First With The Most Forrest

Nathan Bedford Forrest did not invent mobilized guerilla warfare, but he did modernize and polish it to an extent that has left few theoretical areas for improvement. Tanks and jeeps, it could even be said, do not possess the mobility relative to the main force which they attach that Forrest’s dedicated band of horsemen enjoyed. Following in the footsteps of Francis Marion and Lighthorse Harry Lee, American practitioners of the devastating hit-and-run cavalry attach of the Revolutionary War, Forrest raised their effective but geographically limited campaigns to an art-form spread over the widest possible tactical theatre. He accomplished this with superior knowledge of terrain and of horses coupled and with an iron will, a complete disregard for physical exhaustion (his own and that of his men) and, this book will demonstrate, by the most admirable sort of sheer country orneriness. Forrest, a man of simple upbringing, is the perfect symbol for the odd mélange that was the Confederate Army; patrician West Pointers like Lee side by side by unregenerate racists like Forrest. These well-bred students of battles and from the classical era were not prevented by an almost unimaginable difference in class from being able to recognize the tactical genius of a farmer from the low country... That any scholar of this history of warfare would have to judge Forrest rather more harshly for his conduct after the war than this conduct during it is just another tragic aspect of the larger tragedy that generated The War Between the States. Heroes rose from unlikely places and returned, when the time for heroism had past, to their more unheroic pursuits. Whether than return negates the valor shown during the conflict is only for you to determine, after you have learned of Forrest’s life in all its aspects, heroic, and less so.

Amid the aristocratic ranks of the Confederate cavalry, Nathan Bedford Forrest was untutored, all but unlettered, and regarded as no more than a guerrilla. His tactic was the headlong charge, mounted with such swiftness and ferocity that General Sherman called him a "devil" who should "be hunted down and killed if it costs 10,000 lives and bankrupts the treasury." And in a war in which officers prided themselves on their decorum, Forrest habitually issued surrender-or-die ultimatums to the enemy and often intimidated his own superiors. After being in command at the notorious Fort Pillow Massacre, he went on to haunt the South as the first grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. Now this epic figure is restored to human dimensions in an exemplary biography that puts both Forrest's genius and his savagery into the context of his time, chronicling his rise from frontiersman to slave trader, private to lieutenant general, Klansman to—eventually—New South businessman and racial moderate. Unflinching in its analysis and with extensive new research, Nathan Bedford Forrest is an invaluable and immensely readable addition to the literature of the Civil War.

While much has been written about Forrest's notorious life as a slave trader, Civil War general, and early leader of the Ku Klux Klan, his later Christian conversion and renunciation of his racist views are largely overlooked. This book is specifically devoted to the spiritual aspect of Forrest's life. By God's grace, he changed his ways.

For the last two years of the Civil War I was a private soldier in a regiment of Alabama cavalry which had formerly served under Forrest. Four companies of this regiment had formed a portion of the famous battalion which had distinguished itself in the engagement at Fort Donelson, and, refusing to surrender, had marched out with him through the gap in General Grant’s lines. Although I was at no time directly under General Forrest, I was impressed by the enthusiastic devotion to him of these veterans, who had followed his banner for the first year of the war, and who seemed never to tire in speaking of his kind treatment of them, his sympathetic nature as a man, his great personal daring, and especially of his wonderful achievements as a commander. Of these achievements I was at that time not altogether ignorant. His escape from Fort Donelson; the desperate charge which saved Beauregard’s army from Sherman’s vigorous pursuit after Shiloh, in which he was severely wounded; the capture of Murfreesborough with its entire garrison of infantry and artillery, with his small brigade of cavalry without cannon; the charge on and capture of Coburn’s infantry at Thompson’s station; the capture of the garrison at Brentwood; and the relentless pursuit of Streight’s raiders, which ended in the surrender of these gallant Union soldiers to Forrest with less than one-half of their number, had already attracted wide attention and had made him famous. The knowledge of these facts, together with a personal association with the men who had felt the influence of his immediate leadership, naturally interested me in his career, which I closely followed to the end of the great struggle. When the general government, with wise forethought, began to collect and to place at the disposal of its citizens the official reports and correspondence, and all the reliable literature of the war, I undertook, in the light of these and other authentic papers, a closer analysis of his military record. The further my investigations proceeded, the more I became convinced that while Forrest was justly acknowledged to be one of the most famous fighters and leaders of mounted infantry or cavalry which the war produced on either side, he was more than this, and that a careful and unbiased statement of his achievements would place him in history not only as one of the most remarkable and romantic personalities of the Civil War, but as one of the ablest soldiers of the world. While I had hoped, as year after year slipped by since peace was declared, that some one abler than I would undertake the task of placing in readable shape the story of his life, I had determined if this were not done before I should pass into the “sere and yellow leaf” to pay this tribute to his memory myself. It has been a work of years to gather up from every available source the matter relating to this history—his early days, his civil and private life, and the accurate facts of his military record. In 1894, I wrote a condensed sketch, had it printed in single column upon the margin of wide sheets of paper, leaving a large blank space, and these I mailed to every surviving officer or soldier of his command whose address I could obtain, and to others personally acquainted with Forrest before or after the war. All were requested to return the sheet with corrections, and to add everything of interest, for the accuracy of which the sender could vouch. I also caused the publication of this sketch in various newspapers of wide circulation in the section of the South from which his troops were chiefly drawn, and asked as well for private letters of information. As a result of these efforts a great mass of material came into my possession, and an interest was aroused which encouraged me in the laborious task of sifting the reliable from the unreliable, and of making presentable to the reader the matter which was worthy of credence.

An insightful exploration of the relentless myth of the famous Civil War general, this volume scrutinizes the collective public memory of Nathan Bedford Forrest as it has evolved through the press, memoirs, biographies, and popular culture.