Nathan Bedford Forrest, died October 29, 1877

Forrest in 1868

Nathan Bedford Forrest was an early member of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). The KKK was formed by veterans of the Confederate Army in Pulaski, Tennessee in 1866, and soon expanded throughout the state and beyond. Forrest became involved sometime in late 1866.  Forrest arrived in Nashville while the Klan was meeting at the Maxwell House Hotel; he was sworn in as a member in Room 10.

Maxwell House in Nashville, Tennessee, c. 1900
Forrest was sworn into the Ku Klux Klan here in the fall of 1866, and the first national meeting of the group was reportedly held here the following spring.

A son of Forrest's friend, Minor Meriwether, wrote of how in 1867, his father's friends came to the Meriwether home in Mephis to discuss the Ku Klux Klan.  The younger Meriwether explained that "at my father's house in 1867 it was agreed that the Ku Klux Klan by midnight parades at 'Ghosts,' and by whipping and even by killing Negro voters," would render blacks "afraid to vote" and keep them out of public office.

Minor Meriwether

In an 1868 interview printed by the Cincinnati Commercial newspaper, Forrest claimed that the Klan had 40,000 members in Tennessee and 550,000 total members throughout the Southern states. He said he sympathized with them, but denied any formal connection.  He described the Klan as "a protective political military organization . . . The members are sworn to recognize the government of the United States . . .  Its objects originally were protection against Loyal Leagues and the Grand Army of the Republic . . . "  As the interview continued, Forrest responded to Tennessee Governor Brownlow’s threats to utilize the militia to end Klan violence. He stated, “if they attempt to carry out Brownlow’s proclamation, by shooting down Kuklux…there will be war, and a bloodier one than we have ever witnessed.” While Forrest professed that he opposed war and that he would only fight in self-defense, he also threatened that “if the militia attack us, we will resist  to the last. . . "

Asked about "negro suffrage", Forrest said, 

I am opposed to it under any and all circumstances, and in our convention urged our party not to commit themselves at all upon the subject. If the negroes vote to enfranchise us, I do not think I would favor their disfranchisement. We will stand by those who help us. And here I want you to understand distinctly I am not an enemy to the negro. We want him here among us; he is the only laboring class we have; and, more than that, I would sooner trust him than the white scalawag or carpetbagger. When I entered the army I took forty-seven negroes into the army with me, and forty- five of them were surrendered with me. I said to them at the start: "This fight is against slavery; if we lose it, you will be made free; if we whip the fight, and you stay with me and be good boys, I will set you free; in either case you will be free." These boys stayed with me, drove my teams, and better confederates did not live.

"This Is A White Man's Government"
"We regard the Reconstruction Acts (so called) of Congress as usurpations, and unconstitutional, revolutionary, and void." - Democratic PlatformThis Thomas Nast cartoon appeared during the presidential election campaign of 1868. The cartoon presents one of Nast’s continual themes: that the Democratic party suppresses the rights and threatens the safety of black Americans. 

The figure on the left is an Irish-American man. "5 Points" refers to a neighborhood in New York City, populated at the time primarily by poor Irish immigrants. In the background. Nast adds the burning Colored Orphan Asylum and a lynched figure to remind viewers of the Irish-American and Democratic involvement in the Civil War draft riots in New York City.

The middle figure is Nathan Bedford Forrest, who represents the influence of former Confederates in the post-war Democratic party. He wears his Confederate uniform, with a lash—symbolizing slavery—in his back pocket, and stands ready to plunge a knife—symbolizing the Confederate war effort, "The Lost Cause"—into his black victim. On Forrest’s coat is a medal honoring his command at Fort Pillow—symbolizing Confederate atrocities against black soldiers. In the background, Nast includes a burning freedmen’s school, representing the violence resistance of many white Southerners to the freedom and advancement of blacks in society. Forrest was one of the organizers of the Ku Klux Klan.

The figure on the right is August Belmont, a Jewish financier who served as the national chair of the Democratic party. Nast pictures Belmont holding aloft a packet of money designated for buying votes.

Underneath the three Democratic figures is a black Union veteran, holding an American flag and reaching for a ballot box. Nast emphasized that black men had earned the right to vote through their participation in the Union war effort. In having the Democrats trample the American flag, as well as the black man, the artist implies that they are attacking basic American principles and the entire nation, not merely one minority.

In 1868, Forrest delivered a speech in Brownsville, Tennessee where he reiterated some of the same sentiments articulated in his newspaper interview, and again stressed that the Klan was prepared to fight if the Tennessee militia were called out. 

“If the Radical Legislature, with Governor Brownlow, arms the negroes, and tells them to shoot down all Confederate soldiers, on the grounds that they are members of this Ku-Klux Klan, there will be civil war in Tennessee.” 

According to the newspaper report of the speech, this statement was met by applause from the large audience gathered to hear him speak. He added that he was not inciting violence or war, but “we have already lost all but our honor by the last war, and I must say, that in order to be men we must protect our honor at all hazards, and we must also protect our wives, our homes, and our families.”

After a year as Grand Wizard, in January 1869, Forrest issued KKK General Order Number One: "It is therefore ordered and decreed, that the masks and costumes of this Order be entirely abolished and destroyed."  But while Forrest’s apologists point to this action as evidence of Forrest’s support for law and order, this action was not intended to disband the Klan, nor was it meant to stop the Klan’s terrorist activities. Michael Martinez notes that “Forrest’s defenders point to General Order Number One as evidence of his realization that the Ku Klux Klan was a terrorist organization deserving of nothing so much as opprobrium.” According to Martinez, however, “Such an interpretation is disingenuous.”  Other historians have made this same point, a fact that is ignored by Forrest’s modern day supporters, such as the Sons of Confederate Veterans and neo-Confederate organizations. Stetson Kennedy proposes that the order to disband the Klan was nothing more than an attempt to fool the rest of the nation into thinking that the South had surrendered to Reconstruction. The Klan, he says knew this order was not intended to restrict its activities in any way. “Consequently they went about their business as usual, without having to be told by anyone that the only real intent of the edict was to con the nation into believing that the Southern ‘troubles’ were over, and that a Fifteenth Amendment specifically asserting the political rights of blacks (then being debated in Congress) was not necessary.”

The violence in the Southern states at the hands of the Ku Klux Klan became so problematic that Congress held hearings on the matter in 1871. Thirteen thick volumes had been gathered of testimony detailing or denying beating and murders of blacks and their white Republican allies throughout the South.

Forrest testified before the Congressional investigation on Klan activities on June 27, 1871. According to Forrest,

There was a great deal of insecurity felt by the southern people … The negroes were holding night meetings; were going about; were becoming very insolent; and the southern people all over the State were very much alarmed. I think many of the organizations did not have any name; parties organized themselves so as to be ready in case they were attacked. Ladies were ravished by some of these negroes, who were tried and put in the penitentiary, but were turned out in a few days afterward. There was a great deal of insecurity in the country, and I think this organization was got up to protect the weak, with no political intention at all.

Forrest denied membership; the investigating committee wrote:

"When it is considered that the origin, designs, mysteries, and ritual of the order are made secrets; that the assumption of its regalia or the revelation of any of its secrets, even by an expelled member, or of its purposes by a member, will be visited by ‘the extreme penalty of the law,’ the difficulty of procuring testimony upon this point may be appreciated, and the denials of the purposes, of membership in, and even the existence of the order, should all be considered in the light of these provisions. This contrast might be pursued further, but our design is not to connect General Forrest with this order, (the reader may form his own conclusion upon this question,) but to trace its development, and from its acts and consequences gather the designs which are locked up under such penalties.”

The committee also noted, "The natural tendency of all such organizations is to violence and crime; hence it was that General Forrest and other men of influence in the state, by the exercise of their moral power, induced them to disband.”

Countless volumes have been written documenting the Ku Klux Klan’s  activities in Tennessee and in the South in the years following the Civil War.  Many have insisted that the Ku Klux Klan was formed as a social club that quickly escaped the control of its original leaders and needed to be disbanded due to a surge of violence. 

The truth is that the Klan’s goals, from the very beginning, were to restore white supremacy throughout the South by way of intimidation and violence. The story of the Klan’s terrorism in Tennessee in 1868 is well documented: the Klan whipped, beat, threatened, shot, and lynched black and white Radicals. The Klan burned schools, robbed homes, and disrupted church services.   Many Tennesseans viewed the Klan as a ‘necessary, political expedient justified by the Radical disfranchisement policy, the high taxes of Brownlow’s administration and the threat black voting posed to white supremacy. None of these accounts of the Klan’s origins, in any way, describe the organization as a social club, formed for benign amusement.  For many white Southerners, the Klan represented a way to restore the social order that was lost as a result of the war.

Katherine Du Pre Lumpkin understood the realities of the Klan. Her autobiography, The Making of A Southerner (1946), describes her childhood indoctrination to the Lost Cause through the teachings of her father, William Lumpkin. She understood that the Klan

must go on until the mass of Negroes ‘came to their senses,’ and their leaders, ‘black, white and yellow,’ had been ousted; until all and sundry – ‘scalawags,’ ’carpetbaggers,’ and Negroes - learned the lesson this organization said it went out to teach. Thus ‘crimes’ were punished; ‘bad men’ were treated according to their deserts; ‘restoration of order’ was envisaged, and ‘putting the darkey in his place.’ It would go on thus - so said the aim - until ‘white supremacy’ was re-established.

In 1867, Forrest had been a partner in a paving firm which contracted to work on Memphis' muddy streets.  Due to lack of payment, the firm gave up its contract before the work was completed.  That same year, Forrest became president of a Memphis fire and life insurance company, but it went out of business the following year.  In February 1868, Forrest filed for bankruptcy in a Memphis court. 

Illustration of Bank Run during the Panic of 1873
Frank Leslie's Illustration Newspaper, October 4, 1873

A group of Mississippi businessmen asked Forrest to head the Selma-based Marion & Memphis Railroad. From late 1868 into 1874, he was president, working to connect Memphis with Selma.  However, the repercussions of the Franco-American War and 1873 were obstacles the company could not overcome, and it went bankrupt.  

Forrest spent his final days running a prison work farm on President's Island in the Mississippi River, near Memphis. There he leased land and worked convict labor.

"The Union as it was / The Lost Cause, worse than slavery."
Thomas Nast, , Harper's Weekly, October 24, 1874

On September 2, 1874 former President of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis, delivered a speech in Memphis, Tennessee denouncing a massacre of sixteen black men a week prior in Trenton, Tennessee. The massacre was committed on August 26, and as the New York Times reported, “About 400 armed, disguised, mounted men,” set upon the jail with the design of kidnapping the sixteen black occupants. Historian Allan Coggins, in Tennessee Tragedies, shows that some of the prisoners admitted to, “conspiring to rise up against the whites of Gibson County.” Coggins also states that the foiled conspiracy was tied to the, “unrestrained actions of the local KKK.”  

No one was arrested, much less convicted, for the crime.

On July 4th, 1875, Forrest was invited to give a speech before an organization of black Southerners called the Independent Order of Pole-Bearers Association.  At this, his last public appearance, he made what the New York Times described as a "friendly speech".  His speech was as follows:

"Ladies and Gentlemen I accept the flowers as a memento of reconciliation between the white and colored races of the southern states.  I accept it more particularly as it comes from a colored lady, for if there is any one on God's earth who loves the ladies I believe it is myself. (Applause and laughter.)   I came here with the jeers of some white people, who think that I am doing wrong.  I believe I can exert some influence, and do much to assist the people in strengthening fraternal relations, and shall do all in my power to elevate every man, to depress none.  (Applause.) I want to elevate you to take positions in law offices, in stores, on farms, and wherever you are capable of going.  I have not said anything about politics today. I don't propose to say anything about politics.  You have a right to elect whom you please; vote for the man you think best, and I think, when that is done, you and I are freemen.  Do as you consider right and honest in electing men for office.  I did not come here to make you a long speech, although invited to do so by you.  I am not much of a speaker, and my business prevented me from preparing myself.  I came to meet you as friends, and welcome you to the white people.  I want you to come nearer to us. When I can serve you I will do so. We have but one flag, one country; let us stand together. We may differ in color, but not in sentiment.  Many things have been said about me which are wrong, and which white and black persons here, who stood by me through the war, can contradict.  Go to work, be industrious, live honestly and act truly, and when you are oppressed I'll come to your relief. I thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for this opportunity you have afforded me to be with you, and to assure you that I am with you in heart and in hand." (Prolonged applause.)

Nathan Bedford Forrest

By 1875, Tennessee was well on its way to re-establishing the antebellum social and racial order, and groups like the Pole Bearers posed little real challenge to the re-assertion of white power in the state. Men like Forrest could afford to be magnanimous with their words.  But the Pole Bearers’ speech attracted attention because it was such an unusual counterpoint to his well-established reputation. It was viewed at the time as a strange event. The Newport, Connecticut Daily News remarked that “lest the colored people forget who Forrest was, the Fates so ordered things that Gen. Pillow addressed them on the same occasion. There can be nothing in a name, if Forrest accompanied by a Pillow would have been too much for the self-possession of any colored person.” 

The Chicago Inter-Ocean observed that the event marked a recognition of the rights of African Americans, “even by such bitter opponents of equality and Forrest and Pillow.” The New Orleans Times noted that “of the Southern leaders in the late war, none have been considerated [sic.] as dangerous an enemy as the famous trooper Forrest.”  But if Forrest’s appearance before the Pole Bearers was seen as progress and reconciliation by some, others wanted no part of it. Describing the event as “the recent disgusting exhibition of himself at the negro jamboree,” the Macon Weekly Telegraph quoted the Charlotte, North Carolina Observer as saying that

"We have infinitely more respect for Longstreet, who fraternizes with negro men on public occasions, with the pay for the treason to his race in his pocket, than with Forrest and Pillow, who equalize with the negro women, with only ‘futures’ in payment."

The Ku Klux Klan or Invisible Empire, by Laura Martin Rose

Confederates and Klansmen, had no doubt whatsoever that Forrest was one of them. One of the first attempts at a narrative history of the Reconstruction-era Klan, The Ku Klux Klan or Invisible Empire, written by Laura Martin Rose of Mississippi, former president and historian of the Mississippi United Daughters of the Confederacy, was explicit about Forrests’ involvement, giving him the title of “Grand Wizard of the Invisible Empire.” Rose was a native of Giles County, Tennessee, the birthplace of the Klan.  Rose’s booklet, sold to raise funds for a monument to Jefferson Davis at Beauvoir, was both excerpted and advertised for sale in the Confederate Veteran magazine, a journal written by and for former Confederate soldiers and their families. 

Advertisement for The Ku Klux Klan or Invisible Empire
in the Confederate Veteran

Confederate Veteran was one of the major voices at the time projecting an explicitly Southern view of the conflict, its causes and consequences.  Rose’ account not only made clear Forrest’s role in the Klan, but defended that organization’s reputation on the basis of his involvement, and credits to him what she sees as the group’s success:

His high standing as a Confederate officer, his devotion to his country, his noble principles and sacred honor pledged to protect the South, puts at naught forever any false statements as to the purposes of the Klan, and challenges any stigma or misrepresentations as to the character of its members, for they were in the main Confederate soldiers, and Forrest was its great leader, and under his leadership and with the loyalty of the members, the Mission of the Ku Klux Klan, or Invisible Empire, was successfully accomplished.

James R. Crowe

Rose’s source on Forrest’s involvement with the Klan is former Major James R. Crowe, one of the original six founders of the Klan at Pulaski, Tennessee. In her booklet, she reprints a letter Crowe wrote her, describing the Klan’s desire to elevate Forrest to the senior leadership:

The younger generation will never fully realize the risk we ran, and the sacrifices we made to free our beloved Southland from the hated rule of the “Carpetbagger,” the worse negro [sic.] and the home Yankee. Thank God, our work was rewarded by complete success. After the order grew to large numbers, we found it was necessary to have someone of large experience to command. We chose General N. B. Forrest, who had joined our number. He was made a member and took the oath in the Room No. 10 of the Maxwell House at Nashville, Tennessee, in the fall of 1866, nearly a year after we organized at Pulaski. The oath was administered to him by Captain John W. Morton, afterwards Secretary of State, Nashville, Tennessee.

Rose concludes, in laying out the great lessons taught by the Klan:

First, the inevitability of Anglo-Saxon Supremacy; when harassed by bands of outlaws, thugs, carpet-baggers, and guerrillas, turned loose on the South and upheld by political machinery, during the Reconstruction period, the sturdy white men of the South, against all odds, maintained white supremacy and secured Caucasian civilization, when its very foundations were threatened within and without. Second, a new revelation of the greatness and genius of General Nathan Bedford Forrest, the “Wizard of the Saddle,” the great Confederate cavalry leader. As Grand Wizard of the Invisible Empire, to his splendid leadership was due, more than to any other.

Rose’s volume, with her claim about Forrest, was subsequently endorsed by the Sons of Confederate Veterans, who pledged “to ‘assist in every way possible to promote its circulation and to cooperate in getting this work in the schools and public libraries’ that the origin and objects of that great order may be more generally known and understood.”

John Watson Morton

John Watson Morton, Forrest’s former artillery commander, remained friends with Forrest.  He went on to serve as the Tennessee Secretary of State.  Morton’s 1909 autobiographical account,  The Artillery of Nathan Bedford Forrest's Cavalry: The Wizard of the Saddle, focuses on the war years, but includes a detailed essay on the Ku Klux Klan written by Thomas Dixon, Jr. The account is an expanded version of a piece Dixon published a few years previously in the September 1905 issue of The Metropolitan Magazine, the same year as he published the novel, The Clansman: An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan, which would in turn become the basis for D.W. Griffith’s infamous screen spectacular, Birth of a Nation.  

 Thomas Dixon, Jr. 

Dixon’s Metropolitan Magazine article is predictably rancid in its inflammatory portrayal of African Americans (“the lowest type of negro, maddened by these wild doctrines, began to grip the throat of the white girl with his black claws. . . “), but it’s also unequivocal on Forrest’s leadership in the Klan. It gives a detailed and specific account of Forrest seeking out Morton, his old comrade, and pressing him to be accepted into the group.  Morton was, according to his autobiography, Grand Cyclops of the Nashville Den of the Klan.  Dixon’s account is compelling because it includes details that came from Morton himself, that describe exchanges between the two men that were not witnessed by anyone else, and could only have been related by Morton.

A lifetime of hard living and battle had taken their toll on Forrest.  He began attending church with his wife at the Court Avenue Presbyterian Church in Memphis. where the gospel was preached by Revered George Stainback.  Late in 1875, Forrest heard Stainback preach from Matthew 7:

"Therefore everyone who hears these words of Mine and acts on them, may be compared to a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house; and yet it did not fall, for it had been founded on the rock. Everyone who hears these words of Mine and does not act on them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house; and it fell—and great was its fall."

Matthew 7:24-27

After the service, Stainback later recounted: 

“Forrest suddenly leaned against the wall and his eyes filled with tears. 'Sir, your sermon has removed the last prop from under me,' he said, 'I am the fool that built on the sand; I am a poor miserable sinner.” 

Stainback told Forrest to go home and read and meditate on Psalm 51 and see where it led him.  The next night, Stainback went by to visit with Forrest, and they fell to their knees and prayed together. Forrest said that he had put his trust in the Redeemer, and that his heart was finally at peace.

Toward the end of his life Forrest told his lawyer, General John T. Morgan, a U.S. Senator:

General, I am broken in health and in spirit, and have not long to live. My life has been a battle from the start. It was a fight to achieve a livelihood for those dependent upon me in my younger days, and an independence for myself when I grew up to manhood, as well as in the terrible turmoil of the Civil War. I have seen too much of violence, and I want to close my days at peace with all the world, as I am now at peace with my Maker.

Forrest died in Memphis on October 29,  1877, at the home of his brother Jesse, reportedly from acute complications of diabetes.  He was 56 years old.

Thousands of people attended his funeral at Court Avenue Presbyterian Church in Memphis.  His funeral oration was given by Jefferson Davis. The funeral procession was over two miles long with over 10,000 area residents.  He was buried at Elmwood Cemetery.

Elmwood Cemetery

James Porter, the governor of Tennessee, rode in a carriage with Jefferson Davis to Forrest’s funeral.  They spoke of his military achievements, and the Governor asked the former Confederate President why Forrest wasn't given the amount of troops and authority in accordance with his ability of consistently achieving victory. Davis replied, "The Commanding General [Bragg] didn’t appreciate Forrest until it was too late. Their judgment just said that he was a bold and enterprising raider and rider. I was misled by them until I read of his campaign across Tennessee in 1864.  The campaign was not understood in Richmond. The impression made to me was just that Forrest made another successful raid, but then I saw it all after it was too late."

Northern newspapers publishing obituaries after his death, while acknowledging Forrest’s genius as a cavalry commander, resurrected the Fort Pillow Massacre charges.  The New York Times’ obituary claimed that, during Forrest’s post-Civil War life, “his principal occupation seems to have been to try to explain away the Fort Pillow affair.” 

In his Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, written in 1885, Ulysses S. Grant wrote that Nathan Bedford Forrest was "about the ablest cavalry general in the South." 

A few months before he died, General Joseph Johnston's nephew paid him a visit and found him reading the book A History of Tamerlane; the book discussed the greatest generals of all time, so he asked his uncle who he thought was the greatest general of the civil war. Without hesitation, Johnston replied, "Forrest".

After his death, Forrest's widow devoted herself to the rearing of three grandchildren, Mary, Nathan Bedford II, and William, children of her only son, whose mother died when they were small. Mary Ann Montgomery Forrest died on January 22nd, 1893, in Memphis.

Nathan Bedford Forrest II 

Forrest's grandson, Nathan Bedford Forrest II (c. 1872 - 1931) was president of the Sons of Confederate Veterans and a Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan. A new and worse Klan emerged Years after Forrest's death. In the wake of D.W. Griffith's revolutionary 1915 film, Birth of a Nation, a reactionary screed with a racialist brief that was expanded to include Catholics and immigrants of all kinds. The Lost Cause mythology grew out of a perceived need to retain a common white Southern identity, to provide justification for the Confederate defeat, and to celebrate the antebellum way of life. This mythology would become a powerful tool in the defeat of Reconstruction and the restoration of white supremacy. In The Lost Cause (1866), Edward A. Pollard “called for a ’war of ideas’ to retain the Southern identity.”   Pollard’s conclusion foreshadowed the state of affairs for most of the twentieth century in the South. He asserted that

 “the war did not decide negro equality; it did not decide negro suffrage; it did not decide States Rights … And these things the war did not decide, the Southern people will still cling to, still claim, and still assert in them their rights and views.”

By the 1880s, Southerners were forging a new public memory that would take shape in the Lost Cause mythology. One aspect of the Lost Cause myth is the notion that the Southern cause was noble and that there was no reason to feel ashamed of defeat. 

The Forrest Monument Association was incorporated on November 20, 1891 and included ex-Confederates as well as other prominent Memphis business leaders among its membership. Notable among these were the organization’s president, Sam Carnes, its vice-president, General George W. Gordon, and secretary, John P. Young. While many of the earlier Confederate monuments across the South were funded through efforts of organizations like the United Daughters of the Confederacy, the Forrest monument was primarily a project of Memphis’ white, male elite.  John P. Young, the secretary, was a Memphis judge who wrote a history of Memphis in 1912, titled Standard History of Memphis, Tennessee, from a Study of the Original Sources. This history clearly reflected a vision of Southern history influenced by Lost Cause ideology. Keeping with the Lost Cause influenced myth of contented slaves, his history notes that in 1874, “confidence between the white people and negroes was gaining ground and the latter had learned to a great extent that their former owners were not enemies, though many of them had never thought so.”

George Washington Gordon

George W. Gordon, an ex-Confederate general who was also one of the early leaders of the Ku Klux Klan in Pulaski, Tennessee, embodies the white supremacist implications of the Forrest monument. General Gordon’s prominent roles, first in the early Ku Klux Klan and, later, as a leader in erecting a monument to Forrest support the conclusion that this monument was designed to shape the future of Memphis as much, or more, than it was intended to honor General Forrest’s military career.  The principal order of business at the Nashville Ku Klux Klan meeting was the adoption of an official constitution or, as the Ku Klux called it, ‘Prescript.’ The drafting of this formal statement of the purposes and basic laws of the order was entrusted to Gordon, then practicing law in Pulaski, who had been one of the first initiates into the original Den.  This makes Gordon’s role in the Klan, while not as visible as Forrest’s, just as crucial to its success.  

Gordon’s Prescript reflects the white supremacist views of the Klan and the majority of Southern whites at this time. It contains a list of “Interrogatories to be Asked” of new recruits who desired Klan membership. The fifth question is: “Are you opposed to negro equality, both social and political?” and the sixth question asks “Are you in favor of a white man’s government in this country?”  These questions reveal not only the Klan’s vision of the New South, but also contribute to the vision of the South reflected in the Forrest monument. Gordon and Forrest were at the forefront of the Klan’s organization and supported its racial ideology designed to control the African American population of Tennessee during Reconstruction.  

Memphis’ devotion to the Lost Cause was exhibited as the city hosted the 1901 United Confederate Veterans reunion. The city decorated streets and celebrated the elaborate event with parades, fireworks, concerts and speeches and its citizens raised $50,000 for the celebration.

In 1904, the remains of Forrest and his wife Mary were disinterred from Elmwood and moved to a Memphis city park named Forrest Park in his honor. The Forrest Monument Association unveiled the statue of Forrest on a horse on May 16, 1905.  The Memphis News-Scimitar reported that the masterfully sculpted monument to Nathan Bedford Forrest would “stand for ages as the emblem of a standard of virtue.”

Forrest Statue and Graves in downtown park
Memphis, Tennessee

Forrest’s role as leader of the Ku Klux Klan was celebrated in the April 30, 1905 edition of the Memphis News-Scimitar in an editorial entitled “Forrest Again in White Shroud.” The editorial was accompanied by an artist’s image of the monument wrapped in a white shroud in preparation for its unveiling. Behind the shrouded monument, nine ghostly riders appear on horseback, wearing the white robes of the Ku Klux Klan. The editorial proclaims, 

“Forrest has come to his own again. Stalwart, strong and invincible…turning his eagle eye toward the south, just as he was wont to do forty years ago when the chaotic conditions of life required the organizing of the Ku-Klux Klan.” 

Forrest is envisioned “clad in his old Ku-Klux garb, a pall of white that covered horse and rider, the great leader of this secret clan rides once more,” and praised as “that leader whose iron hand held the reins of safety over the South when Northern dominion apotheosized the negro and set misrule and devastation to humiliate a proud race.”

By 1905, blacks were segregated on the city’s streetcars and were not allowed to visit the city’s parks.

By the time Forrest’s monument was dedicated, white supremacy had been restored to the South following the end of Reconstruction and establishment of Jim Crow laws. In this atmosphere, it becomes clear that the dedication of Forrest’s monument was intended to reflect white supremacist beliefs and to shape the future of Memphis as much, or more, than it was intended to honor General Forrest’s military career.

~ Tim Bounds

White Southern resistance has reasserted itself in the neo-Confederate movement. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, this movement began in the 1970s as a reaction to civil rights, school busing, and affirmative action and has been growing stronger ever since.  Some of the major neo-Confederate organizations include the League of the South, the Council of Conservative Citizens, and the Sons of Confederate Veterans. These 
groups do not act independently, as many of their members belong to more than one organization. The League of the South and the Sons of Confederate Veterans even share an affiliation policy that links them in non-political matters.  Michael Hill, president of the League of the South, commented on the increase in white supremacist views within the Sons of Confederate Veterans in 1998, stating “the old guard [in the SCV] is on its way out, and the organisation appears ready to work with us as a fellow pro-South group. This is good news long overdue.”

As this movement has grown, Forrest has taken his place as its leading hero. Tony Horowitz’s Confederates in the Attic (1998) provides some evidence of his increasing popularity. Horowitz interviewed Ruffin Flag Company owner Soren Dresch, whose best selling shirt features Nathan Bedford Forrest. Horowitz claimed that this was “confirmation to the trend I’d sensed across the South: a hardening, ideological edge to Confederate remembrance. As Dresch put it, ‘Southerners are getting tired of taking it on the chin. They’re getting more aggressive. Lee’s the Southern gentleman who represents 
reconciliation with the Union. Forrest represents the spirit of going after them with everything you’ve got.’”

To a large degree, the neo-Confederate defenders of Southern heritage have grown in influence over the past two decades as the movement to remove Confederate symbols from the South continues to gain momentum. For many, especially African Americans, the Confederate flags and monuments are nothing more than reminders of slavery and centuries of oppression. Opponents insist that these are “offensive reminders of the worst aspects of Southern culture: a degrading, paternalistic view of African Americans as a racially inferior people and a belief that slavery was necessary to the economic and cultural interest of the antebellum south.” The “continued display of Confederate monuments by government entities … serve as memorials to white supremacy, bigotry, and a divided America in both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.” 

But for the neo-Confederates who honor these symbols, attempts to remove them “are but profane efforts to deny the best qualities of Southern life - namely, an almost mystical faith in agrarianism, a fierce love of liberty, a mistrust of obdurate, centralized authority, and an unabashed appreciation of home and family.”

~ Tom Bounds

The Confederate battle flag was removed from Forrest Park in the late 1960s and the Tennessee state legislature was forced to remove Forrest’s birthday from the list of official state holidays.  But although Forrest’s birthday is no longer a state holiday, it became a day of special observance in 1969.  According to Tennessee Code, Title 15, Chapter 2, it is the governor’s duty to proclaim Forrest’s birthday as a day of “special observance” and “the governor shall invite the people of this state to observe the days in schools, churches, and other suitable places with appropriate ceremonies expressive of the public sentiment befitting the anniversary of such dates.”  

In 1988, the debate regarding Forrest was again renewed in Memphis. The University of Tennessee at Memphis reached an agreement with the city to utilize Forrest Park as a part of its campus and scheduled a ceremony in the park to honor an outgoing president. The Memphis NAACP used this event to bring attention to Forrest’s past and to condemn the actions of the university that linked public funds to Forrest’s name. Maxine A. Smith, Executive Director of the Memphis NAACP, sent a letter to Dr. James C. Hunt, chancellor of the University of Tennessee at Memphis. In this letter, Smith asked if Hunt had “considered the impact of these actions on your Black faculty, your Black students, your minority recruitment program, and all others who retain a sensitivity to human dignity.” She also urged Hunt “to erase some of the racist image that U.T. Memphis holds in the community”.

That same year, Shelby Foote was again featured in The Commercial Appeal and caused some controversy with his claim that, “Forrest deserves the respect and admiration of the whole country,” and the more astounding notion that

“the day that black people admire Forrest as much as I do is the day when they will be free and equal, for they will have gotten prejudice out of their minds as we whites are trying to get it out of ours.”

A commentary in the Tri-State Defender pointed out the ignorance in Foote’s comments by informing him 

“Black people are already free and equal. They did not get that way, however, by admiring Nathan Bedford Forrest.” 

The author, Harry E. Moore then addressed Foote directly, telling him, 

“The day you become as sensitive to the feelings of Black people as you are to those of Whites who admire Nathan Bedford Forrest you will be free, for you will have gotten the racist prejudice out of your mind that you want to force your hero on the descendants of his victims."

 At the 1993 celebration marking the 172nd birthday of Nathan Bedford Forrest, P. Charles Lunsford was invited to speak to the two hundred supporters gathered at Forrest Park. He 
claimed that the fight to keep symbols of the Confederacy had just begun and used part of his speech to attack opponents in this battle. Addressing threats to Confederate symbols across the South, he claimed that opponents to Confederate symbols were hate groups who were trying to attack their culture.

A year later, Lunsford, who coined the term “Heritage, not Hate” was ousted from his leadership post in the Sons of Confederate Veterans after giving a speech to a hate group, the white supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens. 

For the next few years, the primary opposition to Forrest Park took the form of vandalism.   In January 1992, the monument was splashed with paint, which prompted Danny Surwic of the Nathan Bedford Forrest Camp 215 of the Sons of Confederate Veterans to write a letter to The Commercial Appeal complaining that vandals “are damaging some of the finest artwork and historical displays in our city.” “Historical understanding is the first step toward cooperation,” he insisted. “We are all working to bring this city together and move it forward. This action by vandals only tears us apart.”  The monument again fell victim to vandalism in 1994 on the night before the celebration of Forrest’s 173rd birthday. The graffiti made references to Forrest’s slave trading, Klan involvement and the Fort Pillow massacre. The words “racist murderer”, “slave trader,” and “the man on the horse … head of the KKK” were spray-painted on the statue.

In 2000, a monument to Forrest was unveiled in a city park in Selma, Alabama, under the permission of the local government administration in power at the time. Cecil Williamson, a life-long segregationist, former member of the League of the South and City Council president, co-founded Friends of Forrest and oversaw the erection of a statue dedicated to Forrest in the park. The statue was put in place five days after the first Black mayor of Selma, James Perkins Jr., took office. The monument had an inscription which read:

"Defender of Selma, Wizard of the Saddle, Untutored Genius, The first with the most. This monument stands as testament of our perpetual devotion and respect for Lieutenant General Nathan Bedford Forrest. CSA 1821-1877, one of the south's finest heroes. In honor of Gen. Forrest's unwavering defense of Selma, the great state of Alabama, and the Confederacy, this memorial is dedicated. DEO VINDICE." 

Forrest Monument in Old Live Oak Cemetery, Selma, Alabama

Critics called it a symbol of hate. Vandals littered it with trash, pelted it with cinder blocks and tried to pull it down with ropes before it was moved to the Confederate Circle section of Old Live Oak Cemetery in Selma, a private cemetery. 

"We thought it would be good for tourism. Our Civil War and Civil Rights history brings a lot of people to Selma," said Steven Fitts, a local historian and member of Friends of Forrest.

Civil War and civil rights history are juxtaposed in Selma.  After the Battle of Selma, when the Confederacy surrendered, Selma’s Black residents were subjected to night raids by robe-wearing Klansmen, beatings, lynchings, arson, rapes and the ever-present threat of job loss and home eviction. For the next hundred years, a small but entrenched political and economic white elite governed with the harsh hand of Jim Crow laws, backed up by the violence of groups like the KKK.

In the 1960s, a movement for voting rights emerged led by the Dallas County Voters League, which struggled against the literacy tests and poll taxes that kept 99 percent of the city’s Black residents from voting. Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee organizers came to Selma in early 1963, and by 1965, 3,000 people had been arrested in protests and attempts to register to vote.

On Feb. 26, 1965, Jimmy Lee Jackson was killed by an Alabama state trooper following a Civil Rights protest. Days later, 600 people set off on a march from Selma to Montgomery, determined to end the racist segregation that ruled their lives. After crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge, named for a Confederate brigadier general, they were met by an army of police and state troopers who tear-gassed and beat the crowd. That day, March 7, 1965, has come to be known as Bloody Sunday. Four days later, Rev. James Reeb, a Boston minister who came to support the struggle, was beaten to death on a downtown Selma street in broad daylight.

Two weeks later on March 21, some 3,200 marchers started to Montgomery, their numbers swelling to more than 25,000 upon arrival at the state capitol four days later. That night Viola Liuzzo, a Michigan mother drawn to the Civil Rights movement, was murdered by Klansmen as she was shuttling marchers back to Selma.

Bust of Forrest, which was stolen

The bust of Forrest was stolen from the cemetery monument in March 2012. A historical society called "Friends of Forrest" offered a $20,000 reward for its return. In addition, in August plans were announced to replace it with a new bust on a taller 12-foot pedestal, illuminated by L.E.D. lights, surrounded by a wrought-iron fence and protected by 24-hour security cameras. The plans triggered outrage and a protest. On September 25, marchers, chanting "No justice, no peace," started at the Edmund Pettus Bridge, where voting rights protesters were beaten by law enforcement officers during a 1965 march, an episode that drew national attention to violence against blacks in the South during the civil rights era. A group of approximately 20 protesters attempted to block construction of the new monument by lying in the path of a concrete truck. The Selma mayor, George Patrick Evans, decided to halt the work until the city attorney could review the plans. Mayor Evans said it was unclear whether Friends of Forrest had permission to build on the cemetery site. The group does not hold the deed to the property, but it says that the land was donated to the United Daughters of the Confederacy in 1877.

Local lawyer and radio host Rose Sanders said, “Glorifying Nathan B. Forrest here is like glorifying a Nazi in Germany. For Selma, of all places, to have a big monument to a Klansman is totally unacceptable.” Since the bust disappeared on March 12, the Friends of Forrest society has criticized Sanders for saying on the air that she wished the statue did not exist. She in turn has accused the society of hiding the statue, to attract sympathy. “We take the position that, in this country, we’re allowed to venerate our heroes,” said Todd Kiscaden, a Friends of Forrest member overseeing the construction. “There’s a monument to Martin Luther King in town. We don’t deface that monument. We don’t harass people. So let us enjoy the same treatment.”

"I would recommend this man for any young people to model his life after," Todd Kiscaden, of Friends of Forrest, told local NBC affiliate WSFA 12 News.  "The man always led from the front. He did what he said he was going to do. He took care of his people, and his people included both races."

Malika Sanders-Fortier, who described herself as a community leader in Selma, started a petition calling for the city council to remove the monument.  "Monuments celebrating violent racism and intolerance have no place in this country, let alone in a city like Selma, where the families of those attacked by the Klan still live," she wrote in her petition.  The online petition is at Change.org;  as of July 2013, it has more than 3300,000 signatures: Petition to Selma City Council

In response, Gene Hogan, Chief of Heritage Defense for the Sons of Confederate Veterans, started a petition to continue work on the monument:

"The other petition got about 320k signatures. We MUST top that. How soon can we do it?"

The petition got 1,465 signatures before the account was closed.

"Michael" of the Southern Nationalist Network criticized both petitions:

From a Southern nationalist perspective, there is little to like about either petition. The pro-Forrest memorial petition is almost as bad as the anti-Forrest memorial petition in that it purports to defend the same values and uses the same PC language employed by anti-Southern and anti-White groups. There is no mention of the South or Forrest being a soldier for Southern independence. 
There is no mention of the anti-Southern and anti-White agenda of our enemies, nor of their attempts to destroy our culture, heritage and identity. 
The petition is entirely defensive rather putting the enemy on the defense. It is also predictably oriented towards ‘education’ rather than winning. The anti-Southern and anti-White groups that are protesting this memorial and signing the petition to get rid of it are not the least bit interested in reading claims about how Forrest was a great humanitarian and advocate for racial equality. They want the memorial gone because it is quite clearly a symbol of the White South and they are anti-Southern and anti-White. It’s as simple as that. It is futile to attempt to ‘educate’ such people; efforts should instead be focused on reaching our fellow Southerners, strengthening their identity, and encouraging them to stand firm on the matter while at the same time putting our enemies on the defensive. 

Early in 2013, the Memphis City Council voted to change the names of three parks that honor the Confederacy and two of its notable members.  The council passed a resolution to immediately rename Confederate Park and Jefferson Davis Park in downtown Memphis and Nathan Bedford Forrest Park, just a few miles away. The vote was 9-0 with three members sitting out the vote.  The resolution changed the name of Confederate Park to Memphis Park; Jefferson Davis Park to Mississippi River Park; and Nathan Bedford Forrest Park to Health Sciences Park.

The idea for the resolution to change the name of all three parks emerged after council members learned of a Tennessee State House bill that would prevent parks named after historical military figures from being renamed.  The bill was seen by the council as unnecessary interference by state lawmakers. The council voted on a resolution to remove the military names and go with more generic ones, giving them time to decide on new park names without worrying about state action.

The name changes upset those who believe the council is trying to change history by downplaying the significance of the Confederacy's struggle against Union forces. The Sons of Confederate Veterans and others in Memphis oppose the name changes, saying that Forrest is a misunderstood figure who was not a racist but a businessman who treated his slaves humanely and resigned from the Klan.

"We should cherish the history that we have, we shouldn't cover it up and try to bury it or hide it," said Becky Muska, who spoke against the name change.  Muska, who is white, acknowledges that Memphis is a racially divided city. 

So does Kennith Van Buren, a civil rights advocate who supports the name changes.  "These three parks have a racial history that should be erased," said Van Buren, who is black. "These parks are an embarrassment to our city."

Forrest Park is located a few miles from the old Lorraine Hotel, where civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968.  Memphis City Council member Lee Harris visited the park and turned to the west, where a $49 million medical research building is under construction.  "This is a symbol of the growth of Memphis and its diversity and progress," Harris said.  He turned back to face the statue.

"This …" he said and then paused to choose his words carefully.  "This is not."

Harris, a law professor at the University of Memphis, introduced a resolution to rename the three city parks that commemorate the Confederacy.  Harris had been an indifferent observer of the Forrest Park drama, which included the city's removal of a massive marker that the Sons of the Confederate Veterans plopped in the park last year.  But at a January council parks committee meeting, council member Bill Boyd took it upon himself to defend the slave trader. As an example of Forrest's kindness, Boyd shared that after the war, Forrest hired people that he once could have owned.  As Harris listened to Boyd go on and on, he knew the parks' names had to be changed. 

A park named in honor of a historical figure signals that the honoree was exceptional, Harris said.  "Exceptional conduct during that time would have been standing up against what was wrong."  Until his side lost, Forrest was for the status quo.  At best, Harris said, the general had a mixed record. At worst, his inhumanity to man makes him irredeemable.

It's a delicate exercise, this post-mortem calculation of a man's defects and his strengths. How much good does it take to outweigh the bad? What flaws are fatal?  If a serial killer repents and murders no more, how should the victims' families feel when others deem the criminal otherwise gifted and therefore beyond reproach?  There are bad habits, addictions, an incurable weakness for women, foibles that will follow great men into the history books. 

In this case, the scales don't regard Forrest favorably, said Shea Flinn, one of nine council members who voted in favor of the parks' name change.  "I'm glad that we don't have slavery so I don't necessarily see the upside of celebrating the people who fought for that," he said.

An ironic missive to the council from a self-identified Klansman boasts that his gang will be in town for a "peaceful" protest, but added this: "We will also check into your cities (sic) laws on concealed weapon permits because most our members have concealed weapons permits."

On Sunday, July 14, 2013, the sound of cannon fire boomed across Health Sciences Park as more than 200 people came out to celebrate the 192nd birthday of Nathan Bedford Forrest. This annual event marked the first at the Medical Center site since the Memphis City Council changed the name of that park and two others with Confederate themes, but speakers throughout the day proudly maintained that they were celebrating in Forrest Park.  The celebration was sponsored by the Sons of Confederate Veterans and the General Nathan Bedford Forrest Historical Society. Citizens to Save Our Parks, a group aiming to reverse the council’s decision, and nine Memphis residents filed a lawsuit against the city of Memphis and the City Council in May. They claimed that the council had no legal authority to rename the parks. 

Some attendees wore period costumes to commemorate the Civil War veteran. Women in hoop skirts and straw bonnets battled the heat with fans decorated with the Confederate flag. Men in gray uniforms toted muskets at their sides. Kelly Barrow, a high school history teacher in Georgia and lieutenant commander-in-chief of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, gave a passionate speech urging attendees to be vocal about their Southern heritage and Forrest in particular. “We have to make sure his memory is not tarnished,” Barrow said. “It’s our job to tell the truth. By teaching the truth, you’ll free these people of their bigotry, ignorance, intolerance and narrow-mindedness.” The crowd hooted, hollered and clapped in response.

The wrongs committed by great men tend to be as large as the men themselves, and Forrest's were appropriately titanic.  Yet even these were carried out with an indomitable, ruthless courage, and when his frenzied life permitted him time to reflect before acting, he usually did the moral thing, at least as he understood it.  Although history to date has accorded him scant credit, he not only ordered the dissolution of the Ku Klux Klan but went on to disavow repeatedly its race hatred, to protest and decry racial discrimination, and, during his last two years of life, to publicly call for social as well as political advancement for blacks.

~ Jack Hurst, Nathan Bedford Forrest 

Nathan Bedford Forrest, by Jack Hurst 

 In the foreword of the 1989 edition of John Allan Wyeth’s preeminent Nathan Bedford Forrest biography, That Devil Forrest, Western Michigan University history professor emeritus Albert Castel writes: “Despite all the rhetoric from the South’s politicians and editors about ‘States Rights’ and ‘Southern Nationalism,’ [NBF] had no illusions about [the Civil War’s] true purpose:

‘If we ain’t fightin’ to keep slavery, 

 then what the hell are we fightin’ for?’

Years ago, when I was working on an article on the declining cult of Robert E. Lee, I spoke with Charles Wilson, a professor of history and Southern culture at the University of Mississippi and scholar of the mythology of the Lost Cause. Wilson noted that, in spite of Lee’s preeminent place as the greatest hero of the confederacy, Lee’s virtues of perseverance, dignity, grace, and forbearance were not necessarily qualities that held a strong appeal to people in the modern age.

A figure with more natural appeal to modern audiences, Wilson said, would be Nathan Bedford Forrest, a self-made man who cared less about form and dignity and more about getting results. Wilson’s observation was prescient.

In the intervening years, reverence for the Lost Cause seems to have lost much of its general currency. Southerners are as likely as anyone else to make reference to “The Civil War” these days instead of “The War Between the States,” as Southerners insisted it be called for the first century after the event. Some of the change reflects the pervasiveness of mass media that is national in scope; another part reflects the changes in textbooks put out by publishers more concerned with issues of contemporary political correctness than those of a bygone Southern correctness.

On the other hand, while general, low-level Confederate nostalgia may be declining, the intense-level kind seems to be gaining even more momentum as a niche fixation. While most of us go on about our lives, a small corps of people around the South are ever ready to continue the struggle on at least some abstract level. On a fairly benign level are the Confederate re-enactors who like to dress up and “experience” history; on a darker level are the crypto-racists posturing about possible secession as a means of protecting “individual rights.”

The common thread in all this is the assertion that the prime interest lies in honoring a noble Southern past. There is also a corollary insistence that the war was not about slavery.

. . . It may be true that the Civil War was not totally about slavery. But it is false to say that the war was not about slavery altogether.

~ Phil Ashford

Why do some white Southerners today continue to celebrate men like Forrest? Hasan Jeffries, professor of African-American history at Ohio State University, believes the answer lies in personal history and identity. “So much of the personal identity of white Southerners has historically been wrapped up in Confederate mythology and implicit notions of white supremacy that to reject the Confederacy today would mean to turn one’s back on one’s own family—to find fault not only with oneself, but with one’s parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents,” he explained. “They held these falsehoods as near and dear truths. It would mean admitting to living a lie. These are some of the most difficult and uncomfortable things for people to do,” he added.

Coming to grips with our history, and thinking long and hard about the message we want to send into the future, is difficult, but necessary, work.

"I'm asking that we give Nathan Bedford Forrest a rest. Let's not put up ugly statues of him. Let's not fight over where to put his dead body. Let's not see how we can insult people by suggesting we give room to him in the Civil Rights Museum. Let's stop literally and metaphorically dragging him out of the ground to fight about him. It seems the kindest thing we can do all around. 

Let him rest in peace.

~ Betsey Phillips

“Here we are on the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, 
and we’re still having the same fights.”

~  Malika Sanders-Fortier