kids encyclopedia robot

Nathan Bedford Forrest facts for kids

Kids Encyclopedia Facts
Quick facts for kids
Nathan Bedford Forrest
Nathan B. Forrest - LOCc.jpg
Birth name Nathan Bedford Forrest
Nickname(s) "Old Bed"
"Wizard of the Saddle"
Born (1821-07-13)July 13, 1821
Chapel Hill, Tennessee, U.S.
Died October 29, 1877(1877-10-29) (aged 56)
Memphis, Tennessee, U.S.
Buried
Allegiance  Confederate States
Service/branch  Confederate States Army
Years of service 1861–1865
Rank Confederate States of America General-collar.svg Lieutenant General
Unit
  • White's Company "E"
  • Tennessee Mounted Rifles
  • (7th Tennessee Cavalry)
Battles/wars
Relations
  • Nathan Forrest II (grandson)
  • Nathan Forrest III (great grandson)
  • John N. Forrest (brother)
  • William H. Forrest (brother)
  • Aaron H. Forrest (brother)
  • Jesse A. Forrest (brother)
  • Jeffrey E. Forrest (brother)
  • Mat Luxton (half-brother)

Nathan Bedford Forrest (July 13, 1821 – October 29, 1877) was a Confederate States Army general during the American Civil War and later the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan from 1867 to 1869.

Before the war, Forrest amassed substantial wealth as a cotton plantation owner, horse and cattle trader, real estate broker, and slave trader. In June 1861, he enlisted in the Confederate Army and became one of the few soldiers during the war to enlist as a private and be promoted to general without previous military training. An expert cavalry leader, Forrest was given command of a corps and established new doctrines for mobile forces, earning the nickname "The Wizard of the Saddle". He used his cavalry troops as mounted infantry and often deployed artillery as the lead in battle, thus helping to "revolutionize cavalry tactics". While scholars generally acknowledge Forrest's skills and acumen as a cavalry leader and military strategist, he is a controversial figure in U.S. history for prewar slave trading, his role in the massacre of several hundred U.S. Army soldiers at Fort Pillow, a majority of them black, and his postwar leadership of the Klan.

In June 2021, the remains of Forrest and his wife were exhumed from Health Sciences Park, where they had been buried for over 100 years, and where a monument of him once stood. They were later reburied in Columbia, Tennessee. In July 2021, Tennessee officials voted to move Forrest's bust from the State Capitol to the Tennessee State Museum.

Early life and career

Nathan Bedford Forrest Boyhood Home
Nathan Bedford Forrest Boyhood Home, Chapel Hill, Tennessee (2021)

Nathan Bedford Forrest was born on July 13, 1821, to a poor settler family in a secluded frontier cabin near Chapel Hill hamlet, then part of Bedford County, Tennessee, but now in Marshall County. Forrest was the first son of Mariam (Beck) and William Forrest. His blacksmith father was of English descent, and most of his biographers state that his mother was of Scotch-Irish descent, but the Memphis Genealogical Society says that she was of English descent. He and his twin sister, Fanny, were the two eldest of 12 children. Their great-grandfather, Shadrach Forrest, moved between 1730 and 1740 from Virginia to North Carolina, where his son and grandson were born; they moved to Tennessee in 1806. Forrest's family lived in a log house (now preserved as the Nathan Bedford Forrest Boyhood Home) from 1830 to 1833. John Allan Wyeth, who served in an Alabama regiment under Forrest, described it as a one-room building with a loft and no windows. William Forrest worked as a blacksmith in Tennessee until 1834, when he moved with his family to Salem, Mississippi. William died in 1837 and Forrest became the primary caretaker of the family at age 16.

Crop and autotune Forrest's early home in Hernando, Mississippi from Mathes, J. Harvey - 1902 - General Forrest - facing page 11
Early home of the Forrest family in Hernando, Mississippi, photograph published 1902

In 1858, Forrest was elected a Memphis city alderman as a Southern Democrat and served two consecutive terms. In 1859, he bought two large cotton plantations in Coahoma County, Mississippi and a half-interest in another plantation in Arkansas; by October 1860, he owned at least 3,345 acres in Mississippi. He acquired several cotton plantations in the Delta region of West Tennessee. By the time the American Civil War started in 1861, he had become one of the wealthiest men in the Southern United States, having amassed a "personal fortune that he claimed was worth $1.5 million".

Forrest stood 6 feet 2 inches (1.88 m) in height and weighed about 180 pounds (82 kg). He was noted as having a "striking and commanding presence" by U.S. Army Captain Lewis Hosea, an aide to Gen. James H. Wilson. Forrest rarely drank and abstained from tobacco use; he was often described as generally mild-mannered, but according to Hosea and other contemporaries who knew him, his demeanor changed drastically when provoked or angered. He was known as a tireless rider in the saddle and a skilled swordsman. Although he was not formally educated, according to Spaulding, Forrest was able to read and write clear and grammatical English, although he was a poor speller.

Marriage and family

Nathan B. Forrest, William H. Forrest, Jesse A. Forrest, Jeffrey E. Forrest
The brothers Forrest, left to right: N. B. Forrest, William H. Forrest, Jesse A. Forrest (photographed after the civil war), Jeffrey E. Forrest; there may be no surviving photographs of Aaron H. Forrest and John N. Forrest
Capt William M Forrest With a Group of the Members of Gen Nathan Bedford Forrest s Staff
N. B. Forrest, his 15-year-old son W. M. Forrest, and his 25-year-old brother J. E. Forrest all enlisted in the Confederate States Army on the same day; Jeffrey Forrest was killed in action at the Battle of Okolona in 1864 ("Capt. William M. Forrest With a Group of the Members of Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest's Staff" Memphis Commercial Appeal, February 9, 1908)

Forrest had twelve brothers and sisters; two of his eight brothers and three of his four sisters died of typhoid fever at an early age, all at about the same time. He also contracted the disease, but survived; his father recovered but died from residual effects of the disease five years later when Bedford was 16. His mother, Miriam, then married James Horatio Luxton, of Marshall, Texas, in 1843 and gave birth to four more children. In 1845, Forrest married Mary Ann Montgomery (1826–1893), the niece of a Presbyterian minister who was her legal guardian. They had two children, William Montgomery Bedford Forrest llll (1846–1908), who enlisted at the age of 15 and served alongside his father in the war, and a daughter, Fanny (1849–1854), who died in childhood. There are also reports dating to 1864 that Forrest had two children with a young enslaved woman named Catharine.

All of Forrest's younger brothers—in order, John N. Forrest, William H. Forrest, Aaron H. Forrest, Jesse A. Forrest, and Jeffrey E. Forrest—worked as slave traders with Bedford before the war. All but John, who was a disabled veteran of the Mexican–American War, served as Confederate military officers in Tennessee and Mississippi during the American Civil War. Forrest's son William M. Forrest served as his aide-de-camp, and his half-brother Mat Luxton was a sergeant and scout in his cavalry.

Forrest's grandson, Nathan Bedford Forrest II (1872–1931), became commander-in-chief of the Sons of Confederate Veterans and a Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan in Georgia and secretary of the national organization. A great-grandson, Nathan Bedford Forrest III (1905–1943), graduated from West Point and rose to the rank of brigadier general in the U.S. Army Air Corps; he was killed during a bombing raid over Nazi Germany in 1943, becoming the first American general to die in combat in the European theater during World War II.

American Civil War

Early cavalry command

After the Civil War broke out, Forrest enlisted in the Confederate States Army (CSA) on June 14, 1861. He reported for training at Fort Wright near Randolph, Tennessee, joining Captain Josiah White's cavalry company, the Tennessee Mounted Rifles (Seventh Tennessee Cavalry), as a private along with his youngest brother and 15-year-old son. Upon seeing how badly equipped the CSA was, Forrest offered to buy horses and equipment with his own money for a regiment of Tennessee volunteer soldiers.

His superior officers and Governor of Tennessee Isham G. Harris were surprised that someone of Forrest's wealth and prominence had enlisted as a soldier, especially since significant planters were exempted from service. They commissioned him as a lieutenant colonel and authorized him to recruit and train a battalion of Confederate mounted rangers. In October 1861, Forrest was given command of a regiment, the 3rd Tennessee Cavalry. Though Forrest had no prior formal military training or experience, he had exhibited leadership and soon proved he could successfully employ military tactics.

Forrest gained a reputation for his willingness to maintain discipline through the use of physical force. When the information a scout returned with proved to be erroneous, Forrest struck the man's head against a tree. After a lieutenant refused to join his troops in a river where they were building a bridge, Forrest pushed him into the water. A soldier who refused to paddle across the Tennessee River was hit with an oar by his general. Two others who fled from a rout were beaten with a branch, and Forrest shot the one who had borne the colors. Along with brutal treatment of his prisoners, this led many soldiers and junior officers to refuse to serve under him.

Public debate surrounded Tennessee's decision to join the Confederacy, and both the Confederate and United States armies recruited soldiers from the state. Over 100,000 men from Tennessee served with the Confederacy, and over 31,000 served with the U.S. Army. Forrest posted advertisements to join his regiment, with the slogan, "Let's have some fun and kill some Yankees!". Forrest's command included his Escort Company (his "Special Forces"), for which he selected the best soldiers available. This unit, which varied in size from 40 to 90 men, constituted the elite of his cavalry.

Sacramento and Fort Donelson

Template:Image flip Forrest won praise for his performance under fire during an early victory in the Battle of Sacramento in Kentucky, the first in which he commanded troops in the field, where he routed a U.S. Army force by personally leading a cavalry charge that Brigadier General Charles Clark later commended. Forrest distinguished himself further at the Battle of Fort Donelson in February 1862. After his cavalry captured a U.S. artillery battery, he broke out of a siege headed by Major General Ulysses S. Grant, rallying nearly 4,000 troops and leading them to escape across the Cumberland River.

A few days after the Confederate surrender of Fort Donelson, with the fall of Nashville to U.S. forces imminent, Forrest took command of the city. All available carts and wagons were pressed into service to haul 600 boxes of army clothing, 250,000 pounds of bacon, and 40 wagon-loads of ammunition to the railroad depots, to be sent off to Chattanooga and Decatur. Forrest arranged for heavy ordnance machinery, including a new cannon rifling machine and 14 cannons, as well as parts from the Nashville Armory, to be sent to Atlanta for use by the Confederate Army.

Shiloh and Murfreesboro

A month later, Forrest was back in action at the Battle of Shiloh, fought April 6–7, 1862. After the U.S. victory, Forrest commanded a Confederate rear guard. In the battle of Fallen Timbers, he drove through the U.S. skirmish line. Not realizing that the rest of his men had halted their charge when they reached the full U.S. brigade, Forrest charged the brigade alone and soon found himself surrounded. He emptied his Colt Army revolvers into the swirling mass of U.S. Army soldiers and pulled out his saber, hacking, and slashing. A U.S. infantryman on the ground beside Forrest fired a musket ball at him with a point-blank shot, nearly knocking him out of the saddle. The ball went through Forrest's pelvis and lodged near his spine. A surgeon removed the musket ball a week later without anesthesia, which was unavailable.

By early summer, Forrest commanded a new brigade of inexperienced cavalry regiments. He led them into Middle Tennessee in July under orders to launch a cavalry raid. On July 13, 1862, led them into the First Battle of Murfreesboro, as a result of which all of the U.S. units surrendered to Forrest. The Confederates destroyed much of the U.S. Army's supplies and railroad tracks in the area.

West Tennessee raids

NathanBedfordForrestportrait
Gen. Bedford Forrest

Promoted on July 21, 1862, to brigadier general, Forrest was given command of a Confederate cavalry brigade. In December 1862, Forrest's veteran troopers were reassigned by General Braxton Bragg to another officer despite his protest. Forrest had to recruit a new brigade of about 2,000 inexperienced men, most of whom lacked weapons. Again, Bragg ordered a series of raids to disrupt the communications of the U.S. Army forces under Grant, which were threatening the city of Vicksburg, Mississippi. Forrest protested that sending such untrained men behind enemy lines was unwise, but Bragg insisted, and Forrest obeyed his orders. In the ensuing raids, he was pursued by thousands of U.S. soldiers trying to locate his fast-moving forces. Avoiding attack by never staying in one place long, Forrest eventually led his troops during the spring and summer of 1864 on raids into west Tennessee, as far north as the banks of the Ohio River in southwest Kentucky and into north Mississippi.

Forrest returned to his base in Mississippi with more men than he had started with. By then, all were fully armed with captured U.S. Army weapons. As a result, Grant was forced to revise and delay his Vicksburg campaign strategy. Newspaper correspondent Sylvanus Cadwallader, who traveled with Grant for three years during his campaigns, wrote that Forrest "was the only Confederate cavalryman of whom Grant stood in much dread".

Dover, Brentwood, and Chattanooga

The U.S. Army gained military control of Tennessee in 1862 and occupied it for the duration of the war, having taken control of strategic cities and railroads. Forrest continued to lead his men in small-scale operations, including the Battle of Dover and the Battle of Brentwood until April 1863. The Confederate army dispatched him with a small force into the backcountry of northern Alabama and western Georgia to defend against an attack of 3,000 U.S. Army cavalrymen commanded by Colonel Abel Streight. Streight had orders to cut the Confederate railroad south of Chattanooga, Tennessee to seal off Bragg's supply line and force him to retreat into Georgia. Forrest chased Streight's men for 16 days, harassing them all the way. Streight's goal changed from dismantling the railroad to escaping the pursuit. On May 3, Forrest caught up with Streight's unit east of Cedar Bluff, Alabama. Forrest had fewer men than the U.S. side but feigned having a larger force by repeatedly parading some around a hilltop until Streight was convinced to surrender his 1,500 or so exhausted troops (historians Kevin Dougherty and Keith S. Hebert say he had about 1,700 men).

Day's Gap, Chickamauga, and Paducah

Forrest served with the main army at the Battle of Chickamauga on September 18–20, 1863, in which he pursued the retreating U.S. Army and took hundreds of prisoners.

Forrest (along with other subordinates of Bragg) was not blameless for the disorganization that had led Bragg to decide against pursuit after the Chickamauga victory. He and Wheeler had regularly failed throughout the entire Chattanooga campaign to gather intelligence on the disposition of Union forces, in Forrest's case because he often involved himself in the thick of battles where he could not gather this information. Forrest also failed tactically on the first day of battle, moving his troops north up the creek in response to a perceived threat instead of screening the Confederate advance as he had been ordered to. As a result, the time it took the infantry to fight for the crossings at Alexander's and Reed's bridges allowed Union general William Rosecrans to shore up his defenses in the area. That night, Forrest again declined to screen the army's right flank; if he had he would have found a wide gap in the Union lines, a misstep that has been called "the most significant intelligence oversight of the entire battle" as it left Bragg utterly uninformed about Union dispositions even as he planned a counterattack. The next morning a poorly-planned attack Forrest initiated in that area led to heavy casualties and delayed the counterattack.

In an attempt to build a foothold to retake Chattanooga, Bragg ordered Forrest and Wheeler north after the battle in order that they might disrupt Rosecrans's fragile supply line from Nashville. But Forrest diverted to Knoxville, allowing Rosecrans to consolidate his hold on the city, leading Bragg to describe Forrest as "nothing more than a good raider" as he signed orders to transfer Forrest out of his command, to western Tennessee, a month or so later. This supposedly led to a meeting where Forrest confronted and threatened Bragg's life, calling him a coward and saying "you might as well not give me any orders, for I will not obey them", one of several instances in his career where Forrest was openly insubordinate to his superior officers. It is now considered to be apocryphal, although it was repeated in biographies published with Forrest's approval, suggesting it reflected his assessment of Bragg.

On December 4, 1863, Forrest was promoted to the rank of major general. On March 25, 1864, Forrest's cavalry raided the town of Paducah, Kentucky in the Battle of Paducah, during which Forrest demanded the surrender of U.S. Colonel Stephen G. Hicks: "if I have to storm your works, you may expect no quarter." Hicks refused to comply with the ultimatum, and according to his subsequent report, Forrest's troops took a position and set up a battery of guns while a flag of truce was still up. As soon as they received the U.S. reply, they moved forward at the command of a junior officer, and the U.S. forces opened fire. The Confederates tried to storm the fort but were repulsed; they rallied and made two more attempts, both of which failed.

Fort Pillow massacre

Fort Pillow, located 40 miles (64 km) upriver from Memphis (near Henning, Tennessee), was initially constructed by Confederate general Gideon Johnson Pillow on the bluffs of the Mississippi River, and taken over by U.S. forces in 1862 after the Confederates had abandoned the fort. The fort was defended by 557 U.S. Army troops, 295 white and 262 black, under U.S. Army Maj. L.F. Booth.

On April 12, 1864, Forrest's men, under Brig. Gen. James Chalmers, attacked and recaptured Fort Pillow. Booth and his adjutant were killed in the battle, leaving Fort Pillow under the command of Major William Bradford. Forrest had reached the fort at 10 a.m. after a hard ride from Mississippi. By 3:30 p.m., Forrest had concluded that the U.S. troops could not hold the fort; thus, he ordered a flag of truce raised and demanded that the fort be surrendered. As he often did to avoid the high casualties that came with having to storm fortifications, Forrest warned Bradford that he could not be held responsible for what his men might do in the heat of such a battle. Bradford refused to surrender, believing his troops could escape to the U.S. Navy gunboat, USS New Era, on the Mississippi River. Forrest's men immediately took over the fort, while U.S. Army soldiers retreated to the lower bluffs of the river, but the gunboat did not come to their rescue.

What happened next became known as the Fort Pillow Massacre. As the U.S. Army troops surrendered, Forrest's men opened fire, slaughtering black and white U.S. Army soldiers. According to historians John Cimprich and Bruce Tap, although their numbers were roughly equal, two-thirds of the black U.S. Army soldiers were killed, while only a third of the whites were killed. The atrocities at Fort Pillow continued throughout the night. President Abraham Lincoln asked his cabinet for opinions as to how the United States should respond to the massacre.

Nathan Bedford Forrest - Thomas Nast - Sept 5 1868
Union and Republican-aligned editorial cartoonist Thomas Nast often awarded Forrest "with an ironic Fort Pillow 'medal' when he skewered him in a dozen cartoons as a prominent white supremacy, Lost Cause of the Confederacy symbol."

At the time of the massacre, General Grant was no longer in Tennessee but had transferred to the east to command all U.S. troops. Grant wrote in his memoirs that Forrest, in his report of the battle, had "left out the part which shocks humanity to read".

Because of the events at Fort Pillow, the U.S. public and press viewed Forrest as a war criminal.

Brices Cross Roads and Tupelo

Brices Crossroads
Battle of Brices Cross Roads

Forrest's most decisive victory came on June 10, 1864, when his 3,500-man force clashed with 8,500 men commanded by U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Samuel D. Sturgis at the Battle of Brices Crossroads in northeastern Mississippi. Here, the mobility of the troops under his command and his superior tactics led to victory, allowing him to continue harassing U.S. forces in southwestern Tennessee and northern Mississippi throughout the war. Forrest set up a position for an attack to repulse a pursuing force commanded by Sturgis, who had been sent to impede Forrest from destroying U.S. Army supply lines and fortifications. When Sturgis's Federal army came upon the crossroads, they collided with Forrest's cavalry. Sturgis ordered his infantry to advance to the front line to counteract the cavalry. The infantry, tired, weary, and suffering under the heat, were quickly broken and sent into mass retreat. Forrest sent a full charge after the retreating army and captured 16 artillery pieces, 176 wagons, and 1,500 stands of small arms. In all, the maneuver cost Forrest 96 men killed and 396 wounded. The day was worse for U.S. troops, who suffered 223 killed, 394 wounded, and 1,623 missing. The losses were a deep blow to the black regiment under Sturgis's command. In the hasty retreat, they stripped off commemorative badges that read "Remember Fort Pillow" to avoid goading the Confederate force pursuing them.

One month later, while serving under General Stephen D. Lee, Forrest experienced tactical defeat at the Battle of Tupelo in 1864. Concerned about U.S. Army supply lines, Maj. Gen. Sherman sent a force under the command of Maj. Gen. Andrew J. Smith to deal with Forrest. U.S. Army forces drove the Confederates from the field, and Forrest was wounded in the foot, but his forces were not wholly destroyed. He continued to oppose U.S. Army efforts in the West for the remainder of the war.

Tennessee Raids

Forrest's Raid - Harper's Weekly - September 10, 1864
"Forrest's Raid" sketched by George H. Ellsbury (Harper's Weekly, September 10, 1864)

Forrest led other raids that summer and fall, including a famous one into U.S. Army-held downtown Memphis in August 1864 (the Second Battle of Memphis) and another on a major U.S. Army supply depot at Johnsonville, Tennessee. On November 4, 1864, during the Battle of Johnsonville, the Confederates shelled the city, sinking three gunboats and nearly thirty other ships and destroying many tons of supplies. During Hood's Tennessee Campaign, he fought alongside General John Bell Hood, the newest commander of the Confederate Army of Tennessee, in the Second Battle of Franklin on November 30. Facing a disastrous defeat, Forrest argued bitterly with Hood (his superior officer) demanding permission to cross the Harpeth River and cut off the escape route of U.S. Army Maj. Gen. John M. Schofield's army. He eventually attempted, but it was too late.

Murfreesboro, Nashville, and Selma

Franklin-Nashville campaign
Map of the Franklin–Nashville campaign including troops commanded by Forrest

After his bloody defeat at Franklin, Hood continued to Nashville. Hood ordered Forrest to conduct an independent raid against the Murfreesboro garrison. After success in achieving the objectives specified by Hood, Forrest engaged U.S. forces near Murfreesboro on December 5, 1864. In what would be known as the Third Battle of Murfreesboro, a portion of Forrest's command broke and ran. When Hood's battle-hardened Army of Tennessee, consisting of 40,000 men deployed in three infantry corps plus 10,000 to 15,000 cavalry, was all but destroyed on December 15–16, at the Battle of Nashville, Forrest distinguished himself by commanding the Confederate rear guard in a series of actions that allowed what was left of the army to escape. For this, he would later be promoted to the rank of lieutenant general on March 2, 1865. A portion of his command, now dismounted, was surprised and captured in their camp at Verona, Mississippi on December 25, 1864, during a raid of the Mobile and Ohio Railroad by a brigade of Brig. Gen. Benjamin Grierson's cavalry division.

In the spring of 1865, Forrest led an unsuccessful defense of the state of Alabama against Wilson's Raid. His opponent, U.S. Army Brig. Gen. James H. Wilson, defeated Forrest at the Battle of Selma on April 2, 1865. A week later, General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Grant in Virginia. When he received news of Lee's surrender, Forrest surrendered as well. On May 9, 1865, at Gainesville, Forrest read his farewell address to the men under his command, urging them to "submit to the powers to be, and to aid in restoring peace and establishing law and order throughout the land."

War record and promotions

Postwar years and later life

Memphis and vicinity LOC 2006636341
"Memphis and vicinity" mapped during the American Civil War, including President's Island where Forrest's post-war farm was worked by convict labor

As a former slave owner and slave trader, Forrest experienced the abolition of slavery at the war's end as a major financial setback. During the war, he became interested in the area around Crowley's Ridge and took up civilian life in 1865 in Memphis, Tennessee. In 1866, Forrest and C.C. McCreanor contracted to finish the Memphis & Little Rock Railroad, including a right-of-way that passed over the ridge. The ridgetop commissary he built as a provisioning store for the 1,000 Irish laborers hired to lay the rails became the nucleus of a town, which most residents called "Forrest's Town" and which was incorporated as Forrest City, Arkansas in 1870.

The historian Court Carney writes that Forrest was not universally popular in the white Memphis community: he alienated many of the city's business people in his commercial dealings and was criticized for questionable business practices that caused him to default on debts.

He later found employment at the Selma-based Marion & Memphis Railroad and eventually became the company president. He was not as successful in railroad promotion as in war, and, under his direction, the company went bankrupt. Nearly ruined as the result of this failure, Forrest spent his final days running an eight-hundred-acre farm on land he leased on President's Island in the Mississippi River, where he and his wife lived in a log cabin. There, with the labor of over a hundred prison convicts, he grew corn, potatoes, vegetables, and cotton profitably, but his health steadily declined. In May 1877, Forrest's use of convict labor was described as indistinguishable from slavery, in its use of bloodhounds, shotgun-wielding guards, and corporal punishment. Critics also argued it was unjust and exploitative: "The convict farmer has a financial interest in the conviction of as many persons as he may need...and the obsequious and corrupt myrmidons and magistrates of the law can readily supply the demand at a short notice in a country where the unprotected negro is left to steal or starve."

P15138coll6 2626 full - State of Alabama, Selma, Marion, Memphis Railroad Company bonds. Issued September 1, 1869
Selma, Marion & Memphis Railroad bonds, issued 1869 by the state of Alabama, signed by N. B. Forrest

Death

Elmwood Cemetery S Pauline St 2010-09-25 Memphis TN 17
Marker at Memphis' historic Elmwood Cemetery, where a number of Forrest family members are buried
Elmwood Cemetery S Pauline St 2010-09-25 Memphis TN 14
During his lifetime Forrest helped raise money for a Confederate monument at the cemetery

Forrest reportedly died from acute complications of diabetes at the Memphis home of his brother Jesse on October 29, 1877. His eulogy was delivered by his recent spiritual mentor, former Confederate chaplain George Tucker Stainback, who declared in his eulogy: "Lieutenant-General Nathan Bedford Forrest, though dead, yet speaketh. His acts have photographed themselves upon the hearts of thousands, and will speak there forever."

Forrest's funeral procession was over two miles long. The crowd of mourners was estimated to include 20,000 people. According to Forrest biographer Jack Hurst, writers present at the public viewing of Forrest's body and the funeral procession noted many black citizens among them.

Forrest was buried at Elmwood Cemetery in Memphis. In 1904, the remains of Forrest and his wife Mary were disinterred from Elmwood and moved to a Memphis city park that was originally named Forrest Park in his honor but has since been renamed Health Sciences Park.

On July 7, 2015, the Memphis City Council unanimously voted to remove the statue of Forrest from Health Sciences Park, and to return the remains of Forrest and his wife to Elmwood Cemetery. However, on October 13, 2017, the Tennessee Historical Commission invoked the Tennessee Heritage Protection Act of 2013 and U.S. Public Law 85-425: Sec. 410 to overrule the city. Consequently, Memphis sold the park land to Memphis Greenspace, a non-profit entity not subject to the Tennessee Heritage Protection Act, which immediately removed the monument as explained below.

See also

Kids robot.svg In Spanish: Nathan Bedford Forrest para niños


kids search engine
Nathan Bedford Forrest Facts for Kids. Kiddle Encyclopedia.