Forrest The Brothers Forrest

[larry_cockerham]

Dr. John Watson Morton

The following was written by former Capt. John W. Morton describing his introduction of Forrest into the Klan. This is a man who was there. He was Grand Cyclops of the Nashville Den. He writes in the third person with respect to himself. Dr. Watson defends the Klan of which he was a part as being necessary for civil justice and peace and talks about the time when it had served it's purpose and was shut down in Tennessee. This is his description of the entry of Nathan Buford Forrest to the group of Klansmen in Nashville. It can be found in the appendix of his The Artillery of Nathan Bedford Forrest's Cavalry published 1909:

 

[larry_cockerham]

The entry

"Captain Morton then had an office diagonally across from the Maxwell House [which sat on the corner of Church and 4th Av. N]. Looking from his window one day, he saw General Forrest walking impatiently around Calhoun Corner, as it was then called. Hastening down the steps to greet his former chieftain, he encountered a little negro boy, who inquired where he could find Captain Morton. He said: "There's a man over yonder on the corner and he wants to see him, and he looks like he wants to see him mighty bad." Captain Morton hurried across the street, and, after salutation, the General said; "John, I hear this Kuklux Klan is organized in Nashville, and I know you are in it. I want to join." The young man avoided the issue and took his Commander for a ride. General Forrest persisted in his questions about the Klan and Morton kept smiling and changing the subject. On reaching a dense woods in a secluded valley outside the city, Morton suddenly turned on his former leader and said: "General, do you say you want to join the Kuklux?"

 

[larry_cockerham]

General Forrest was somewhat vexed and swore a little: "Didn't I tell you that's what I came here for?"

"Smiling at the idea of giving orders to his erstwhile commander, Captain Morton said; "Well, get out of the buggy." General Forrest stepped out of the buggy, and next received the order: "Hold up your right hand".

General Forrest did as he was ordered, and Captain Morton solemly administered the preliminary oath of the order. As he finished taking the oath, General Forrest said: "John, that's the worst swearing that I ever did."

"That's all I can give you now. Go to Room 10 at the Maxwell House tonight and you can get all you want. Now you know how to get in," said Captain Morton.

 

[larry_cockerham]

An opinion

Many contemporary writers in this early part of the 21st century, portray General Forrest as a racial bigot bringing great difficulty to the black population of the south. This is an attempt to get at the truth. Was General Forrest a racial bigot? Certainly not. Many of his former slaves served with him the entire war. At the close of the war there was no organized state or local government in Tennessee. The male population, both white and black, had been devastated. Nearly all men between the ages of 20 and 40 had been actively involved in the war. "Carpetbaggers" from the north were roaming the south looking for investment opportunities and taking advantage of vulnerable families. There were reports of "uprisings" of blacks newly freed and frustrated by their prospects for the future causing riots and borrowing food, clothing and shelter as were many white southerners.

General Forrest doubtless was interested in trying to keep the peace as much as possible until order could be restored. This was volunteer militia duty on his part, probably very little more. Yes, there are many sides and view points to this story.

 

[Elijah]

The posts above seem to indicate a man anxious to join the KKK which I find inconsistent with a conclusion that Forrest wasn't a racial bigot. When added to the Fort Pillow events, Forrest looks pretty racist even though he later turned against the KKK. In my opinion, a conclusion that he was 'certainly not' a bigot has not been properly evidenced.

Many of the people of the day were racists. (still true today). That doesn't mean Forrest wasn't also a fine cavalry leader for the Confederate Army. People are generally multi-faceted capable of much right and much wrong within the same lifetime.

 

[bama46]

The posts above seem to indicate a man anxious to join the KKK which I find inconsistent with a conclusion that Forrest wasn't a racial bigot. When added to the Fort Pillow events, Forrest looks pretty racist even though he later turned against the KKK. In my opinion, a conclusion that he was 'certainly not' a bigot has not been properly evidenced.

Many of the people of the day were racists. (still true today). That doesn't mean Forrest wasn't also a fine cavalry leader for the Confederate Army. People are generally multi-faceted capable of much right and much wrong within the same lifetime.

The KKK of the time was more of a Confederate veterans social club who also tried to bring about a certain amount of order out of the chaos that was middle Tennessee at the end of the war. Larry has written extensively on this and I suggest you read his posts on various forrest threads.
Additionally, it remains to be seen that Pillow was a racially motivated massacre. You have to remember that the northern newspapers blew this incident all out of porportion.

 

[K Hale]

And that's the truth about Forrest, the man, and the myth, forever joined to the story of a hard-won Confederate victory at Fort Pillow.

Having read all of this, I am not quite clear on whether the Union troops at Ft. Pillow did or did not surrender before being shot down by Forrest's men. Evidently one side says they did and the other side says they didn't. Did any evidence proving this one way or the other ever come to light?

I don't care whether these guys were black, white, or purple, you don't execute people who have surrendered. At the same time, you don't surrender and then pick up your musket and start shooting again. So I'm interested in knowing just what went on here.

Forrest says:

"We busted the fort at ninerclock and scattered the ******s. The men is still a cillanem in the woods."

This suggests, at least in my mind, people being chased down and murdered. Regarding prisoners, Forrest goes on to say:

"Them as was cotch with spoons and brestpins and sich was cilld and the rest of the lot was payrold and told to git."

So is he saying anyone with any object, be it a spoon or a breastpin, was considered to be engaging in armed resistance and was shot?

(I do like his substitution of "payrold" for "paroled," as it brings to mind the image of him handing out paychecks before sending them on their way.)

 

[Elijah]

The KKK of the time was more of a Confederate veterans social club who also tried to bring about a certain amount of order out of the chaos that was middle Tennessee at the end of the war. Larry has written extensively on this and I suggest you read his posts on various forrest threads.
Additionally, it remains to be seen that Pillow was a racially motivated massacre. You have to remember that the northern newspapers blew this incident all out of porportion.

No personal offense meant but, I have read many of Larry's posts on Forrest. I find him very knowledgeable but shy about admitting Forrest shortcomings. The KKK was more than a social club. I believe they were a social club that went around having fun scaring the black population in an attempt to keep them intimidated.

However, I freely admit that Forrest backed out within a couple of years. Hopefully because he found his actions distasteful and wanted to be a better man. Just like his quotes from 1875 would seem to indicate.

 

[K Hale]

Serving under Lt. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, Major Anderson served as his communications secretary, or in other words (so Bama and I can understand), he wrote many of Forrest's letters.

<snip>

[I ask if this letter depicts the emotions of the horrible individual many continue to attempt to attach with N.B. Forrest? I think not.]

So Anderson wrote the letter, then Forrest thought it sounded good, and signed it?

It's hard to trust documents written by one person and signed by another.

 

[larry_cockerham]

No personal offense meant but, I have read many of Larry's posts on Forrest. I find him very knowledgeable but shy about admitting Forrest shortcomings. The KKK was more than a social club. I believe they were a social club that went around having fun scaring the black population in an attempt to keep them intimidated.

However, I freely admit that Forrest backed out within a couple of years. Hopefully because he found his actions distasteful and wanted to be a better man. Just like his quotes from 1875 would seem to indicate.

Thanks for the kind words and the others as well. Please be assured that none of us have shied from Forrest's human traits. You must put him in his position in history, in his time and place. This was a semi-literate man, raised on a rocky farm in middle Tennessee as the son of a blacksmith who was forced to help raise his younger siblings when his Dad died in 1834 when Bedford was 13. He had the fortitude and determination to do just that. His youngest brother died in his arms at Okolona, Jeffrey Forrest who had been born six months after his Father's death. Forrest's (Bedford) formal education was minimal, though he managed to accumulate a couple of million real dollars as the war broke out. No small feat for a dummy. He was doing something right. The fact that he was a most successful dealer in slaves has been described many times. To put that activity in it's place in history is difficult for us to imagine in 2009. It was very legal, just not moral. Most all inhabitants of the north and south were racists, as was Bedford Forrest. There were some soldiers killed at Fort Pillow who apparently didn't surrender properly. Forrest was not present at that precise moment, and according to his testimony and that of others did not order a massacre. Now, if you take the life of this man and study it in detail, I sincerely believe you will adjust your judgement of him just a bit toward the positive side. All of the evidence, taken collectively and analyzed over and over gives me and many others the benefit of the doubt. He was mostly just a warrior, a smart and compassionate one. His association with the klan was a brief period and must be studied in context. Read Morton's book on Forrest along with the works of Jordan & Pryor, Wyeth, Sword, Bradley, Stanley Horne, Jack Hurst and others and let me know your conclusions. I started from scratch. I never heard of the guy 15 years ago and I still champion my Union ancestors. After much study, I'm a Forrest fan. The facts are there, but the evidence must be taken as a body, not just an opinion or an article from a person not as in love with the South as many of us who are part of it confess to be. Nathan Bedford Forrest was a good man, warts and all. No, he didn't find the actions of the klan distasteful, but rather necessary. Read the accounts from Morton, one of the few men who were there. His record stands up under scrutiny as well. Later generations, different story, but we ain't talkin' about the 1880-1960s. Please put yourself in perspective in time and think about it with an open mind.

 

[larry_cockerham]

<snip>

So Anderson wrote the letter, then Forrest thought it sounded good, and signed it?

It's hard to trust documents written by one person and signed by another.

Most of Forrest's reports apparently were written by his staff. Col. D.C. Kelly was married to the sister of Commodore Vanderbilt, the guy who founded the university with Kelly's help. Kelly was a Methodist minister whose efforts became Peabody College, now part of Vanderbilt. Capt. Anderson who did much of the writing was also quite literate. Forrest was extremely smart, quick to makedecisions that resulted in victory in battle time after time. He rode home from South Alabama upright in the saddle after four long years in which he killed more than half a dozen men in combat with his own hands and caused the deaths of thousands of others and 29 of the horses he rode. His thoughts were very clear and his sentiment shows time after time in a consistent manner as do the quotes from his public statements. All our US presidents have had writers, Forrest was not so different.

 

[larry_cockerham]

After some consideration, I agree that it's rather unlikely that Forrest believed in superstitions. Well, if we assume that superstition is a kind of distorted religious feeling, than it is hard to suppose that someone who turned to God so late in life could have been prone to any religious feeling earlier.

I'm very pleased by the opportunity to hear a presentation tonight on this very subject from a man who has spent at least four decades gaining knowledge about Forrest and the war in general (no pun). Dr. Michael Bradley spent 36 years teaching history in college at Motlow State (named for a great Tennessean, Lem Motlow, proprietor and son-in-law of Jack Daniels of Lynchburg) and who walks around spouting knowledge gained along with his phd from Vanderbilt. Dr. Bradley is currently Commander of the Tennessee Divsion of the Sons of Confederate Veterans and has been an ordained minister for decades as well. I'm betting I'll learn some stuff. If you're on Edmondson Pike tonight, look us up!

 

[footeghost]

<snip>

So Anderson wrote the letter, then Forrest thought it sounded good, and signed it?

It's hard to trust documents written by one person and signed by another.

Yes Forrest would dictate. I believe Winston Churchill among no less than most commanders, Diplimats,, Presidents, did?do as well. It is well known Forrest was Semi-literate spelling Phonectictly and saying pens looked like snakes. Anderson did not make anything up though after it being read to him(Forrest) he would say " it didn't have the right pitch" and they do it over. I believe his points were his, respected, and well taken as dead serious. He also as larry pointed out by some miracle was one of the richest businessmen in the south common sense whatever. This thread is one of the finest on this site and a Forrest must. If you really want to see what all the hoopla is about, unbelievably interesting at worst, ha ha. yes I am a Fan no Matter Ben

 

[larry_cockerham]

slaves and the Forrest family

Forrest and the Slave Trade

From his beginnings as a young farmer at the age of 13, Bedford Forrest continued to clear land around his widowed mother's farm. It was "a life of poverty, toil and responsibility," but with the help of his siblings, the farm grew and returned increased profits, permitting Bedford to purchase additional land for more crops. As Forrest matured into his early 20's, he was tutored in the business world by an uncle and other relatives and sharpened his business acumen on his crop and land deals.
North Mississippi was still the frontier in the 1840's but its proximity to the growing city of Memphis provided a ready market for Forrest's produce and increased his land business. Forrest soon expanded his vocation by joining in his uncle Jonathan's livery stable and horse-trading business, and he and his brothers became accomplished horsemen as well. In 1845, at the age of 24, Bedford married Mary Ann Montgomery and settled in Hernando, MS, a mere 20 miles south of Memphis.

 

[larry_cockerham]

In 1851, as the Forrest farm holdings increased, as did his income, Bedford could afford to employ slave labor to work the expanding farmland. The scope of his business, too, now having outgrown Hernando, Forrest moved to the bustling, booming river port of Memphis. There he dealt in cotton, in plantations, in livestock and, as an offshoot to his other business, he now found it economically expedient to get into another accepted commerce: the slave-trade business.

"It is said Forrest was kind to his negroes; that he never separated members of a family, and that he always told his slaves to go out in the city and choose their own masters. There is no instance of any slave taking advantage of the permission to run away. Forrest taught them that it was to their own interest not to abuse the privilege; and, as he also taught them to fear him exceedingly, I can believe the story. There were some men in the town to whom he would never sell a slave, because they had the reputation of being cruel masters."

One of his regular customers was a Negro slave-trader from Kentucky, who routinely bought and sold over 1200 slaves in a year.

 

[larry_cockerham]

business is over

In 1858, Bedford Forrest was elected an alderman (city councilman) for the city of Memphis and re-elected in 1859. Early in 1859, Forrest had had enough of the demands of his business trades and thus the real-estate, livestock, and slave business was closed out in Memphis, and Alderman Forrest resigned to settle on his plantation in Mississippi. Before the end of the year, however, he returned to make his residence in Memphis, where he was promptly re-elected as Alderman, to serve his unexpired term until 1860. He never reentered the slave-trade business.

Facts & quotes taken from "First With the Most", Robert Henry, pg. 23-27.

 

[larry_cockerham]

advertising

An 1859-60 Memphis newspaper ad submitted by Nathan read:

"buying and selling Negroes, both on commission and on private account" 89 Adams Street.

An ad for Forrest's Yard read:

"one of the most complete and commodious establishments of the kind in the Southern country".

Another note in Jack Hurst's Nathan Bedford Forrest, A Biography said he was paying for the college education of youngest brothers.

There is also mention of his step-father James H. Lunton. Before the war Nathan owned plantations in Coahoma County, Mississippi and across the river in Phillips County, Arkansas.

 

[larry_cockerham]

after the war

In an interview 28 Aug 1868 with the Cincinnati Commercial Newspaper, General Nathan Bedford Forrest was quoted:

"And here I want you to understand distinctly, I am not an enemy to the Negro. We want him here among us. He is the only laboring class we have, and more than that, I would sooner trust him than the white scalawag or carpetbagger."

One can easily see here his attitude that the Blacks were perhaps not completely equal, though he appears to be friends with the notion of their co-existence. The reference above to the white scalawags and carpetbaggers was the key to his brief involvement with the klan in Tennessee.

 

[larry_cockerham]

Willie, the son and aide to the general

William Montgomery Forrest [ Nathan Bedford, William, Shadrack, William, James] Captain Forrest was with his father Nathan Bedford Forrest in all the campaigns that caused the world to ring with his fame. He was wounded three times, at Fort Donelson, at Harrisburg and at Spring Hill, Tenn. At Harrisburg, MS on 14 Jul 1864 as a Lt. Willie was thrown from his horse by a concussion from a shell and was carried from the field. He was paroled at Gainesville, Alabama May 11, 1865. William married Jane Taylor Cook 1868 in Hernando, DeSoto County, Mississippi. He joined the Historical Society in Memphis, Tenn. Oct. 9, 1904. He died Feb. 8, 1908 at his home at 187 Adams Avenue,. Memphis, Tenn. He was stricken with a fatal stroke of paralysis while at the Lyceum Theater. His funeral was held at the Court Avenue Presbyterian Church, Memphis, Tenn. It is written that he had a premonition of his death, as he wrote in a letter to his wife Jane on the night he collapsed with a stroke.

 

[larry_cockerham]

Nathan Bedford Forrest II, grandson

This is the guy who causes the memory of his grandfather the most grief:

Nathan Bedford Forrest II [William Montgomery, Nathan Bedford, William, Shadrack, William, James] Born 6 Apr 1872 Memphis d. 13 Mar 1931 White Springs, Hamilton County, Florida. He was married to Mattie Hayes Patton 1 Jun 1904 (b. 1883 Memphis), and lived for many years in Memphis where he was connected with the Equitable Life Insurance Co. He had also been in business with his father as a railroad and levee contractor. He left Memphis about 1919 and made his home in Atlanta. He also spent 5 years in Alaska as a miner and prospector.

NATHAN BEDFORD FORREST II, Grand Dragon of the Klan

For a number of years he had taken an active interest in the Ku Klux Klan, which had it's headquarters in Atlanta. At the time of his death he held the Honorary position of Imperial Klokann, an office in the national organization. He also held the position as Grand Dragon of Georgia. He died March 13, 1931 in White Springs, Florida of a paralytic stroke. He had one son Nathan Bedford Forrest III, and three daughters, Mary Helen, (sic) Nandy and Martha.