Originally aired on June 19, 1998 - In part 199 of our Civil War series, Virginia Tech history professor James Robertson profiles the colorful and controversial Nathan Bedford Forrest, perhaps the greatest cavalry officer during the War.
#199 – Nathan Bedford Forrest
Few generals in the Civil War were more colorful or more controversial than the premier horseman in the western theatre, Nathan Bedford Forrest. Admirers called him the “wizard of the saddle” and the “world greatest commander of mounted troops”. Union General William Sherman labeled him “that devil Forrest”, but later acknowledged the Confederate horseman to be “the most remarkable man our Civil War produced on each side”.
Forrest was born in Tennessee. The son of a blacksmith. He received only six months of education. At the age of sixteen he took charge of the support of widowed mother, five brothers, and three sisters. Diligent application and good management skills eventually brought Forrest great wealth in his adopted hometown of Memphis.
He was forty when he enlisted in the Southern army as a private. Within a year he was a brigadier general of cavalry. When his regiment was ordered to lay down its arms at Fort Donelson in 1862, Forrest called his men together. “Boys,” he said, “those people are talking about surrendering and I am going out of this place before they do or bust hell wide open”. He boldly led his two hundred men to safety.
Forrest demonstrated from the first that he was an untutored genius with keen insight into strategy and extraordinary capability as a tactician. He taught his men to charge both ways whenever surrounded by the enemy. Forrest was the first man in the fight and the last to leave.
The unsmiling commander initiated a new concept of cavalry warfare. Forrest used horsemen as a modern general would use motorized infantry. His mounted troops moved with lightning speed far behind enemy lines. Once at their target the cavalrymen tied their horses to trees and fought on foot as infantry. Their sudden appearance and furious assault usually brought great destruction. Then the Confederates remounted and galloped away before the victims could regain their composure.
Forrest looked and acted the part of an unlearned soldier who made war with driving fury. Tall, strongly built, wispy looking with wild hair and hollow cheeks. He abstained from liquor and tobacco, but possessed a profanity that bordered on the obscene. On the negative side, Forrest insisted on being in control. He was humorless and volatile by nature. Worse, Forrest never got along with any superior officer. He once threatened to kill General Braxton Bragg if the Army commander even again crossed his path.
Yet, Forrest made up in battle for what he may have lacked in discipline. During the Civil War he received four wounds, had twenty-nine horses shot from under him and personally killed at least thirty Federals in hand to hand fighting. He raised three different commands and conducted a dozen raids. He once summed up his own philosophy of combat with the simple statement, “war means fighting, and fighting means killing”.
By war’s end he was a physically broken and financially strapped veteran. In 1875, Forrest quietly joined the Presbyterian Church. For a time he led the Ku Klux Klan, but withdrew from the organization when it became an instrument more of personal vengeance than of preserving law.
Prior to his death in 1875, Forrest worked a small farm near Memphis. He let his beloved horse, King Philip, graze in the front yard. The animal’s mind was filled with memories of battle. One day during Reconstruction a Union cavalry company rode past the Forrest home. King Philip charged the group teeth bared and front feet flailing. As Forrest sought to restrain the animal the Union officer shouted, “General, now I can account for your success, even your horses fight for you”.