Questions about Nathan Bedford Forrest
Short answers, pulled from the story.
Who was Nathan Bedford Forrest and why is he controversial?
Nathan Bedford Forrest was a Confederate general during the American Civil War who rose from private to lieutenant general without prior military training, and later served as the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. He is controversial because of his role in the Fort Pillow Massacre of 1864, in which Black Union soldiers were killed after the fort had effectively ceased resistance, and his leadership of the Klan's campaign of racial terror during Reconstruction.
What happened at the Fort Pillow Massacre in 1864?
On the 12th of April 1864, Confederate forces under Forrest's command attacked Fort Pillow, Tennessee, which was defended by 557 Union soldiers, roughly half of them Black. After the Union commander refused to surrender, Confederate troops killed a disproportionate share of Black soldiers: according to historians John Cimprich and Bruce Tap, two-thirds of the Black soldiers were killed while only a third of the white soldiers died. Confederate soldier Achilles Clark wrote to his sisters that the scene was a "great slaughter pen" and described Black soldiers being shot after falling to their knees to beg for mercy.
What role did Nathan Bedford Forrest play in the Ku Klux Klan?
Forrest was elected the first and only Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan in the spring of 1867, after being sworn in at the Maxwell House Hotel in Nashville. He was active in Klan recruitment from 1867 to 1868. In January 1869, citing the Klan's lack of discipline and increasingly counterproductive methods, he dissolved the organization and ordered members to destroy their costumes, though few complied.
How did Nathan Bedford Forrest make his fortune before the Civil War?
Forrest built his prewar fortune primarily through the slave trade. Between 1851 and 1860, he was one of the four largest slave traders in Memphis, operating a business headquartered at 87 Adams Street that could hold up to 500 enslaved people. He is believed to have earned profits of hundreds of thousands of dollars in 1850s currency. He also owned at least 3,345 acres of cotton plantations in Mississippi by 1860 and claimed a personal fortune worth $1.5 million when the Civil War began.
What was Nathan Bedford Forrest's military reputation during the Civil War?
Forrest was widely considered one of the Civil War's most skilled cavalry commanders. Union General William Tecumseh Sherman called him "that devil Forrest" and described him as "the most remarkable man our civil war produced on either side." Correspondent Sylvanus Cadwallader, who traveled with Grant for three years, wrote that Forrest was the only Confederate cavalryman of whom Grant stood in much dread. Forrest pioneered the use of cavalry as mounted infantry, using speed and maneuver to disrupt enemy supply lines and communications.
When and where did Nathan Bedford Forrest die?
Nathan Bedford Forrest died on the 29th of October 1877, from acute complications of diabetes at the Memphis home of his brother Jesse. He was 56 years old. His funeral procession was more than two miles long and drew an estimated 20,000 mourners. He was buried at Elmwood Cemetery in Memphis with military honors; his remains were later moved multiple times and reburied in Columbia, Tennessee, in September 2021.