The Battles And Campaigns Of Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest 1861 1865

Nathan Bedford Forrest. The Tennessean was one of the most intriguing and controversial characters to emerge during the Civil War. Books and articles on the man span the gamut from hero worship because of his remarkable battlefield victories, to condemnation for his involvement with the slaughter at Fort Pillow and later, his association with the Ku Klux Klan. Retired Special Forces brigadier general John R. Scales plows entirely new ground with The Battles and Campaigns of General Nathan Bedford Forrest, 1861-1865, a careful and unique examination of Forrest's wartime activities and how his actions affected the war in the Western Theater. Each chapter covers specific raids or campaigns, all arranged chronologically. After describing the environment within which Forrest operated, which helps readers understand the larger situation within which his movements were made and his battles were fought, Gen. Scales narrates the decisions Forrest and his opponents made and the actions they took. Firsthand sources, including heavy use of documents and reports from the Official Records, coupled with 109 original maps, make it easy to understand the often complex background, movements, and engagements involving Forrest and his command. Scales' study is also a meticulous guide to Forrest's campaigns. For example, each action is augmented with detailed driving directions to allow readers to examine his battlefields and the routes his cavalry took during its famous raids. For the first time, students of Forrest's campaigns can follow in his footsteps, experiencing the terrain much the same way he did. A detailed review and assessment of each raid or campaign follows the description of the actions and the associated driving instructions. Throughout, General Scales relies upon his own extensive military background to help evaluate and explain how and why Forrest grew in command ability and potential as a result of his experiences--or didn't. The late award-winning author Albert Castel asked two major questions about Nathan Bedford Forrest: "Exactly what impact did Forrest's dazzling raids and victories have upon the overall course of the war?" and "Had Forrest been given a higher command and/or greater opportunities, what would have been the potential outcome as regards the fate of the Confederacy?" The Battles and Campaigns of General Nathan Bedford Forrest makes it much easier to answer both.

In June 1861, practically unschooled, without military training or experience, Nathan Bedford Forrest (1821–1877) enlisted in the Confederate Army as a private. Yet by the Civil War's end he was a lieutenant general whose dazzling exploits and bloody victories caused him to be regarded by his Northern opponents as a "devil," by Southerners as a living legend, and by historians as the greatest cavalry commander and one of the few authentic military geniuses produced by the war. His spectacular, unparalleled career has intrigued generations of Civil War scholars and enthusiasts. Subsequent biographies or studies of him have never totally superseded The Campaigns of General Nathan Bedford Forrest (1868) by General Thomas Jordan (West Pointer and chief of staff to Generals Beauregard, Albert Sidney Johnston, and Braxton Bragg) and the professional journalist J. P. Pryor. Forrest himself gave them complete access to his military papers, spent many hours in interviews with them, and closely supervised their writing. Hence, this work is not just a flat campaign study of Forrest—in effect, it is his military memoir and as such remains the most valuable source on Forrest and his cavalry.

In the work, now in course of preparation by the Messrs. Blelock & Co., will be found an authentic account of the campaigns and operations in which I took part during the war for the independence of the Confederate States. Believing it to be proper that there should be a timely and lasting record of the deeds and services of those whom I have been so fortunate as to command, I placed all the facts and papers in my possession or available to me, in the hands of accomplished, writers, who have done their part with close and conscientious research, and have endeavored to make up a chronicle neither over-wrought nor over-colored, as I can testify. For the greater part of the statements of the narrative I am responsible, and all facts and incidents derived from other sources are properly credited in the footnotes. It is hoped that justice will be found done in some degree to the courage, zeal, fortitude, and other soldierly qualities of the men of “Forrest’s Cavalry,” for that has been the main purpose of the work. N. B. Forrest. Memphis, Tenn., October 3, 1867.

This is the best biography of one of the most exciting, colorful, and controversial figures of the Civil War. A renowned cavalryman, Nathan Bedford Forrest perfected a ruthless hit-and-run guerrilla warfare that terrified Union soldiers and garnered the respect of warriors like William Sherman, who described his adversary as "that Devil, Forrest . . . the most remarkable man our Civil War produced on either side." Historian Bruce Catton rated Forrest "one of the authentic military geniuses of the whole war," but Brian Steel Wills covers much more than the cavalryman's incredible feats on the field of battle. He also provides the most thoughtful and complete analysis of Forrest's hardscrabble childhood in backwater Mississippi; his rise to wealth in the Memphis slave trade; his role in the infamous Fort Pillow massacre of black Union soldiers; his role as early leader and Grand Wizard of the first Ku Klux Klan; and his declining health and premature death in a reconstructing America.

Spanning countries and centuries, a “how-not-to” guide to leadership that reveals the most maladroit military commanders in history—now in paperback. For this book, fifteen distinguished historians were given a deceptively simple task: identify their choice for the worst military leader in history and then explain why theirs is the worst. From the clueless Conrad von Hötzendorf and George A. Custer to the criminal Baron Roman F. von Ungern-Sternberg and the bungling Garnet Wolseley, this book presents a rogues’ gallery of military incompetents. Rather than merely rehashing biographical details, the contributors take an original and unconventional look at military leadership in a way that appeals to both specialists and general readers alike. While there are plenty of books that analyze the keys to success, The Worst Military Leaders in History offers lessons of failure to avoid. In other words, this book is a “how-not-to” guide to leadership.

The Nashville and Decatur Railroad was in operation five months before the start of the Civil War and 17 months before the Federals took control of Nashville and the railroad. Running through Central Tennessee to Alabama, the highly contested line passed through Confederate-held territory, where rebels and their sympathizers continually sabotaged bridges, trestles and track. This first full-length work on the N&D Railroad emphasizes its importance in the Western Theater and brings to light the four key men who kept it open for the duration of the war. Significant military activities in the region are described, along with the contraband camp, military complex and other features surrounding the railroad's only tunnel.

The Civil War fascinates Americans like no other war in their history. Many Americans are still fighting some of the war’s issues in an Odyssey that stretches back to the first settlement and will persist until the end of time. The war itself was an Iliad of brilliant generals like Grant, Sherman, and Sheridan for the Union, or Lee, Jackson, and Forrest for the Confederacy; epic battles like Gettysburg and Chickamauga; epic sieges like Vicksburg and Petersburg; and epic naval combats such as Monitor versus Merrimack, or Kearsarge versus Alabama. It was America’s most horrific war, with more dead than all others combined. Around 625,000 soldiers and 125,000 civilians died from various causes, bringing the total to 750,000 people. Of 31 million Americans, 2.1 million northerners and 880,000 southerners donned uniforms. Why did eleven states eventually ban together to rebel against the United States? President Jefferson Davis began an answer when he said: ‘If the Confederacy falls, there should be written on its tombstone, Died of a Theory.’ That theory justified the enslavement of blacks by whites as a natural right and duty of a superior race over an inferior race; a theory, it was believed, that morally and economically elevated both races. Although slavery was the Civil War’s core cause, there were related chronic conflicts over the nature of government, citizenship, liberty, property, equality, wealth, race, identity, justice, crime, voting, power, and history – some of which issues have never entirely gone away. America’s Unending Civil War is unique among thousands of books on the subject. None before has explored the Civil War’s related and enduring conflicts of ideas and principles through four centuries of a nation’s history.

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.