Nathan Bedford Forrest (1821 - 1877)

Early Life

Nathan Bedford Forrest was born in 1821 in Chapel Hill, Bedford County, Tennessee. His parents were William Forrest and Miriam Beck. Nathan had a twin sister, Fanny. He grew up with no education except the backwoods skills of hunting, tracking and survival. His father was a blacksmith. He moved with his parents and siblings in 1834 to TIppah County, Mississippi. Nathan's father died in 1837 when Nathan was 16 years old. After the death of his father Nathan helped his mother and other brothers clear swampland for farming. He had lost two of his brothers and all three of his sisters due to fevers. His mother remarried in 1841 to Joseph Luxton. Nathan went to work for his uncle, Jonathan Forrest, at a tailor shop in Hernando, Desoto County, Mississippi. In 1845, Jonathan Forrest was killed in a street fight over a business dispute. Nathan went after the murderers, killing two and wounding two others.

Family

He was married to Mary Montgomery in 1845 in Desoto County, Mississippi. He moved his family to Memphis, Shelby County, Tennessee and is found on the census there in 1860, He was a planter. He and Mary had the following children:

1. Willliam Montgomery Forrest born in 1846 in Mississippi
2. Frances Forrest born in 1849 in Mississippi

Military

When war came to the south Nathan Bedford Forrest enlisted as a private along with two of his brothers. Soon after entering the Confederate service June 14, 1861, as a private in White's mounted rifles, he obtained authority to raise a regiment of cavalry, the equipment of which he purchased at his private expense at Louisville. With great ingenuity and daring he brought these supplies to Memphis after eluding the Federal authorities and defeating a body of troops with a force of seventy five Kentucky Confederates he had called to his aid. With his regiment he joined the forces at Fort Donelson, and after distinguishing himself in the conflict with the Federals, led his men through the enemy's lines when surrender was determined upon.

Joining Albert Sidney Johnston, he was in the heat of the fight at Shiloh, and though wounded refused to leave the field until the safety of the army was assured. Subsequently, the Federals having occupied middle Tennessee, Colonel Forrest made a series of brilliant cavalry movements into that territory that made his name famous throughout America.

Promoted brigadier-general July 21, 1862, he hung upon Buell's flank during the movement into Kentucky, protected Bragg's retreat, and while the army was in winter quarters actively covered the Federal front at Nashville, continually doing damage to the enemy. In 1863, in an effort to break Rosecrans' communications, he entered Tennessee with less than one thousand men, captured McMinnville, and surprised the garrison of 2,000 at Murfreesboro, capturing all the survivors of the fight, including General Crittenden.

General Streight, having started on a cavalry raid to Rome, Ga., was pursued and caught up with, and so impressed by Forrest's demand for surrender, that he turned over his entire command, which was in such disproportion to their captors that Forrest had to press into service all the citizens in reach to assist in forming an adequate guard.

In the great battle of Chickamauga he commanded the cavalry of the right wing, and was distinguished in the fight, but he was so dissatisfied with the incompleteness of this Confederate victory that he tendered his resignation. Instead of its acceptance he was promoted major-general and assigned to the command of all cavalry in north Mississippi and west Tennessee, and the guardianship of the granary of the Confederacy. With a small force he entered west Tennessee and recruited several thousand hardy volunteers, which, with some veteran troops, he welded into the invincible body known as "Forrest's Cavalry."

In February, 1864, General Smith with seven thousand mounted men was sent against him in co-operation with Sherman, but was utterly routed at Okolona and Prairie Mound. In return Forrest rode through Tennessee to the Ohio river, and captured Fort Pillow, Union City and other posts with their garrisons. In June 8,300 Federals under General Sturgis entered Mississippi. Forrest had only 3,200 men, but at Brice's Cross Roads he struck the straggling Federal column at its head, crushed that, and then in detail routed successive brigades until Sturgis had suffered one of the most humiliating defeats of the war, losing all his trains and a third of his men.

Gen. A. J. Smith renewed the invasion with 14,000 men, but retreated after a desperate battle at Harrisburg, near Tupelo. Reorganizing his beaten forces Smith again advanced with reinforcements from Memphis, and Forrest was compelled to foil the enemy by taking half his force and making a sixty-hour ride to Memphis, the daring entry of which compelled Smith's rapid retreat.

Then for a time General Forrest made havoc with the Federal transportation, garrisons and depots in Tennessee, exploits crowned by the capture and destruction of six million dollars' worth of the enemy's supplies and a gunboat fleet, at Johnsonville, "a feat of arms," wrote Sherman, "which I must confess excited my admiration."

After the fall of Atlanta he joined Hood at Florence, and fought at Franklin and Nashville. As commander of the rear guard of the retreating Confederate army, Forrest displayed his most heroic qualities, with hardly a parallel but the famous deeds of Marshal Ney while covering Napoleon's retreat from Moscow. In February, 1865, he was promoted lieutenant-general, and given the duty of guarding the frontier from Decatur, Ala., to the Mississippi. With a few hundred hastily gathered men he made his last fight at Selma, and on May 9 he laid down his arms. It is stated that he was 179 times under fire in the four years, and he said, "My provost marshal's books will show that I have taken 31,000 prisoners." By European authority he is pronounced the most magnificent cavalry officer that America has produced.

Life after the War

After the war, Nathan Bedford Forrest returned to Memphis, Tennessee, and entered private business as a lumber merchant and planter, later becoming president of the Selma, Marion and Memphis Railroad. In the late 1860s, he associated himself with a fledgling secret society called the Ku Klux Klan and allegedly was its first Grand Wizard, though he later denied any association with the group when testifying before a Joint Congressional Committee in 1871, and again in several newspaper interviews.

In 1874, the railroad company failed and Forrest was forced to sell off many of his assets. He spent his remaining years overseeing a prison camp near Memphis and living with his wife in log cabin salvaged from this plantation. He died on October 29, 1877, reportedly from complications of diabetes.

He rose to the rank of Lt. General with his own cavalry command.

Death and Burial

He died on October 29, 1877, reportedly from complications of diabetes.

• Known as Bedford during his lifetime
• Nathan Bedford Forrest made his fortune as a planter, real estate developer and slave trader in the Memphis area. When the Civil War broke out, he was one of the richest men in the South. He was also known as a duelist.
• With little education, he enlisted in the Confederate army as a private in July 1861, quickly promoted, eventually to Lt. General of the cavalry. He was known for innovative and brutal tactics, participating in numerous battles in Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi and Alabama.
• He was the commanding officer at the April 1864 Battle of Fort Pillow (aka Fort Pillow Massacre), where hundreds of Southern Unionist and black Union soldier prisoners were massacred. Although accused of war crimes for this incident, he was never formally charged.
• Defeated at the Battle of Selma in April 1865, he surrendered after hearing of Lee's surrender at Appomattox.
• Emancipation of the slaves was a major financial setback for Forrest after the war.
• Forrest was an early member of the Ku Klux Klan, joining in 1866. Some dispute that he was the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan; given the organization's secretive nature, it's not like there are archives to confirm or deny. Three years after joining, a period when the Klan engaged in a reign of terror intended to scare the newly enfranchised black away from voting. By 1869, he distanced himself from the organization, perhaps to advance his railroad enterprises. In 1871, he testified about the KKK before the US Congress, with his personal role explicitly excluded from the inquiry.
• He and his wife were originally buried in Elmwood Cemetery, Memphis, Tennessee. In 1904, he and his wife were reinterred in a downtown park then named Forrest Park (later renamed Health Sciences Park). In June 2021, the couple's remains were disinterred for reburial at the National Confederate Museum in Columbia, TN.

Legacy

• Forrest County, Mississippi is named in his honor, as is Forrest City, Arkansas & Nathan Bedford Forrest State Park in Tennessee. The Tennessee legislature keeps a bust of Forrest in its chamber. In 2007, the Tennessee legislature designated July 13 (Forrest's birthday) as "Nathan Bedford Forrest Day."
• A 25-foot statue of Forrest, along I-65 in Nashville on private land, has been an ongoing object of controversy, including disputes over cutting the vegetation around it. The statue's designer was the late Jack Kershaw, an attorney who defended James Earl Ray, convicted of shooting Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. in Memphis. Kershaw once told the New Orleans Time Picayune: "Somebody needs to say a good word for slavery."
• As late as World War II, a US Army base in Tennessee was named in his honor.
• A high school in Jacksonville, Florida was named in his honor in 1959 at the urging of the Daughters of the Confederacy, as a retort to the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision ordering desegregation of schools. In 2013, the County School Board voted 7-0 to change the name to Westside High School.
• Fictional movie character (based on a novel of the same name), Forrest Gump, was named after his ancestor, Nathan Bedford Forrest.

Research Notes

Some family genealogies have him and his wife confused with William G. Forest (1838-1922) and his wife Lucinda E. Graham 1841-1899. This a different couple. Fetterly-28 04:36, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

Sources

• Find A Grave: Memorial #355

• Wikipedia

• https://www.biography.com/people/nathan-bedford-forrest-9299050
• http://tennessee-scv.org/ForrestHistSociety/history.html
• "United States Census, 1850," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:M4LH-RSM : 12 April 2016), Bedford Forrest, De Soto county, De Soto, Mississippi, United States; citing family 19, NARA microfilm publication M432 (Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.).

• "United States Census, 1860", database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:M8T2-T2X : 12 December 2017), N B Forrest, 1860.

• "Tennessee, Civil War Service Records of Confederate Soldiers, 1861-1865," database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:FZQB-5NT : 4 December 2014), Nathan Bedford Forrest, ; from "Compiled Service Records of Confederate Soldiers Who Served in Organizations from the State of Tennessee," database, Fold3.com (http://www.fold3.com : n.d.); citing military unit Third (Forrest's) Cavalry, NARA microfilm publication M268 (Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1960), roll 12.

• "United States Census, 1870," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MD8Q-6QY : 12 April 2016), N B Forrest, Tennessee, United States; citing p. 13, family 92, NARA microfilm publication M593 (Washington D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.); FHL microfilm 553,061.

• https://www.battlefields.org/learn/biographies/nathan-bedford-forrest.

• Photo: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/gld/item/2010647758/.

• See also: https://www.splcenter.org/news/2018/10/19/naming-enslaved-reconciling-past-memphis-0.