Was Nathan Bedford Forest really da shizznit in the war?

Great Debates
61

Well, there’s a lot of controversy over NBF. First he is the poster boy for Southern apologists. They get to praise him as a general, while in actuality are praising him for being the dude who got the KKK it’s big start. In fact he has more monuments and such in the South than any other general, including RE Lee, who was certainly one of the greatest American generals of all time.

As a army commander he wasn’t very good. He pales into insignificance besides Stonewall Jackson & many others. For example, during the Franklin–Nashville campaign - Wikipedia NBF quite possibly turned the campaign into disaster by going off on his own and arguing with Hood, his superior officer. In fact NBF argued with his superior’s quite a bit.

He was damn good as a cavalry commander, second only to JEB Stuart. But his wins were smaller local wins, his biggest command was only about 3000 men. Only his raids had any strategic benefit. The Oxford American History mentions NBF only once, in a list of CSA calvary generals. Longstreet, ect are mentioned many times, while Lee is mentioned more times than any other general of that war. Lee was great, NBF was historically insignificant.

The quote “He [Forrest] was the only Confederate cavalryman of whom Grant stood in much dread,” is not documented as to being from Grant. It comes, uncited, from Foote, who was one of NBFs greatest fans, and a Southern Apologist. At best it’s “Foote sez that a un-nammed source sez that Grant sez” or third hand, thus worthless. :dubious:Having read Grants bio, years ago, I can remember no such quote complimenting NBF.

So- on a list of great CSA Generals, he should score below JEB Stuart, but his current fame is much higher, due to various Southern Apologists.

Basicaly, the idea is “we’ll made a memorial to NBF as a War Hero, but we all know it’s really to the KKK and what it stands for”.:rolleyes:

62

There are a lot of similarities. Given the small force he commanded, I couldn’t say Forrest could have done better.

Yeah, but said superiors included men like Floyd, Bragg, and Hood. He was about the only man i the SOuth prepared to tell them of to their faces, and he was right. Hood’s entire Nashville campaign was an utter disaster.

63

nm

64

If you need to make personal comments about other posters, take them to The BBQ Pit.

[ /Moderating ]

65

This is factually incorrect. Very few colonies were given representation in the home countries’ halls of legislation–and then it tended to occur in the nineteenth century, not the eighteenth.

The cry of “IS absolutely wrong” also should be put in context.
On the one hand, universal suffrage was still years away in Great Britain and few people in England had any more representation than their counterparts West of the Atlantic. (One may argue that that was not just, but as an aspect of an evolving situation regarding representative government, it was the way of the world in that period.)
On the other hand, the taxes that were sought were intended to reimburse Britain for the expenditures that the French and Indian War had cost that nation, protecting the colonists from the French and various Indian nations after the colonists had provoked warfare in their attempts at expansion. After insisting that the King had to send troops to protect them from 1754 to 1763, it was more than a bit selfish of the colonists to insist that they should be exempt from paying for that protection.

I am glad that the story developed in the way that it did and I think the “American experiment” has been reasonably successful, but we should not try to portray the struggle, incorrectly, as “good guys vs bad guys.”

66

Fantasy.

Nathan Bedford Forrest did not found the KKK. It was already up and running, and growing rapidly, when he joined. After only a year as Imperial Wizard, he became disgusted and ordered the group disbanded in January, 1869. Since he really had little actual control over the organization, various KKK groups continued with their activities in defiance of Forrest’s order until federal legislation and a Congressional investigation effectively put a stop to Klan activities. Thus ended the first incarnation of the Klan, in the early-to-mid 1870s.

The Klan was revived much later, in 1915, taking inspiration from the film Birth of a Nation. Forrest had been dead for 35 years when this new Klan emerged. This latter organization was, as the PBS article on Forrest puts it, a “new, different, and much worse Klan” than Forrest had known.

As the PBS article also notes,

See also his speech to the Pole-Bearers organization I quoted in my earlier post.

67

To argue with you a little bit there. I’ve heard by others before you as well that Forrest’s disbanding order was due to its distaste at its racist violence, but I’m not sure that that’s necessarily the case. I mean, for one thing, the Klan was pretty racist and violent when he joined it. Have you ever read Jack Hurst’s Forrest biography? He argues that Forrest ended his association with the Klan in 1869 for two main reasons. First, the Democrats had taken back control in Tennessee, and so the Klan was now unnecessary (in Tennessee, at least, which is where Forrest was concerned), and second, that the violence of the Klan was hurting Forrest’s attempts to get northern investment for his railroad.

I mean, too often in defense of Forrest, I’ve heard it claimed that he was shocked! Shocked that the Klan was a violent racist organization, and I don’t think the evidence supports that.

68

What is factually incorrect? I did not say any colonies WERE given representation,
I said IF they had been.

I am not sure what you are getting at here, but in context the “way of the world”
had been wrong ever since the deah of the ancient Greek democracies, and perhaps
some of the medieval Norse (Al)thing assemblies. In similar context slavery was still
the “way of the world” except I think for Denmark. Was slavery absolutely wrong or not?

I do not believe the colonies were opposed in principle to taxation. What they wanted
was for representatives of theirs to have voice in passing the tax legislation.

OK, but I hope you won’t object when I portray the struggle, correctly, as such.

69

I’m no fan of Forrest’s pre-war career, choice of side, language, spelling, postwar association with the KKK, or his involvement in war crimes. But I won’t go so far as you do here. In addition to his cavalry reputation, Forrest frequently proposed what hindsight reveals to have been the militarily correct approach (such as his breakout from fort Donelson, and his analysis of Bragg’s actions after Chickamauga). Given that he was uneducated, and that many of the West-Point-educated officers in the war did not do so well in anticipating the correct course of action (McClellan is the poster boy for this), I think that’s pretty remarkable.

I’m with smiling bandit on this – I put Hood into the “Worst Military Leader Elimination Thread,” where he held out until the 29th round of voting.

70

I have not read Hurst’s biography. Does he have more evidence than you are showing? Because this sort of sounds like conclusions being offered as evidence.

Forrest himself explained his action, saying that the Klan was “becoming injurious instead of subservient to the public peace.” And his action did not occur in a vacuum. It happened at a time when many other prominent Southerners were losing patience with the Klan’s version of mob rule.

71

Of course he does. I gave you a 3 sentence summary. He wrote an entire biography of the man. But he talks about Brownlow’s Senate election and the elevation of Senter to the governorship, along with the Klan based backing of his full term, Forrest’s trips to Ohio and courting of New Englanders to get investment capital, where he faced criticism about the Klan, the growing rift between upper class leadership of the Klan, who, having achieved political ascendency again, needed a peaceful and stable society to attract industry, and the lower class membership who were concerned about limiting civil rights for blacks and keeping out Northerners, and so on.

Hurst does say that he thinks that Forrest’s attitude about racial issues evolved over time and that he eventually, by the mid 1870s, seemed to believe that there wasn’t any natural black inferiority, but that that wasn’t necessarily his attitude in '68.

72

I think it’s more likely that his thinking was evolving all along. I think by January of '69 when he disbanded the Klan, at least part of the reason was personal doubt. I don’t buy that his reasons were as cynical as you (and Hurst, I gather) suggest.

It should be noted that Forrest, when he was a slaveowner, actually had a reputation for humane treatment of his slaves. (Of course, that is within the inherently inhumane context of slavery.)

73

First of all, Forrest didn’t actually disband the Klan in January of '69. The Klan was active until at least 1870, when the Klan in South Carolina clashed with the state militia, and was actually still active (although weak) until 1871, when federal prosecutions finally killed it. All Forrest did was strip it of any sort of unified structure. But the unified structure was pretty much a myth anyway. None of the chapters outside of Tennessee paid any attention to it, and even the chapters in Tennessee didn’t, for the most part. Forrest’s leadership was nominal at best.

Secondly, what’s your reason for thinking that his disassociation with the Klan wasn’t for practical reasons? He wasn’t the only one to stop his association around that time, and a lot of states were back under Democratic control. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the Klan was strongest in the states where there was the most federal interference, and lasted longest in the states where Redemption was later. And Tennessee was redeemed pretty early.

As for his treatment of his slaves, he treated them reasonably humanely, but I don’t know that that’s something surprising. Forrest wasn’t a sadist…no one has ever accused him of that, and it makes sense to treat your slaves decently. Poorly treated slaves can’t work and tend to try to run away. So I don’t know what your point is there.

74

Your claim that Britain was the only entity that levied taxes without the consent of those upon whom they were levied is without any basis in fact. Given the dearth of representative governments of any sort during that period, your claim that “the British were the only ones commiting that wrong” is ludicrously in error.

Even your claim for an “absolute” wrongness to levy such taxes is anachronistic. The general belief in the value of representative government had only begun to be developed by various philosophers in the century prior to the American rebellion. It is an idea I heartily embrace, but it is hardly the only legitimate form of government. Your references to the Greek democracies further demonstrates a lack of awareness of history. Athens and a couple of other cities had a rudimentary form of democratic government (with strong oligarchic leanings), but it was hardly anything that we would recognize as a representative government and it was not based on any Hobbesian notion of a social contract. (It is notable that those “democratic” states exercised exactly the sort of distant control and taxation over their subject states and colonies for which you criticize Britain and those experiments in democracy died less from external conquest than from their own internal excesses. That is why Plato, at the end of the Peloponnesian War, and Aristotle in the next generation, each condemned democracy as a horrible and unjust form of government.)

That’s OK; I am willing to simply chuckle at such partisan naïveté.

75

I’ll tackle this first. Not all slave owners did treat their slaves humanely. If you’ve ever listened to slave narratives, you know that the slaves themselves divided slaveholders into “good masters” and “bad masters.” Bad masters were those who beat their slaves capriciously, or allowed their overseers to do so. Bad masters were those who split up families without a thought for the slaves’ feelings on the matter. Forrest didn’t do either of those things. My point is that he had some humanitarian feeling toward blacks all along. It’s not something he suddenly developed between 1869 and 1875.

As you alluded to earlier, the point of the Klan from Forrest’s perspective was not to frighten and injure blacks. The point was to get Democrats elected. Now part of this meant intimidating blacks into not voting Republican, or not voting at all. I don’t think Forrest had any problem with violence and intimidation, per se, as long as it was directed toward this end.

I suspect what disgusted Forrest (and, as I noted, other prominent Southern leaders) was that much of the violence toward blacks turned out to be random and directionless. Violence for the sake of violence. Sadists having fun. My reading of Forrest is that he would not have approved of this. (That’s where his reputation as a “good master” comes into my thinking.)

Hurst, obviously, has a more cynical take on the matter.

76

To my eye, Forrest was unusual in that he was completely capable of dismissing all tradition and respect for society from his mind. He made up his own thoughts and followed through on them. When he was a businessman, he did well and acted how he wanted to act. When he was a soldier, he did well and led how he wanted to lead. When he was a politician, he acted how he thought best, and if kindness and equality with blacks was best, he was prepared to accept that surprisingly easily.

Does he have a lot to answer for? Most definitely. But he was a remarkable man who is both better and worse than his time, and I can’t simply handwave him as a villain. I can’t say I’ve ever done anything half so heroic as proclaiming black equality in middle Tennessee in 1870.

77

I’m trying to picture explaining the meaning of “shizznit” to the ghost of Nathan Bedford Forest. Or watching Snoop Dogg explain it to him…

78

Yeah, let the ghost of Snoop Dogg doit. Guy won’t let go of the world, no - he just wants his 15 decades of fame…

:smiley:

79

Sure, people did, and I’ve read the slave narratives, but those people were either sadists or damn fools, and Forrest wasn’t either a sadist or a damn fool. Merely treating your slaves well, when its in your interest to do so, isn’t necessarily a sign of humanitarian sentiment.

Well, clearly, but I don’t know that we’re arguing about this. Forrest wasn’t a sadist, and while he could be a violent man, his violence was always purposeful violence. But there are those who claim that Forrest disassociated himself with the Klan not because of its random violence, but because if its violence. If anything, I think Forrest’s actions are even more reprehensible. If he were motivated by some sort of deep hatred, that would be one thing, but he wasn’t, and yet, he was willing to play with and draw upon that for his own purposes.

Hurst seems to admire Forrest, and his biography is laudatory. I don’t. The man was a slave trader, a slave owner, a traitor, and complicit in the massacre of US soldiers. But he was a damn good cavalryman.

80

Forrest certainly wasn’t a noble figure. But neither was he evil incarnate as some paint him whenever his name comes up on these boards.

And yes, he was a helluva fighter.