Early Life
Nathan Bedford Forrest born on July 13, 1821 in Chaple hill, Tennessee. Forrest was born into a very poor blacksmith family in the middle of Tennessee. Forrest and his eleven siblings grew up in a small two room cabin. His big family was short lived due to a typhoid that killed half of his brothers including his twin brother.
Coming up from this poor family he became a business man. He owned a cotton plantation in the Tennessee Delta and a slave owner as well as slave trader. Forrest took the head of the family after his father’s death and supported his mother and siblings through college. 1861 Forrest was the richest man in the South claiming he was worth $1.5 million.
The New York Times wrote an article saying "He was known to his acquaintances as a man of obscure origin and low associations, a shrewd speculator, negro trader, and duelist, but a man of great energy and brute courage." http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/0713.html
Post-War Years in Tennessee
After serving in the civil war and joining the Confederate Army Forrest returned to Tennessee and publicly advocated for peaceful submission to the victorious Union. Unfortunately, Forrest did not receive the sudden racial enlightenment, nor did he submit entirely to the “new world order”. Perhaps blacks were no longer slaves in the new world order, but, Forrest believed, they had to remain the South's docile workforce, for their own good as well as his. "I am not an enemy of the negro," Forrest said. "We want him here among us; he is the only laboring class we have." http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/roadshow/fts/palmsprings_200801A41.html
In the winter of 1865 to 1866 The Ku Klux Klan was created by a group of the Confederate Army veterans. Adopting the Greek word “kyklos,” meaning circle and the English word clan creating their name Ku Klux Klan. Nathan Bedford Forrest was believed to be the “first Grand Wizard”- the head of the Ku Klux Klan.
Attire in the Klan consisted of white robes and sheets intending to prevent identifying the federal troop “(and supposedly designed to frighten blacks)”. It didn’t take long for the Klan to become a terrorist group in service of the Democratic Party and white supremacy. The goal: to destroy Congressional Reconstruction by murdering blacks and several whites. The whites that were killed had done one of two active in the Republican Party and/or educating black children.
The terrorist group burned churches, schools, and drove hundreds of thousands of people out of their homes. In the hopes to persuade black voters that a return to their state of repression and near-slavery, as it existed before the war, was in their best interest. To scare blacks off voting and running for office; in the spring of 1867, Forrest and his “dragons” launched a campaign of midnight parades. “Ghosts” masquerades; and “whipping” and even killing Black voters and white Republicans.
“Bedford Forrest was a product of a divided society in which acts of racism were often considered good Christian behavior. He always suffered from a wild temper, bullied his subordinates and even his commanding officers, and was extremely violent.”
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/roadshow/fts/palmsprings_200801A41.html
To End
Local law enforcement officials were unable and unwilling to stop the Ku Klux Klan so, congress passed the Force Bill in 1871. President Ulysses S. Grant authorized the military to suppress and most of all prosecute the Klan. Prosecutors managed to win convictions and break up the Klan activity (for now).The Ku Klux Act resulted in nine South Carolina counties being placed under martial law and thousands of arrests although, few people were punished. Federal action did put an end to most Klan activities and soon faded away.
To End.. it All
Forrest died in Memphis October 29, 1877 form acute complication of diabetes. Buried at Elmwood Cemetery. In 1904 his remains were disinterred and moved to Forrest Park, a Memphis city park named in his honor.
In 1882 The U.S. Supreme Court declared the Ku Klux Act unconstitutional, but by that time Reconstruction had ended and the KKK had faded away.
Work Cited:
*Chalmers, David Mark. 2003. Backfire: How the Ku Klux Klan Helped the Civil Rights Movement. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield.
*Nathan Bedford Forrest: In Search of the Enigma, by Eddy W. Davison and Daniel Foxx. 2007.
*"Obituary: Nathan Bedford Forrest", The New York Times, 30 October 1877
*Wormser, Richard. “Rise And Fall of Jim Crow”. http://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/stories_org_kkk.html
*“Nathan Bedford Forrest”. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathan_Bedford_Forrest#cite_note-nytimes.com-6
*The New York Times. “On This Day”.http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/0713.html. October 30, 1877.
