elmira64
Private
- Joined
- Oct 24, 2021
A persons acceptance of salvation is based upon the belief that Christ paid the price.
-
Welcome to CivilWarTalk, a forum about the American Civil War! - Join today! It's fast, simple, and FREE!
Nathan Bedford Forest
- Thread starter TheJohnnyReb1861
- Start date
Rebforever
Lt. Colonel
- Joined
- Oct 26, 2012
"War means fighting, and fighting means killin" General N.B. Forrest.
kGs
Private
- Joined
- May 17, 2023
Hi, where did you get those clippings? I've heard some elaborate claims that he was a Freemason only to discover the purported lodge's own records show he visited once, didn't complete a single degree, and never returned.
RedRover
1st Lieutenant
- Joined
- Dec 16, 2019
General Forrest was associated with many organizations. For example, he was evidently associated with the Memphis Jockey Club to an extent...
Memphis Daily Avalanche, 5-2-1859.
But evidently his longest association was with the Odd Fellows, which he first joined in 1847, and continued with to his death, and at that time was a reported member of Chickasaw Lodge No. 8, Memphis:
Memphis Daily Appeal, 10-31-1877.
Here's the 1851 International Order of Odd Fellows hall in Memphis, built in 1851 and demolished in 1924:
Plain Dealer, Cleveland, OH, 10-31-1877.
Daily Critic, Washington, DC, 11-1-1877.
The Odd Fellows were particularly known as a non-partisan charitable organization...
Public Ledger, Philadelphia, 5-30-1867.
American Traveller, Boston, 10-9-1869.
Daily Memphis Avalanche, 4-4-1867.
His alleged association with masked outlawry was based on a statement from a newspaper interview with Mr. Woodward, writing for the Cincinnati Commercial Tribune in August, 1868, during a particularly contentious election cycle; Mr. Woodward's article claiming to quote Gen. Forrest that there were 40,000 Klux in Tennessee, and half a million south-wide, in active armed opposition to reconstruction, etc.: and the article produced a nation-wide political sensation; and it was not infrequently cited by various politicians... but credulity varied...
Daily Globe, Washington, DC, 4-24-1870.
the Journalist Woodward subsequently also printed a story of subsequently visiting Fort Pillow with Gen. Forrest, and giving an account of the battle and massacre there... Gen. Forrest also, apparently, publicly claimed that claim was also false...
Evening Telegraph, Philadelphia, 9-24-1868.
When in 1871 General Forrest was called to testify before a congressional committee on these subjects, relative the 1868 newspaper interview with Woodward, He was asked about membership in any particularly southern orders. He stated that he had joined the Order of the Pale Faces, but claims he was more interested in seeing what they were about, and went to a couple of meetings only.
The Order of the Pale Faces was composed principally of Confederate veterans or others of Southern ideals (evidently including some Union veterans, and many who were not veterans), but was not particularly secretive. The names of its officers, meeting locations, etc. were frequently published in the papers.
Nashville Union and American, 4-10-1869.
Nashville Union and American, 4-14-1869.
Nashville Union and American, 4-2-1870.
Nashville Union and American, 1-18-1870.
It pleased some contemporary journalists to claim that the Pale Faces were the master organization of the klux...
...
Chicago Republican, 3-19-1870.
So when Forrest testified before the reconstruction committee of Congress in 1871 he was asked about southern organizations in Tennessee, and he noted the Pale Faces were classed by some among them....
Forrest next stated, that between the two organizations, Ku Klux and Pale Faces, the former had been formed like vigilance committees or vigilantes, and many wore masks, etc.
Forrest admitted to have joined the Pale Faces chapter at Memphis, and so far as he testified, that order was akin the Odd Fellows or Free masons, though limited to southern white men, in a manner like the Loyal Leagues among the republicans and freedmen, but distinct from the klux as it promoted "preventing crime... preventing disorder..." by his account:
I don't know if there are any surviving records of the Memphis chapter of the Pale Faces to check against Gen. Forrest's claim of joining and going to a couple meetings. However, there are evidently, in various archives, records of particular camps of the order, like that of Maury County, Tennessee, with membership rosters and records, etc.
In contrast to the above controversial organizations, General Forrest was well known to have been a member of Order of the Odd Fellows. That order declared that it was not divided on political issues either during or after the war... for example, from E.D. Farnsworth of Nashville, then presiding officer of the grand lodge of the Odd Fellows of the United States, claimed in 1870:
Daily Globe, Washington, DC, 4-24-1870.
Charles H. Brooks wrote in 1902 that the Odd Fellows were frequently associated or confused with Freemasonry, but he declined to accept that:
As you mention, there are several modern claims that Gen. Forrest was a free mason...
From Warren Getler and Bob Brewer, "Shadow of the Sentinel: One Man's Quest to Find the Hidden Treasure of the Confederacy," (2003):
From R.L. Worthy, The Founders' Facade: Christianity, Democracy, Freemasonry, and the Founding of America (2004):
Or Mark A. Tabbert, "American Freemasons: Three Centuries of Building Communities," (2006):
or Michael Dedivonai, "The Quest For Truth: Come Now and Let Us Reason Together (2012):
However, I have not seen any contemporary 19th Century statements that Forrest had any particular or significant association with Freemasonry.
Edward L. King's webpage on famous "non-masons" (http://www.masonicinfo.com/famousnon.htm) claims that Forrest was never a member of that order and claims to the contrary, by masons or non-masons, are inaccurate:
7th Mississippi Infantry
Brev. Brig. Gen'l
- Joined
- Sep 28, 2013
- Location
- Southwest Mississippi
52ndFandS
First Sergeant
- Joined
- May 20, 2024
- Location
- Pennsylvania
I think Forrest was a lot more complex an individual that he's being made out to be now. To not see it through the lense of the times then you can can basically say whatever you want. You can lump him in with Bill Andrson (as far as I'm concerned a fine tactician with some very, very loose screws) or Champ Ferguson.
But Godly. Belief in battle, keeping that faith saves many and I've worked on many the soldier or veteran who has profound faith.
Amd I've worked on some who were cold as ice, ruthless in war, and kindest people, and religious after war.
Religion is a very personal thingvat least to me. And I don't think NBF was an evil man. Much like my grandfather, it took him time to.come around. And what is in a soldier's heart, especially one who has been in the grave as ling as Forrest has, is a forensic mystery that will never be solved.
- Joined
- Mar 25, 2014
I don't know if NBF was a mason or not but the source is a 1957 book titled "10,000 Famous Freemasons" written by William R. Denslow. He was sponsored by the Missouri Lodge of Research. Harry S. Truman wrote an intro for the book. The methodology was to select 60,000 'celebrities' and work backwards to research a Freemason connection. They used the library of the House of the Temple, Supreme Council but acknowledge the difficulty in proving membership in a secret order even with these records. The thumbnail bio's provided for the celebrity masons are not researched and seem to be rather shoddy. The standard of proof of membership also seems to be somewhat flexible.
In any case Mr. Denslow states that NBF was entered as an apprentice in Angerona Lodge # 168 at Memphis, Tennessee.
kGs
Private
- Joined
- May 17, 2023
I am interested in Charles H. Brooks 1902 statement you quoted, he seems to see freemasonry not only as a separate fraternity but as having fundamentally different beliefs, I'm assuming this is referring to the more occult aspect of masonry, the rituals and so forth (don't odd fellows use the all seeing eye)? I have a hard time believing an increasingly religious Forrest would have tolerated that or characters like Albert Pike. I'm not clear on his mention of odd fellows being, unlike masonry, a "friendly society", as opposed to secret society? Forrest seemed to throw odd fellows into the secret society camp in his congressional hearings. All that said my primary concern as a Christian is; was Forrest dabbling in mysticism/rituals with the odd fellows and so forth or was he just philanthropic?
Chalmers' Division
Corporal
- Joined
- Jun 12, 2016
- Location
- Memphis
Nothing like a fighting preacher. In the book, Chaplains in Gray, it was suggested that clergy in the ranks were, at times, better than those sent from command levels- never knew what one would get. Forrest seemed to keep a consistent pulse on his fighting force which must have included religious services/offerings for spiritual growth too.
RedRover
1st Lieutenant
- Joined
- Dec 16, 2019
Opinions certainly differ about the nature of free masonry, Odd Fellowship, various churches, etc.
Mr. Brooks' work (1902) is relative to the "Grand Order" of Odd Fellows:
Which Brooks says was one of over 30 different organizations of Odd Fellows in the USA, with the "Independent Order" (I.O.O.F.) the largest. Mr. Brooks explains of his disagreement of a consanguinity between Freemasonry and Odd Fellowship, as that Odd Fellowship has no particular interest in establishing any historical traditions other than fellowship between its current members...
So it appears he and some other Odd Fellows were uncomfortable accepting any tradition of other groups perceived to be an antipathy to any church, or other group.
Theodore A. Ross' history of Odd Fellows (1916), claims as follows regarding a distinction between Free Masonry and Odd Fellowship:
It is stated by friends of General Forrest that in his last years he turned to the church, it is evident that at the time of his death he was yet associated with the Odd Fellows. From Col. William Oates:
General Basil Duke opined:
James L. Ridgeley's History of American Odd Fellowship (1878), claims Odd Fellowship was generally approved by some Protestant churches:
However, scanning the period, it is evident there was then a great deal of debate among various churches relative to membership in secret orders, including the Odd Fellows. For example, it was reported in 1890 (accurately or not I do not know) the Catholic Church might allow memberships in some secret orders...
Fort Worth Gazette, 10-22-1890.
Though in Boston five years later, it was reported Catholic members were required to withdraw from Odd Fellowship, etc.:
Boston Daily Journal, 7-15-1895.
The Cumberland Presbyterian Church, to which General Forrest was said to be attached, evidently had less problem with Odd Fellowship. I see other notables in Tennessee affiliated with that church, given as members of Free masonry and Odd Fellowship, so evidently that church had no particular problem with these orders:
Some Methodist Churches, evidently, generally had no concern about secret orders:
Others did;
A "Free Methodist" church movement and churches after 1848 generally disapproved of such memberships:
The Protestant Episcopal Church evidently had some debate on the subject. I find from 1874 in Pennsylvania:
19th Century "Missionary Baptist" Churches (like those affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention), may have been of tolerance. For example I see a mid-19th Century Baptist minister in Virginia noted:
....
Evidently the Primitive or Old School Baptists (called "hardshells") generally opposed membership with secret orders, from even the 1820s. Some idea of their continued opposition (from 1909):
Of course there were many other churches and various opinions on the subject, even within those noted above.
The 19th Century Odd Fellows insignias did employ the all seeing eye. From 1878.
Regarding General Forrest and General Pike. Immediately post-war both were in and around Memphis. Pike was the Editor of the Memphis Appeal. There was a political falling out in the summer of 1868. On August 1 of that year, General Forrest and several other former Confederate generals met with the State authorities at Nashville to petition with a "pledge of peace." Forrest spoke there, stating:
Daily Memphis Avalanche, 8-5-1868.
Shortly after at a Democratic political meeting and convention on August 10 at Brownsville, Tennessee, including some Confederate generals and some black speakers, resolutions were made to approve black suffrage, and to encourage it to vote the Democrat ticket, and appealing to them as voters to approve of restoring "rebel suffrage," etc. Among the speakers at this meeting was General Forrest.
The Brownsville resolutions stated in part...
General Forrest's speech was long at that event, mostly against the administration of Governor Brownlow, and his suggestion all his political enemies, and all Confederate veterans, were Ku Klux, etc. But relative to the resolutions:
General Pike disapproved of this event, and its resolutions, in unmeasured terms, in the pages of his paper, and opposed any acceptance of suffrage for the freedmen. The Memphis Daily Avalanche, edited by Mr. Galloway, a frequent associate of Gen. Forrest, responded negatively to Pike's criticisms:
Memphis Daily Avalanche, 8-27-1868.
General Pike would not relent in his opposition to the suffrage of the freedmen. From one of his lengthy replies, he claimed the freedmen were not legal citizens and denied they had any right to vote:
....
...
....
Memphis Daily Appeal, 9-2-1868.
Gen. Pike, unwilling to compromise, and amidst further battles of words on the subject, shortly stopped editorship of the Appeal, and soon left Memphis for Washington.
The South-western, Shreveport, LA, 9-9-1868.
Borderruffian
Captain
- Joined
- Aug 4, 2007
- Location
- Marshfield Missouri
Judge not lest ye be Judged. As far as my opinion of whether NBF had a Conversion to Christianity or was in fact Christian prior to that only his Creator knows. For those of us removed it's just supposition.
kGs
Private
- Joined
- May 17, 2023
Lots of good info, you an Odd Fellow/Mason? This is a little off-topic but I suspect you have an opinion on similar masonic claims regarding pretty much all CS leadership? my own reading led me to think they were not although both Davis's father and Stonewall's father (died before Jackson could know him) were masons.
Borderruffian
Captain
- Joined
- Aug 4, 2007
- Location
- Marshfield Missouri
- Joined
- Sep 15, 2018
- Location
- South Texas
I don't think age matters when it comes to being saved or converted.Whether you're a teenager or an old man on his death bed it should not be of any concern to any man.
RedRover
1st Lieutenant
- Joined
- Dec 16, 2019
I am not a member of either order, and cannot comment on either beyond the quoted opinions from the period books given. They are just two of many secret orders in the Civil War period. As noted, opinion varied widely, with some members of each perhaps disliking the other, and some who were members of both... and various churches or individuals in the South having various opinions of either.
The mobilization of distrust of secret orders for political purposes commenced in the 1830s as I recall.
In the 1830s the "third party" as it were, was the "Anti-Masonic Party" which ran presidential candidates, and produced many pamphlets claiming the organization was a secret rebellion against the Constitution, etc.
By 1840 the Anti-Mason party had largely ceased as a stand alone.
Speaking of the secret orders...
In the late 1850s the Sons of Malta had a rapid, though short-lived popularity, including night parades of "fantasticals" in cities across the United States. Supposedly it was designed in "serio-comic" mockery of secret orders, and perhaps those who feared them. For example, I've seen that they would parade with great solemnity, but upon inquiry, they would remain silent or otherwise decline to explain their purpose or intent other than in cryptic sentences, etc. (which was, evidently, to some, rather unnerving).
A Sons of Malta salute...
I've never had any negative interactions with members of Masonry or Odd Fellowship, etc., but I seem to recall some decades back several slight unpleasantries on the playgrounds of youth when confronted by something akin the Sons of Malta secret sign as the above... usually accompanied by the cryptic watch-words, "na ny--na-ny--boo--boo" or some such...
The Sons of Malta was rather overshadowed in 1860 by the wide-spread public parades of the "Wide-Awakes" and "Little Dougs" etc. relative to the contentious presidential race of that year.
Another secret order of some note from the '50s was the "Knights of the Golden Circle," a club ostensibly supporting further adventures in central America and the Caribbean, as if to annex them to the United States; founded by "General" George Bickley, he claimed to be a political/military organization, to finance fillibustering expeditions (like some which had recently been in the news, like Walker's in Nicaragua, or the Lopez expeditions to Cuba)... but the whole thing was principally a money making scam, and as such he was allowed to operate at will throughout the country without violating any ACTUAL laws relative to international disorder.
n 1859 and early 1860 Southern newspapers had seen enough to start warning people not to get caught up in this fraud. People from up north who had invested in the venture were showing up in Texas prepared to invade Mexico with the order, and surprised to find the promised pay, bounties, weapons, transports, and quartermasters flush with money for recruits, arms, etc. were not there (they didn't exist!)
Here's an explanation of Bickley's originating the K.G.C.'s:
New York Daily Tribune, 8-11-1863.
From a New Orleans paper in 1860, Southerners already being warned about the frauds...
By the war some of the chapters evidently remained, and the K.G.C.'s caused some excitement, in attempting to "recruit" their tax base. It was said many persons in the South went about claiming to represent K.G.C. chapters, and that they represented the secession movement particularly... so pay them for secret signs, etc.
Post-war, Jeff Davis says the fact that such K.G.C. "sharps" were about, had no relevance to the formation of the Confederacy, which was carried out in public view, and defended with public arms in hand.
But the order and similar offshoots (if they were off-shoots) made more noise in the North. For example, General Jubal Early claims that during Lee's march through Pennsylvania some sharps had sold memberships to the farmers under the claim the Confederates were K.G.C.s and would thus spare them...
In the mid-west the K.G.C. order, revamped particularly as the "Order of American Knights" (O.A.K.) provided a wartime foil for Gov. Morton's administration...
...
There were many indictments of members...
...
Even where the organizations changed their names, it was not uncommon for any anti-administration clubs to be publicly derided as K.G.C.s...
Delaware Gazette, Delaware, OH, 7-21-1862.
Similar throughout much throughout the Union, there was political press about the K.G.C.'s, or similar clubs, especially in the midwest; in Ohio...
even Kentucky:
Also in California...
It pleased some to declare that the Southern Confederacy itself was but a manifested K.G.C. empire, in the manner expounded by Bickley's lectures and pamphlets. It was consequently not odd to find in the northern Press claims that Jefferson Davis only served the Confederacy out of his allegiance to the K.G.C.:
New York Daily Reformer, Watertown, 10-26-1864.
Or (from 1885) that Davis had originated the "Order of American Knights" and their ritual and order...
There is no evidence that Davis had anything particular to do with these clubs. But in 1864, with these organizations bedeviling the republican party according to the northern press, the Confederate government's agents in Canada were pleased to try to encourage their further organization to affect the 1864 election, if possible:
From Clement Eaton (History of the Southern Confederacy):
That seems to have been the extent of the Confederacy's interest in such organizations. I have seen even modern authors claim the K.G.C. was a "Southern" political institution, with Jefferson Davis at the head. Credulity varies.
13 IL Cav & 64 GA Inf
Captain
- Joined
- Jan 29, 2024
- Location
- Florida & Alabama (also GA & VA)
Amazing that you knew this or could look it up quickly. Good find.
kGs
Private
- Joined
- May 17, 2023
Anyone know where I can find Shelby Foote's commentary on Forrest?
13 IL Cav & 64 GA Inf
Captain
- Joined
- Jan 29, 2024
- Location
- Florida & Alabama (also GA & VA)
He must have been the tallest guy at those get togethers.
Similar threads
- Learn About Us
- ►About CivilWarTalk
- ►Contact the Webmaster
- ►Meet the Staff
- ►Link to CivilWarTalk
- Join Our Community
- ►Register
- ►Browse Forums
- ►View Today's Discussions
- ►Search the Forum
- Get Help
- ►FAQ
- ►Student Guide
- ►Forum Rules & Etiquette
- ►Copyright / DMCA
Bringing the