Forrest What made Forrest most successful as a commander?

What INDIVIDUAL skill contributed most in making Forrest an effective commander?

  • Knowledge of terrain

    Votes: 4 16.7%
  • Executive/entrepreneurial experience

    Votes: 4 16.7%
  • Willingness and ability to bluff

    Votes: 10 41.7%
  • Knowledge of people

    Votes: 10 41.7%
  • Fast learner

    Votes: 11 45.8%
  • Other (Please explain!)

    Votes: 10 41.7%

  • Total voters
    24
Forrest's success due to speed. He had concentrations of troops spread all over the area he was tasked with defending or invading and when he moved on a target he would spread the word to all the relevant groups to concentrate on a specific zone ASAP. So, while he often had few troops on hand, when needed, he could move to a new target with the confidence that by the time he got there many other troops would be waiting for him or soon to arrive?
 
Forrest's success due to speed. He had concentrations of troops spread all over the area he was tasked with defending or invading and when he moved on a target he would spread the word to all the relevant groups to concentrate on a specific zone ASAP. So, while he often had few troops on hand, when needed, he could move to a new target with the confidence that by the time he got there many other troops would be waiting for him or soon to arrive?

Agreed. This is where Forrest's brothers were essential to his objectives. They were excellent at support. Forrest was probably the most mobile cavalryman of the war - it was a trademark of his. For example, he was the only substantial Confederate commander who could move with relative ease inside Union held territory.
 
I've sometimes wondered if he was right! A military education might have made an even better soldier - or ruined a fine talent. As he said, "Whenever I fit one of them West Pointer fellers, I generally had him whipped before he got his tune pitched." He never missed a chance to poke one in the eye, either - Wilson's spy-who-came-to-dinner, Major Hosea was a proud graduate of West Point and said so, and also wondered at Forrest's success. Forrest replied, "I have never rubbed my back up against no college."

Of course, given that many of the top Union and Confederate commanders were graduates of the USMA, and/or were from families that constituted the middle and upper layers of American society, Forrest lacking this pedigree, would certainly do his best to denigrate the sons and daughters of that strata of society. Forrest was a born leader in his own right, but the West Pointers also learned a thing or two along the way.
 
“get there the fastest, with the mostest.”

Yep, that was one of the basic foundations of Forrest's strategy in all things military.

However, over the years . . . his order became corrupted by the vernacular speech of the yeoman farmers in Tennessee.

I think he actually said something like: "get there first with the most men ".

It means the same the same thing and to this day remains a sound strategy.

The may be some details in this older thread:

 
I believe his greatest strength was his greatest weakness. The lack of a West Point education was mentioned earlier. What that lack was specifically was the ability to take orders as well as give them. Perhaps no other soldier in the CW was better at independent action. However his greatest failure (Tupelo) and the most consequential at that was his failure to be a dutiful subordinate; to carry out the orders he was given; to accept his superior's plan and work to fulfil that vision. He had no training and no life experience to draw upon in that regard
 
Bedford Forrest successful skill was his ability to use intimidation and manipulation to control men due to his understanding of fear. He developed this skill by way of his success in his role of being a Slave Trader and plantation slave owner. It also explains why he could only control a small force of men as he did not have the ability/confidence/formal training to control a larger force. In regards to his so called wonderful military tactics that he invented. That is simply adopted well known American Indians tactics that most Americans living on the frontier part of the country knew. I recall maybe that Bedford's father was supposedly an Indian fighter or his grandfather.
 
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