Nathaniel Bedford Forrest was a Confederate army general and a promoter of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). Views of his military leadership have recently tilted from that of an acclaimed general to one with far lower opinions. Born in Chapel Hill, Tennessee in 1821, his life is most memorable for his active promotion of the KKK after the Civil War when he settled in Memphis along the Mississippi River. Forrest was a major slave trader and after the abolition of slavery, his financial security was gone. He took an opportunity to run the Marion & Memphis Railroad in Selma, Alabama and drove the company into bankruptcy.
Forrest grew up in a violent frontier environment in a rugged area 30 miles south of Nashville. There were no established institutional or social organizations in the area and disputes were often settled by a duel. It is recorded that Forrest, his mentor, and uncle had a business partnership and a disgruntled group of men challenged them one day resulting in Forrest shooting and killing two of the men and then chasing off the other two with a bowie knife. This event earned him the titles of constable, coroner, and lieutenant in the state militia. He developed a reputation for being popular and ambitious with a lack of education and a temper which brought the military.
After moving to Memphis in 1851, Forrest switched from a career of merchandising cattle to selling the enslaved who were “sold down the river.” Forrest lived the good life having a self-claimed worth over $1 million by the late 1850s. With his power and influence, he was elected Town Alderman in 1858. He enlisted in the Confederate Army in June of 1861 with no formal military education.
Viewing a threat to slavery as a threat to his personal status, Forrest volunteered as a private in the Confederate army when the South seceded. He quickly moved up to colonel where his rampant rage led to the abuse of his subordinates. When mistakes were made, he responded the only way he knew, with violence. One such event resulted in Forrest being shot by a subordinate in the abdomen and the same subordinate dying from a knife wound to the lung. Some people refused to serve under him due to his reputation as a tyrant and hothead. He still utilized duels while he was a commander to solve disputes.
Military intelligence has been viewed as a major lacking skill for Forrest that had a significant impact on the problems of the Confederate military. This void resulted in the loss of the South’s strategic rail center in Chattanooga due to insufficient intelligence being provided by Forrest. The inability to provide information about the Union Army locations aided the Union in their ability to move around. Forrest’s misplacement of Union threat assessments allowed the Union to advance, even with gaps in their lines. Essentially, Forrest’s title was above his own skill and ability as a commander.
As his campaign moved further into western Tennessee, Forrest either provided the orders or lost control of his troops when they massacred over half of the Black Union soldiers at Fort Pillow. These murders occurred primarily after the troops had surrendered. Fort Pillow followed Forrest’s own troops recently having been repelled with heavy casualties at a nearby fort by Black soldiers. History has reported two versions of the massacre at Fort Pillow with some military historians saying the killings were done in self-defense while others provide credible evidence that this was a retaliatory slaughter. It is rumored that many of the Black Union soldiers at Fort Pillow were former slaves of Forrest’s and that it took only minutes for 2/3rds of the soldiers to be slaughtered with minimal Confederate losses. A congressional committee labeled the event as "an indiscriminate slaughter," resulting in Forrest being known as the "Butcher of Fort Pillow."
Forrest’s troops retained their violent and brutal reputation against the formerly enslaved and Southern Unionists including the murder of surrendered commanders and returning captives to slavery in violation of the Articles of War. His lack of leadership led to a mistaken charge against the Union at Tupelo. Forrest later suffered a serious wound after attacking a Union rearguard.
“Forrest’s inability to effectively disrupt Sherman’s supply line during the 1864 Atlanta campaign, coupled with his ineffectual defense of the now-worthless interior of Mississippi, was a major contributing factor in the defeat of Confederate arms in the decisive year and theater of the war. If the South had any chance of victory, it was in using its hard-riding cavalrymen to disrupt Union supply lines, as they had successfully done in 1862, to stymie the efforts of the North’s superior arms. But Forrest’s failure to adapt led directly to Southern defeat.” (Rein, C.)
Looking back at his military career, some have viewed Forrest as magnanimous and a strategic genius, but many critics now say he failed at operational and tactical levels of war while brutally treating his captured opponents. Some have gone as far as saying he was one of the worst military commanders ever when looking at his personal attributes, including his alienation of peers, berating subordinates, and irritating his superiors.
Forrest did have some military strengths as a leader, but not as a commander. He was an expert cavalryman and able to inspire others to follow him into battle but he was viewed as a skilled tactician who lacked strategic vision. In summary, he was a better warrior than commander and wars are won by the stronger commanders. Forest’s reputation as a military leader has been championed by the supporters of the Lost Cause movement who want to preserve the myth of Southern history. Meanwhile, the Fort Pillow massacre was a precursor to his future violence against Blacks including the murder of one of his hired freedmen with an ax handle. His foray into the KKK was a natural next step and at one point, he even threatened to have the Klan confront the Tennessee State Militia.
Looking for a scapegoat for financial his losses, Forrest became the central figure of the rising KKK movement with an emphasis of disenfranchising Blacks and securing white supremacy. In 1867, Forrest was allegedly installed as the first Grand Wizard of the Klan at their convention in Nashville, Tennessee. While serving as the head of the Klan, he denied his membership and said he was only a sympathizer to the cause. He simultaneously claimed he could rally 40,000 Klansman in less than a week from an organization of 550,000 men nationally. Forrest also claimed the KKK’s enemy were northerners that had moved to the South at the end of the war, even though their focus was on violence against Blacks.
Under his leadership, the Klan grew rapidly and provided aid to Confederate widows and orphans while resisting Reconstruction initiatives to advance Black voting rights and to end segregation. Allegedly, Forrest was opposed to the increasingly violent actions by the Klan and began to distance himself from the organization in 1869. It is also speculated he left the Klan because he was losing his authority over them as they grew. Forrest contracted with the state of Tennessee in 1875 to provide a prison work farm along the Mississippi River while living with his wife in a log cabin salvaged from his plantation. He remained there until his death from poor health in 1877, reportedly due to diabetes.
After his death, perspectives on Forrest’s life began to diverge. Years later, his military achievements became mystical. However, some say that his unscrupulous business practices made him an unpopular local figure who was feared and disliked. The elevation of Forrest to Confederate military hero began at the turn of the 20th century with the rise of the “Lost Cause” efforts by the United Daughters of the Confederacy who focus on rewriting the Southern narrative of the Civil War. Forrest was now considered an exemplar of moral virtue by white Memphians who honored him with a statue. With the statue came further elevation of Forrest’s reputation to “spiritual comforter.” Only a minimum number of Confederate statues were erected in Memphis at the time and even one-time resident, Jefferson Davis, did not have a statue there until the 1960s. The Forrest statue was said to be for the good of the community as a tribute to virtue, as well as a tribute to his life. There were 30,000 people at the statue dedication in 1905. Forrest was now cast as a loving humanitarian, kind, gentle, moral, and respectful…the definition of revisionist history.
(The statue of Nathan Bedford Forrest in Memphis was removed in 2021, for more information on the removal, please go to https://www.npr.org/2021/06/19/1008371491/confederate-general-remains-memphis-moved)
Cited sources
· Carney, Court. “The Contested Image of Nathan Bedford Forrest.” The Journal of Southern History 67, no. 3 (2001): 601–30. https://doi.org/10.2307/3070019.
· “Forrest, Nathan Bedford.” MS Civil Rights Project. https://mscivilrightsproject.org/forrest/person-forrest/nathan-bedford-forrest/.
· “Nathan Bedford Forrest” by Christopher M. Rein, reprinted with permission from The Worst Military Leaders in History, edited by John M. Jennings and Chuck Steele, Reaktion Books Ltd. © Reaktion Books 2022. Retrieved from: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/03/nathan-bedford-forrest-military-career-civil-war-ku-klux-klan.html