The first thing I learned about Lieutenant-General Nathan Bedford Forrest was that he had twenty-nine horses shot out from under him in battle; in my fifth-grade social studies class, I remember thinking to myself that the most dangerous thing one could be was one of Forrest’s horses. The unconquerable Tennessean was bold, severe, and uncompromising in the discharge of his duties for our Cause. He was born in direst poverty on the Duck River settlement, the son of a blacksmith, heir to, in John Wyeth’s words, “that restless race of pioneers who in search of home and fortune had followed close upon the heels of the savages, as these were driven farther and farther towards the setting sun.” From this obscurity on the frontier, Forrest attained a position of prominence in Memphis through his own determined struggle. He was animated by a rigid code of honor and was known for his fierce, yet judicious, temperament. He was seen to drink only after sustaining serious wounds; when invited to take a drink, he often declined, saying, “My staff does all my drinking.” His friends said that without any affectations of piety, “Forrest was by nature deeply reverent and religious.” On one occasion, a lynch mob threatened the jail to kill an imprisoned murderer; Forrest interposed himself between the prisoner and the inflamed crowd, brandishing a knife and promising to kill any man who dared lay a hand on the man. He spontaneously broke into an oration, appealing to the better angels of their nature, and successfully persuaded the mob to leave and let the legal system run its course. Forrest met his beloved wife when he found her carriage stuck in the mud; at once, he assisted in extricating the carriage. There were two men standing by on horseback, doing nothing, and Forrest’s repugnance at their unchivalrous apathy was such that rather than assist his future wife back into her carriage, he confronted the two loafers. He asked them why they had not helped the damsel in distress, and added that if they did not depart forthwith, he would “give them such a thrashing [that] they would never forget it.”
Of Forrest, Wyeth asked, “By what mysterious alchemy did the elements in him combine to lift him to the stars, while we who just as earnestly…strive to reach the realms of the immortals, stumble and fall, perish and are forgotten?” What catapulted this unschooled, unlettered, and iconoclastic “left-handed scion of the American pioneer”, with no military education, into “not only…one of the most remarkable and romantic personalities of the War, but…one of the ablest soldiers of the world”? Known as the Wizard of the Saddle, “the fertile imagination of a Walter Scott could scarcely conjure up a tale more romantic” than Forrest’s ascendance to legend.
General Johnston considered Forrest to be the greatest soldier of the War. General Beauregard remarked that the man’s “capacity for war seemed only to be limited by the opportunities for its display.” Even the demonic Sherman conceded that Forrest “was the most remarkable man our War produced on either side…he had never read a military book in his life…but he had a genius for strategy that was original, and to me incomprehensible. There was no theory or art of war by which I could calculate with any degree of certainty what Forrest was up to. He seemed always to know what I was doing, or intended to do, while…I could never form any satisfactory idea of what he was trying to accomplish.” Lord Wolseley, remarking upon Forrest’s fearlessness, marveled that he, “nature’s soldier…by sheer force of character alone, became the great fighting leader…his military career teaches us that the genius which makes men great soldiers is not to be measured by any competitive examination in the science or art of war. ‘In war’, Napoleon said, ‘men are nothing; a man is everything.’”
Forrest’s maxim was that “war means fighting, and fighting means killing”; he was acutely aware of what victory would require, and was willing to achieve it at any cost. He devoted his energy and his personal fortune totally to our Cause, and would happily have lain down his life for the Confederacy. To the consummation of this end, “everything must be subordinated.” This devotion extended well beyond his own life and his own finances; his only child left college to serve under him, and was wounded. After ensuring that the wound was not grievous, Forrest ordered him to return to the front. He never lost sight of his purpose, and never let him his men forget theirs. In one address congratulating his men for driving a force thrice greater than their own from the country, he urged them to “achieve your independence or perish in the attempt.” Upon leaving Lieutenant-General Taylor’s command, Forrest told the man, “I know not how long we are to labor for that independence for which we have thus far struggled in vain, but this I do know, that I will never weary in defending our cause, which must ultimately succeed. Faith is the duty of the hour. We will succeed. We have only to work and wait.”
Poster Comment:
This is excerpted from a long article, nice history about the General.