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General Nathan Bedford Forrest (July 13, 1821 - October 29, 1877), perhaps the American Civil War's most highly regarded cavalry officer, and one of the war's most innovative and successful generals, developed tactics that soldiers still study even today. After the war, he became the first leader of the Ku Klux Klan.
Early Life
Nathan Bedford Forrest was born to a poor middle Tennessee family on July 13, 1821 in the Bedford County town of Chapel Hill. Forrest became the head of his family at the age of 17, following his father's death, and despite having no formal education, he determined to pull himself and his family up from the poverty that enmired them. Ultimately, he became a businessman, a plantation owner and a slave trader. He put his younger brothers through college, provided for his mother and by the time the American Civil War broke out in 1861, had become a millionaire, one of the richest men in the U.S. South.
Military Career
Given that Nathan Bedford Forrest earned much of his money in the slave trade, he naturally favored the Confederate side in the war. Using his own money, he raised and equipped a regiment of Tennessee volunteer soldiers to fight in the Confederate army. General Nathan Bedford Forrest himself wanted no more than to fight for the Confederacy as a private, but because of his prominence in society and the fact he had raised the troops himself, he ended up as their commanding officer, with the rank of Colonel. He knew almost nothing of military operations, but applied himself diligently to learn, and soon became a competent officer.
Forrest's efforts did not go unnoticed, and he soon won promotion to Brigadier General and gained command of a Confederate cavalry brigade. He first distinguished himself in battle at the Battle of Fort Donelson in February 1862, when he led a breakout from a siege by the Union army. He had tried to persuade his superiors of the feasibility of retreating out of the fort across the Cumberland River, but they refused to listen. Nathan Bedford Forrest angrily walked out of a meeting and declared that he had not led his men into battle to surrender. He proved his point when nearly 4,000 troops followed him across the river to fight again. A few days later, with the fall of Nashville imminent, Forrest took command of the city and evacuated several government officials and removed millions of dollars in heavy machinery used to make weapons - something the Confederacy could ill afford to lose.
A month later, Nathan Bedford Forrest was back in action at the battle of Shiloh ( 6 - 7 April 1862). Once again, he found himself in command of the Confederate rear guard after a lost battle, and again he distinguished himself. For the first time, he came under enemy fire and showed himself to have no fear. He charged a line of Union skirmishers, drove them off, but was wounded in the process. Nathan Bedford Forrest allegedly became the battle's last casualty.
Nathan Bedford Forrest quickly recovered from the injury and was back in the saddle that summer, in command of a new brigade of green cavalry regiments. In July, he led them back into middle Tennessee after receiving an order from the commanding general, Gen. Braxton Bragg, to launch a cavalry raid. It proved a stunning success. On Forrest's birthday, 13 July 1862, his men descended on the Union-held city of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, defeating and then capturing a force of twice their numbers.
This proved just the first of many victories Nathan Bedford Forrest would win; he remained undefeated in battle until the final days of the war, when he faced overwhelming numbers. But he and Bragg could not get along, and the Confederate high command did not realize the degree of Forrest's talent until far too late in the war. In their postwar writings, both Confederate President Jefferson Davis and General Robert E. Lee lamented this oversight.
In December 1862, Nathan Bedford Forrest again received a new command, this one composed of about 2,000 green recruits, most of whom lacked even weapons with which to fight. Again, Bragg ordered a raid, this one into west Tennessee to disrupt the communications of the Union forces under general Ulysses S. Grant, threatening the city of Vicksburg, Mississippi.
General Nathan Bedford Forrest protested that to send these untrained men behind enemy lines was suicidal, but Bragg insisted, and Forrest obeyed his orders. On the ensuing raid, he again showed his brilliance, leading thousands of Union soldiers in west Tennessee on a "wild goose chase" trying to locate his fast-moving forces. Forrest never stayed in one place long enough to be located, raided as far north as the banks of the Ohio River in southwest Kentucky, and came back to his base in Mississippi with more men than he'd left with, and all of them fully armed with captured Union weapons.
Nathan Bedford Forrest continued to lead his men in smaller-scale operations until April of 1863, when he the Confederate army dispatched him into the backcountry of northern Alabama and west Georgia to deal with an attack of 3,000 Union cavalrymen under the command of Col. Abel Streight. Streight had orders to cut the Confederate railroad south of Chattanooga, Tennessee, which would have cut off Bragg's supply line and forced him to retreat into Georgia. Forrest chased Streight's men for 16 days, harassing them all the way, until Streight's lone objective became simply to escape his relentless pursuer. Finally, on May 3, Nathan Bedford Forrest caught up with Streight at Rome, Georgia and took 1,700 prisoners.
Nathan Bedford Forrest served with the main army at the Battle of Chickamauga (18 September - 20 September 1863), where he pursued the retreating Union army and took hundreds of prisoners. Like several others under Bragg's command, he urged an immediate follow-up attack to recapture Chattanooga, which had fallen a few weeks before. Bragg failed to do so, and not long after, Forrest and Bragg had a confrontation which resulted in Forrest's re-assignment to an independent command in Mississippi.
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