Nathan Bedford Forrest

Today we visited a battle site at Parkers Crossings in Tennessee.  This was another battle I wasn’t aware of, but had some interesting history.  To me it was fascinating how the Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forest was described at this park as a military genius and an honest and smart man. 

He grew up poor but became one of the richest men in the South before the war from business including slave trade.  He joined the Confederate army as a private and promoted through the ranks to General without any of the military training that many of the generals had due to his “innate grasp of tactics”.  Given the scarcity of materials in the Confederate Army, he was well known for capturing Union material such as weapons ordinance.  Just in these few weeks of raiding he captured over a million rounds of ammunition.  He wasn’t the type of general to sit back and watch but was active in the battle.  In reading about his actions, he sounds like an action hero in the movies.

Yet he also was investigated for war crimes for allowing a massacre of black Union Army soldiers who had already surrendered.  He recruited Confederate soldiers to build the army by advertising "if you wanna have some fun and to kill some Yankees".  He was (probably) the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.  Definitely controversial!