Nathan Bedford Forrest

Nathan Bedford Forrest (July 13, 1821 – October 29, 1877), was a Confederate general and perhaps the American Civil War's most highly regarded cavalry and partisan ranger (guerrilla leader). He was one of the war's most innovative and successful generals; his tactics of mobile warfare are still studied by modern soldiers. After the war, Forrest became the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.http://www.iupui.edu/~aao/kkk.html

Postwar years and Ku Klux Klan

After the war, Forrest settled in Memphis, Tennessee, building a house on a bank of the Mississippi River. Slavery abolished and financially ruined, Forrest was was said to have been "wiped-out" at this time. He was eventually employed by the Selma, Marion & Memphis Railroad and became the company president. As a private citizen, Forrest was well known for his kindness and generosity to former comrades who called on him.

Related Topics:
Tennessee - Mississippi River - Selma, Marion & Memphis Railroad

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It was during this time that he became the nexus of the nascent Ku Klux Klan movement. According to one oral report, George Gordon, a former Confederate brigadier general, went to Forrest in Memphis and told him about the new organization, to which Forrest replied, "That's a good thing; that's a damn good thing. We can use that to keep the niggers in their place." He was acclaimed at a Nashville, Tennessee, KKK convention (1867) as the first Grand Wizard, or leader-in-chief of that organization. In an 1868 newspaper interview, Forrest boasted that the Klan was a nationwide organization of 550,000 men, and that although he himself was not a member, he was "in sympathy" and would "cooperate" with them, and could himself muster 40,000 Klansmen with five days' notice. He stated that the Klan did not see blacks as its enemy so much as "carpetbaggers" (northerners who came south after the war ended) and "scalawags" (white Republican southerners).

Related Topics:
Ku Klux Klan - George Gordon - Nashville, Tennessee - 1867 - Grand Wizard

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Because of Forrest's prominence, the organization grew rapidly under his leadership. In addition to aiding Confederate widows and orphans of the war, many members of the new group began to use force to oppose the extension of voting rights to blacks, and to resist Reconstruction-introduced measures for the ending of segregation. In 1869, Forrest, disagreeing with its increasingly violent tactics, ordered the Klan to disband, stating that it was "being perverted from its original honorable and patriotic purposes, becoming injurious instead of subservient to the public peace." Due to the national organization's lack of control, this proclamation was more a symptom of the Klan's decline than a cause of it. Many of its groups in other parts of the country ignored the order and continued to function. Subsequently, Forrest preferred to distance himself from the KKK.

Related Topics:
Leadership - Reconstruction - 1869

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Forrest died in October 1877, reportedly from complications of diabetes, in Memphis and was buried at Elmwood Cemetery. In 1904 his remains were disinterred and moved to Forrest Park, a Memphis city park.

Related Topics:
1877 - Diabetes - Elmwood Cemetery - 1904 - Disinterred

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