Posted on 09/10/2007 7:48:32 AM PDT by meandog
KENNESAW, Ga.--Is the history of our great nation important to you?
Union Gen. William T. Sherman said of Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, "After all, I think Forrest as the most remarkable man our 'Civil War' produced on either side." This came from a man who was once a foe of Forrest on the field of battle.
Why do some folks attack America's heritage?
Several years ago, attempts were made to change the name of Forrest Park in Memphis, Tenn. Now, there are people trying to change the name of Nathan Bedford Forrest High School in Jacksonville, Fla.
But was Forrest an early advocate for civil rights?
Forrest's speech during a meeting of the "Jubilee of Pole Bearers" is a story that needs to be told. He was the first white man invited by this group, which was a forerunner of today's civil rights groups. A reporter at the Memphis Avalanche newspaper was sent to cover the event, one that included a Southern barbecue supper
(Excerpt) Read more at fredericksburg.com ...
Oh Yea?
Watch an army force prisoners to dig up land mines nowdays.....They will be committing a WAR CRIME according to the Geneva Convention.
As for “cowardly”, the Confederates were using what weapons they had to stop an overwhelming force from invading THEIR land! (and land mines were and are STILL legal.)
Not without lying they can't.
A nice story except that the Klan was founded in 1866. The Reconstruction Acts weren't passed until 1867.
I'm surprised this fact is not mentioned more often. From Sherman's Memoirs:
"On the 18th day of March, 1864, at Nashville, Tennessee, I relieved Lieutenant-General Grant in command of the Military Division of the Mississippi. About this time, viz., the early part of April, I was much disturbed by a bold raid made by the rebel General Forrest up between the Mississippi and Tennessee Rivers. He reached the Ohio River at Paducah, but was handsomely repulsed by Colonel Hicks. He then swung down toward Memphis, assaulted and carried Fort Pillow, massacring a part of its garrison, composed wholly of negro troops.
At first I discredited the story of the massacre, because, in preparing for the Meridian campaign, I had ordered Fort Pillow to be evacuated, but it transpired afterward that General Hurlbut had retained a small garrison at Fort Pillow to encourage the enlistment of the blacks as soldiers, which was a favorite political policy at that day. The massacre at Fort Pillow occurred April 12, 1864, and has been the subject of congressional inquiry. No doubt Forrest's men acted like a set of barbarians, shooting down the helpless negro garrison after the fort was in their possession;
But I am told that Forrest personally disclaims any active participation in the assault, and that he stopped the firing as soon as he could. I also take it for granted that Forrest did not lead the assault in person, and consequently that he was to the rear, out of sight if not of hearing at the time, and I was told by hundreds of our men, who were at various times prisoners in Forrest's possession, that he was usually very kind to them.
He had a desperate set of fellows under him, and at that very time there is no doubt the feeling of the Southern people was fearfully savage on this very point of our making soldiers out of their late slaves, and Forrest may have shared the feeling."
By the standards of the day, the laying of land mines (or "torpedoes" as they were called) was a war crime and considered one of the most cowardly, criminal acts of war.
That's another way of saying:
He was a slave master/trader who only freed his slaves after the war had started.
The Geneva Convention didn't exist, and at the time a lot of people considered the land mines to be a war crime as well. Who better to get rid of them than the people who planted them?
As for “cowardly”, the Confederates were using what weapons they had to stop an overwhelming force from invading THEIR land!
And the Yankees were using whatever was available to get rid of them.
I never said they didn't. But it is strange all of these people refering to the "Order of Pole-Bearers" as a "prominent civil rights group" or "a forerunner of the NAACP" when no mention of the group in any other context has reached the Internet.
Apparently I'm not the first person to make this observation. More here.
A convenient and oft-repeated Southron myth. In the first place slave marriages were not recognized in any Southern state. In the second place there is documentation that Forrest did indeed separate slaves from their partners and children. In "River Run Red" Andrew Ward details how one Forrest admirer, Judge J.P. Young, was upset as a child when Forrest bought his nursemaid and took her away, separating her from her two children. A former slave named Louis Hughes wrote many years after the war about how his wife and children, who he claims had been illegally abducted after being freed in Kentucky, were sold to separate owners by Forrest. And as it turns out one of the survivors of Fort Pillow, Thomas Hooper of the 6th U.S. Colored Artillery, apparently as a child was sold by Forrest along with his mother, but to separate parties.
Forrest was above all else a successful businessman in his chosen profession. Successful businessmen do not become so by holding to practices that prevent them from doing business. While claims that Forrest abused his slaves apparently have little evidence to support them, he did buy and sell slaves as the opportunity presented itself. And if that meant separating parents from children, or parents from each other, then he didn't seem to have a problem with that.
It's also interesting to note that in his book "Nathan Bedford Forrest: A Biography" Jack Hurst quotes Forrest as claiming in later life that he was part owner in the Wanderer, a slave ship from the 1850's, and was apparently proud of the fact that the death rate among the slaves was low. While slave trading was certainly a legal occupation in the South, slave importing was not.
Proof Please...let’s see your source.
You cannot justify Sherman’s actions. Not this time.
Sure I can.
Wrong. You attempted to do so, but NO cigar!
They laid them. They dug them up. Sounds justified to me.
Link.
If however, as you suggest, they were good, moral and righteous weapons, what's the big deal with Sherman giving the prisoners the opportunity to clean them up?
Likewise, as long as we're talking about Sherman's "barbarity" why not take a look at his correspondence with Hood prior to his taking of Atlanta? Sherman requested Hood vacate the city, and offered to assist in the relocation of it's citizens. Hood placed his defensive positions in and amongst the city's residences, churches etc., then accused Sherman of firing upon residences, churches, etc. It was perhaps history's first "made for al-jazeera" production.
There is -0- proof that the world considered the use of mines to be against the rules of war. The only thing your link proves is that the UNION considered them so (because they were WORKING!) and they committed war crimes to try and eradicate the threat. Sounds like the Yankees had a case of “sour grapes”.......
Too bad the Confederacy did’t have use of the weapons sooner......
According to what I read, the UNION refered to them as “infernal devices”.......
Read the link again and you'll find that the rebel leadership felt the same.
...and they committed war crimes to try and eradicate the threat.
Can you quote what international law they were violating? There had to be one in order for it to be a war crime, right?
Sounds like the Yankees had a case of “sour grapes...
Sounds like Southron whining to me.
A lot of y'all are fond of quoting from Gone With the Wind and Gods and Generals, I suggest you watch the courtroom scene from that great Australian film, Breaker Morant. Especially the part about Boer prioners and trains.
"Thus ended the history of rebel torpedoism, at least for a time, in the county of Bradley; and thus ended, in this region, rebel success in this type of warfare. Bringing to their aid the skill and ingenuity of Europe in concocting rebel schemes and in manufacturing infernal machines, with which to blow up Brother Jonathan, establish a negro Confederacy, promising to pay their foreign help with King Cotton, they succeeded in frightening a miserable gang of their own cowards, and in lifting four wheels, loaded with wood, from the track of a Federal railroad."
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