1. Congressional Testimony of Nathan Bedford Forrest before the Congress Joint Select Committee, Ku Klux conspiracy: Report of the joint Select Committee to Inquire into the Condition of Affairs in the Late Insurrectionary States, Made to Both Houses of Congress. 42nd Congress; 2nd session, Senate Report 41, Volume 13; Washington, D.C. (1872)
Nathan Beford Forrest
I said to forty-five colored fellows on my plantation that it was a war upon slavery, and that I was going into the army; that if they would go with me, if we got whipped they would be free anyhow, and that if we succeeded and slavery was perpetuated, if they would act faithfully to me to the end of the war, I would set them free . . . Eighteen months before the war closed I was satisfied that we were going to be defeated and, and I gave them their free papers, for I fear I might be killed . . . No finer Confederates rode with me. {Emphasis Added}
When Forrest surrendered, there were 65 Free Men of Color riding with his forces. It is noted that all of these men rode with Gen. Forrest until the end of the war and not one ever signed an Oath of Loyalty or was “reconstructed.”
Six years after the fact. Didn’t Forrest have anything to say about his black troopers during the war?
also right after the war he gave a black woman flowers and said he hoped we would all come together now as races of which some did not like him doing that but Gen Forrest was always his own man of which I like