Nonsense. I corrected your mistakes of fact.
You can hate on Forrest all you want to. But you don’t get to invent facts about him. Not in these parts.
And in no way am I a Southern apologist or a Lost-Causer. As I mentioned, half my ancestors were Union men, in a place and time when that was a difficult thing to be. (They paid dearly for it.) I like to think I would have had the courage to do the same.
I didn’t say you were. But some of your opinions are similar.
I didn’t invent any facts. I still say the exact text of the speech is damn suspicous, never having appeared in print until 1990 or so, and not sounding anything like a man from that background and area. I also could not look at those papers from those dates. Mind you, it’s not impossible that you could by a physical microfiche search.
What’s also odd is that several of the earliest NBF bio’s were penned by writers who at time wrote for one or the other of those newspapers.
But liek I said, the whole speech thing is a smokescreen, thrown up by Apologists who want to pretend it actually means something.
And- what other “Mistakes” did I make? My opinions about what a bad General NBF really was? A opinion shared by many others, including some CSA generals.
Examples?
And it is not at all odd that this speech would not have appeared in early bios-- bios written at a time in our history when not only was racial harmony not on many agendas, but a speech in favor of racial harmony might actually have been considered a black mark against Forrest.
More nonsense. Hurst appears to be the one who uncovered this speech in the course of researching his biography, and he is in no way an “apologist” for Forrest.
You said the speech is a recent fabrication. Wrong.
You said Forrest was not highly-regarded as a general by his contemporaries. Wrong.
You gave a false account of Forrest’s participation in the battle of Chickamauga. (Actually almost humorously wrong to anyone who knows anything about it. Forrest wanted to prosecute the action much more aggressively than Bragg actually did. He verbally abused Bragg for failing to follow up on the victory.)
I haven’t fact-checked your accounts of other battles, but I am confident that they are similarly slanted and, well, wrong.
Fact is, you have a theory (well, Loewen has a theory which you are borrowing without attribution) and you are trying to bend the facts to fit the theory. And if you get facts wrong 'round here, you’re going to be called on it.
If you want to hate Forrest, the man himself has given you plenty of reasons. There is no need to try to turn him into a two-dimensional comic book villain. History just ain’t that simple.
Still not proven. All you have to do is get that newspaper page.
Actually the CSA leadership had a poor opinion of NBF, too. Well, until after that war at his funeral, where they did praise him greatly- which was very common (and still is)
"Forrest’s wartime contempories saw him only as a successful raider, they "scarcely conceived of him of a general whose impact rivaled that of senior officers" NBF never commanded “more than a few thousand men” in any case.
But again, I give you NBF’s war record . Other than small cavalry raids & the Battle of Brice’s Crossroads: ( which was nothing but a big cavalry (but very successful) raid, no strategic victory) where are his great wins as a General?
It is true that NBF did get into action early at Chickamauga. But take a look at the battle maps starting with “early afternoon of sept 19th”
Notice that as the battle gets longer, NBF’s forces get further and further from the action. “..*Forrest requested reinforcements from Bragg and Walker near Alexander’s Bridge and Walker ordered Col. Claudius Wilson’s brigade forward about 9 a.m., hitting Croxton’s right flank. Forrest protected his own right flank by deploying the brigade of Col. George Dibrell, which ran into Van Derveer’s brigade and came to a halt under fire. Forrest sent in Brig. Gen. Matthew Ector’s brigade, part of Walker’s Reserve Corps, but without Walker’s knowledge. Ector’s men replaced Debrill’s in line, but they were also unable to drive Van Derveer from his position.[45]
Brannan’s division was holding its ground against Forrest and his infantry reinforcements, but their ammunition was running low. Thomas sent Baird’s division to assist, which advanced with two brigades forward and one in reserve. Brig. Gen. John King’s brigade of U.S. Army regulars relieved Croxton. The brigade of Col. Benjamin Scribner took up a position on King’s right and Col. John Starkweather’s brigade remained in reserve. With superior numbers and firepower, Scribner and King were able to start pushing back Wilson and Ector.” *In other words, NBF tried a attack, with some other general’s troops, and when he was repulsed, he spent the rest of the battle hanging around on the flank and rear, doing nothing. Oh wait, no. His men did raid the Union Hospital.
or as one of your historians put it:
“David A. Powell’s Failure in the Saddle: Nathan Bedford Forrest, Joseph Wheeler, and the Confederate Cavalry in the Chickamauga Campaign is the first in-depth attempt to determine what role the Confederate cavalry played in both the loss of Chattanooga and the staggering number of miscues that followed up to, through, and beyond Chickamauga. Powell draws upon an array of primary accounts and his intimate knowledge of the battlefield to reach several startling conclusions: Bragg’s experienced cavalry generals routinely fed him misleading information, failed to screen important passes and river crossings, allowed petty command politics to routinely influence their decision-making, and on more than one occasion disobeyed specific and repeated orders that may have changed the course of the campaign.”
http://www.amazon.com/Failure-Saddle.../dp/1932714871
But still, Ok he did do some fighting at that battle. How about these?
Battle of Spring Hill: one of the few battles where the CSA outnumbered the North, but ended as a huge lost opportunity for the South. Forrest’s contribution was (wiki) “Forrest’s men moved south and he directed the brigade of Brig. Gen. Tyree H. Bell of Chalmer’s division to drive off what he thought was a small force of cavalry from a knoll south of McCutcheon’s Creek. They were actually engaging with Bradley’s brigade, which drove them back immediately with heavy artillery support. The chastened Forrest remarked, "They was in there sure enough, wasn’t they, Chalmers?” whereupon NBF snided off to a flank, again waiting a chance to raid & loot. A loss.
Battle of Franklin : one of the worst disasters of the war for the Confederate States Army. NBF’s contribution (wiki) “across the river to the east Confederate cavalry commander Forrest attempted to turn the Union left. His two divisions on Stewart’s right (Brig. Gens. Abraham Buford and William H. Jackson) engaged some Federal cavalry pickets and pushed them back. They crossed the Harpeth at Hughes Ford, about 3 miles (4.8 km) upstream from Franklin . When Union cavalry commander Brig. Gen. James H. Wilson learned at 3 p.m. that Forrest was crossing the river, he ordered his division under Brig. Gen. Edward Hatch to move south from his position on the Brentwood Turnpike and attack Forrest from the front. He ordered Brig. Gen. John T. Croxton’s brigade to move against Forrest’s flank and held Col. Thomas J. Harrison’s brigade in reserve. The dismounted cavalrymen of Hatch’s division charged the Confederate cavalrymen, also dismounted, and drove them back across the river. Some of Croxton’s men were armed with seven-shot Spencer carbines, which had a devastating effect on the Confederate line. Wilson was proud of his men’s accomplishment because this was the first time that Forrest had been defeated by a smaller force in a standup fight during the war". A Loss
Third Battle of Murfreesboro: NBF runs off to do another raid: (wiki)”At one point some of Forrest’s troops broke and ran causing disorder in the Confederate ranks; even entreaties from Forrest and Bate did not stem the rout of these units. The rest of Forrest’s command conducted an orderly retreat from the field and encamped for the night outside Murfreesboro . Forrest had destroyed railroad track, blockhouses, and some homes and generally disrupted Union operations in the area, but he did not accomplish much else. The raid on Murfreesboro was a minor irritation, and Forrest was absent at Battle of Nashville ”. A tactical win leading to a huge strategic loss.
Battle of Nashville : NBF wasn;t there until afterwards (he had snided off to loot and raid, see above) , thus allowing Union cavalry to run amok. Leading to: (wiki) “one of the largest victories achieved by the Union Army during the war, Thomas attacked and routed Hood’s army, largely destroying it as an effective fighting force.” Loss.
And of course: the Fort Pillow Massacre. A minor battle where NBF badly outnumbered the North, leading to one of the worst war crimes of the war. But nothing of strategic use was gained by this ‘victory”.
So let us look at the record: NBF had a hugely successful cavalry raid in one battle. At three major battles, NBF was not a success at all. In fact his sniding off to raid at Murfreesboro led directly to “one of the largest victories achieved by the Union Army during the war”.
Hogwash. I have cited primary and authoritative secondary sources. You sticking your fingers in your ears does not constitute a failure of proof on my part.
At any rate, you are the one making an extraordinary claim (that the accounts of the speech are fabricated) yet you have presented NO proof of this, much less the extraordinary proof it requires.
So yes, your statement was false.
As to your assertion that “*in his period he was not considered a great general at all,” I’ll post the quotes that prove you wrong again, since your memory seems oddly short:
“After all, I think Forrest was the most remarkable man our civil war produced on either side. To my mind, he was the most remarkable in many ways. In the first place, he was uneducated, while Jackson and Sheridan and other brilliant leaders were soldiers by profession. He had never read a military book in his life, knew nothing about tactics, could not even drill a company, but he had a genius for strategy which was original, and to me incomprehensible. There was no theory or art of war by which I could calculate with any degree of certainty what Forrest was up to. He seemed always to know what I was doing or intended to do, while I am free to confess I could never tell or form any satisfactory idea of what he was trying to accomplish.” –William Tecumseh Sherman
During the war, Sherman called him a “devil” who should “be hunted down and killed if it costs 10,000 lives and bankrupts the treasury.” Cite.
General Joseph Johnston’s nephew asked him, in his later years, who he considered the greatest soldier of the war. Johnston, without hesitation, replied, “Forrest, who, had he had the advantages of a thorough military education and training, would have been the great central figure of the Civil War.” Cite.
Beauregard said of him “Forrest’s capacity for war seemed only to be limited by the opportunities for its display” Cite.
As to your allegation that he was a poor general, I leave it to the historians, who seem to disagree with you:
Cite.
Cite.
So yes, you are wrong about that, too.
And then of course you tried to paint Forrest as illiterate or semi-literate, and that was quite wrong, too. He was both well-read and well-spoken.
But to the OP: tearing down monuments is a cretin’s hobby. The ones in question (NBF, or Lee in Texas) were erected in good faith as monuments to history. If we remove all the statuary depicting assholes, we’d have to rid ourselves of guys like George Washington, if you want to focus on certain of his policies. The whole American pantheon of history is diminished with every omission.
What is is gonna look like on the day you go to tear down the monument?
kid: Look ma! What are all those cretins doing to that asshole?
Ma: Just look away, son.
And then, who knows, without the monument maybe the archives get tossed. And after enough of this kind of thing it becomes anybody’s guess what actually fucking happened in history.
Leave. the. monuments.
I find the suppression of white supremacy (or white pride) to border on the stupid. Other races are allowed to celebrate and exalt theirs.
Their supremacy?
I disagree. I think it was fine for the Iraqis to pull down the statues of Saddam Hussein, and it would be fine for the North Koreans to do the same for their leaders. After WWII, there was certainly some destruction of Nazi memorials and monuments- and I don’t think that was wrong. For folks like Benjamin Tillman (mentioned in the OP), I don’t think it would be wrong to take down the monument. The only difference between Tillman and my other examples is time- if a Hussein statue had survived for 100 years, does it become wrong to take it down? I can’t think of why that would be so.
Shame on you, guys.
Isn’t the black rights movement and the homosexual rights movement part of the same Democratic party?
Isn’t calling Forrest an asshole sort of downgrading to the homosexual Democrats? I mean, it puts their orifice of choice in a bad light, doesn’t it?
Everyone needs to be more sensitive in this day of political correctness!
You’ve been warned several times about this kind of stupidity and trolling, Dufus. I’m giving you another warning and suspending your account while the staff decides whether or not to ban you permanently.
Let the Germans and the Iraqis and the Koreans do what they want in their countries. I’ve said before that our history isn’t as shameful as theirs, but even if it is we can view those as the days when people didn’t know any better. But if we follow the same path here, there will hardly be any remembrance of history at all, after which it will become distorted if not repeated. Our history is full of crap, but dammit, it is OURS. Leaving the monument doesn’t lend approval to the person depicted. In the case of NBF, it is a clear reminder of what the losing side of the Civil War stood for. The Civil War quits making sense if we turn it into kitsch. Don’t do it!!
This argument is total bullshit. American is special and what is ok for everyone else is not ok for us. Well, at least you’ve made your position completely clear.
Bravo.
The United States military has lots of installations named after Confederate commanders. You’ve probably heard of Fort Benning and Fort Bragg, but there are a bunch of others. Many of these were established when that war was still in living memory, but North and South were supposed to be reconciled; men who had actually shot at one another in the war held joint reunions in the early years of the last century to embody this. Part of that reconciliation was the acceptance of Southern leaders as American heroes.
Yah whatever, Boyo Jim. Maybe American history isn’t exceptional to you, but it is to me. It’s mine.
And tearing down monuments=erasure of history. What’s the motive? Hint: not good.
No, it’s not, not when the “history” is bogus racist propaganda and lies. It’s one thing to list NBF as a general at a battle site. It’s another to name school after school after park after park after a racist bastard- and only because he was a founder of the KKK.
Have you ever listened to Pancho and Lefty? This is more Cowboys v Indians than Nazis and Koreans, you must admit.
Schools and parks are another thing. I’m only defending the monument properties.
Neither of the two committed atrocities like Ft Pillow, neither was a founder of the KKK.