miserably in protecting it's citizens during this phase. Forrest's principles as a civlian prompted him to restore law and order and restore peace to ALL people in his area. His principles also prompted him to disband the organization after radical factions began totally distorting it's function. He was emphatically not two-faced. Gen. Forrest is found a fine Military leader/fighter and an exemplary citizen if contemporary students simply remove the political correctness while probing N.B. Forrest's life.
It would be nice if this were true, but it's not. The KKK in Bedford Forrest's time was a terrorist organization bent on intimidating blacks and Republicans. There is no doubt about that.
"Maury was probably the banner Ku Klux county in Tennessee. The local Klan's tactics varied, but its members commonly traveled in small groups well after dark, each unit operating in a neighborhood where its members were not apt to be known. Thus there was probably some advance planning and organization, delimiting the respetive spheres of operation, specifying persons to be raided, and guiding the attackers to their destinations. Total Klan membership in the county was several hundred. Approaching a Negro cabin, they sometimes stationed pickets to ward off any intruders before they called out the inhabitants or broke in and dragged them out. Men and older boys were the usual targets, although there were reports of abusing pregnant women and forcing children to wade in icy water. The normal punishment was a whipping or beating administered on the bare back with 'hickories,' sticks or small branches torn off a nearby tree. Many persons received several hundred lashes with these instruments, and one man reportedly got 900. The resulting scars were often permanent and some victims were partially crippled. Others were shot, sometimes mortally. A Negro boy of twenty was taken out of his home in Columbia in July by fifty or sixty Klansmen who led him into the country and garroted him; then they tied a stone around his neck and dumped the body into the Duck River." [Allen W. Trelease, White Terror: The Ku Klux Klan Conspiracy and Southern Reconstruction, Chapter 2, "Expansion and Violence in Tennessee, 1868," pp. 28-29]
"Booker T. Washington once said that the white man could never hold the black man in a ditch without getting in the ditch with him. The Ku Klux Klan was a perfect illustration of that proposition. Beginning as a social fraternity devoted to playing pranks, it was soon transformed into a terrorist organization aiming at the preservation of white supremacy. And in the context of Reconstruction politics after 1867, it became a counterrevolutionary device to combat the Republican Party and Congressional Reconstruction policy in the South. For more than four years it whipped, shot, hanged, robbed, raped, and otherwise outraged Negroes and Republicans across the South in the name of preserving white civilization.
"The Klan could not have launched this career, much less persisted in it for so long, without widespread public support in the areas where it flourished. The Ku Klux were not simply desperadoes whom society abhorred but could not control. If some persons felt that way, there were as many others who joined the organization and gave it willing aid and comfort. Finally there was the large element--perhaps a majority--who were both repelled and attracted by the Klan. Sympathizing with its objectives, they deplored its methods. But more important than their private thoughts were their public
actions. Such persons feared Klan retaliation upon themselves if they opposed its course; even more, perhaps, they feared to be accused of treason to the South and the white race. In effect the Klan wrapped itself in the Stars and Bars, recited the racist litanies which had been devised to justify Negro slavery, threatened death to unbelievers, and thereby rendered itself unassailable by orthodox Southerners. Willingly or unwillingly, they entered into a conspiracy to protect the Klan and advance its works.
"The roots of this conspiracy ran so deep that, wherever it extended, the traditional system of local justice was undermined and subverted. In most places the reign of terror exceeded the power even of state governments to control, and federal intervention was required to bring it to a close. Even then the spirit which had animated it carried on and soon triumphed by other means, more humane in some respects as well as more effective.
"In speaking of the Ku Klux conspiracy I recur to a term which Republicans used at the time, but which later became unfashionable and eventually arhcaic. If they gave it a more precisely political meaning than I, the distinction is only a relative one. The pages that follow attempt to explain the background and causes of the conspiracy, its violent career in the states where it took hold, and the agonizing process of stamping it out, involving men and measures at every level of government. This story is central to the history of Reconstruction after the Civil War. The Ku Klux terror colored
nearly every aspect of Southern life and politics, often far beyond the immediate range of terrorist activity. It was therefore central to the formulation and implementation of Reconstruction policy in Washington.
"My attitude toward the Ku Klux terror is in keeping with that of most recent historians of the Reconstruction period; it is impossible any longer to embrace the opposite view which for so long celebrated the Ku Klux Klan and its civilizing mission in the South." [Ibid., pp. xi-xii]
Let us in the process not get Lt. General Nathan B. Forrest I confused with his grandson Nathan B. Forrest II who was in fact the grand wizard of the klan in Georgia during the 1920s and is the one who should be and probably was kicked in the butt a few times. Rob is right about the General, such was not in his character. He was hauled before Congress and was exhonerated without benefit of political pull to say the least. While reading these folks should also check out Lt. General Nathan B. Forrest III who died while on a bombing mission over Germany (like his great grandfather, a man of substance). My message to political correctness would be: "Don't cuss my general until you at least have your facts straight!"
I'm talking about Lt Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, formerly of the CSA, who was Grand Wizard of the KKK in 1867 and 1868. And I have my facts straight:
"It is impossible to say when Forrest heard of the Klan and became attracted to it. Apparently absent from the Nashville meeting, he seems to have joined the order sometime afterward and to have assumed command shortly after that, probably in May 1867." [Allen W. Trelease, White Terror: The Ku Klux Klan Conspiracy and Southern Reconstruction, p. 20]
"In April 1867, one such association of ex-Confederates met in Nashville to organize. This budding organization was the Ku Klux Klan, and its popularity was increasing rapidly. At some point concurrent with this meeting, Bedford Forrest traveled to Nashville to attempt to join it. He visited with his former artillery chief, John Morton, who was Grand Cyclops of the Nashville Den. Morton apparently administered a preliminary oath to his former superior and directed him to return to the Maxwell House for a more formal ceremony. One of the original members of the Klan, James R. Crowe, wrote nearly forty years later, 'After the order grew to large numbers we found it necessary to have someone of large experience to command. We chose General Forrest.' Another man who became a member of the Klan in Memphis later observed, 'N. B. Forrest 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.' " [Brian Steel Wills, A Battle From the Start: The Life of Nathan Bedford Forrest, pp. 335-336]
"There never has been any serious doubt that the first and only Grand Wizard was General Nathan Bedford Forrest. He never admitted the fact in so many words, but his later statements to the press and to a Congressional committee in 1871 help to confirm the notion which was almost universally shared by members and nonmembers alike." [Allen W. Trelease, White Terror: The Ku Klux Klan Conspiracy and Southern Reconstruction, p. 19]
In writing about the KKK during Forrest's membership, Brian Steel Wills writes, "There can be no doubt that the organization became affiliated with the Democratic party and depended upon intimidation and terrorism to achieve its goals." [Brian Steel Wills, A Battle From the Start: The Life of Nathan Bedford Forrest, p. 337
Regarding Forrest, "Of course, Forrest did not propose to shoot white Radical Republicans simply because they were not white conservative Democrats. His was not a 'loyal' opposition. These 'Radicals' represented the clearest threat since the Civil War to all he held dear. They proposed equality for former slaves; he did not. They advocated black suffrage; he found the idea preposterous, unless he could dictate the blacks' votes. They threatened the social and political fabric based upon white supremacy, segregation, and black disfranchisement that he supported." [Ibid., p. 350]
Regarding his appearance before Congress and whether we can believe what he said, "And so he sat in his chair before the members of the committee and maneuvered, dodged, and evaded the barrage of questions, with surprising deftness. There is no doubt that all the while he knew far more than he was saying. Forrest later supposedly told a friend he saw shortly after the interrogation, 'I have been lying like a gentleman.' " [Ibid., p. 364]
Terrorism and intimidation are one side of the picture. A very good book is "Tennessee's Radical Army" by Ben Severance, U. of TN Press, 2005. This is a history of the State Guard which was affiliated with the Radical Republicans in Tennessee and which used "the politics of force" to prevent exConfederates from voting. All the intimidation was not on one side only. The Union Leagues were also affiliated with the Radical Republican party and were hardly free of the use of intimidation and violence themselves.
Trelease is rather dated to be relied on as a sole source about the Klan. He tends to lump all the anti-Reconstruction groups into a single entity called "Klan" and treats them as if they were a monolith. This is inaccurate, overstates the role of a single group, and leads to over-emphasizing the role of one man--Forrest.
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