So much for confederate gallantry.
Forrest was in constant conflict with superiors and subordinates and was a raider, mainly. He was demoted many times, ordered the massacre of all the Black prisoners at Fort Pillow.
If he hadn't paid for his mounted battalion with his own money from slave trading, he likely would have never had a command.
If a Fort Pillow massacre occurred, there is no objective evidence that General Forrest ordered it.
“ordered the massacre of all the Black prisoners at Fort Pillow”
BS.
that entire reply demonstrates your complete lack of knowledge on the subject you are ranting about
Forrest shot a man who stabbed him...what would you do?
help him guide the knife?
Forrest was never demoted. He had his command changed from under him for many reasons mostly strategic which had little to do with him except when David and SD Lee sent him west after Bragg’s last debacle.
There is absolutely no evidence that Forrest ordered the massacre of black (and local Tennessean Unionist with them) during that fight...in fact, there is Federal testimony to the contrary. The Union commander held a drunken command which refused to submit to overwhelming force, violated repeated truce flags and then made the tactical blunder of running into a hole (kind like the Crater Yankees) and got shot to pieces by the river where Forrest himself stopped it. It was a rout no doubt but the less than capable Federal leadership there brought it on himself.
He enlisted as a private and did indeed supply many forces in Memphis and North Mississippi with arms smuggled in from Kentucky and the old Midwest of Southern Indiana and Illinois at the outbreak of the war. Forrest was a very large landowner and cotton trader and known to be a reasonable man with his slaves. His records have been scoured and no Simon Legree was he. His slaves spoke warmly of him and his funeral was attended by more blacks than whites.
He helped form the original Klan to combat Union occupation and carpet baggers and the disenfranchisement of whites and the putting in office of sometimes illiterate blacks who were manipulated by corrupt Yankee administrators.
and I don’t blame him, and he left when they did and he saw the organization had become more than he intended
further, he gave a series of speeches about reconciliation with both the north and blacks...particularly with blacks
and he knew not to wage a guerrilla war because he (and other Southerners) viewed a victory at that cost as dishonorable
and he fought many Yankee forces much larger than his and won about every time except Donleson (where he escaped) and Selma at the end.
he was hardly just a raider.
any decent neo-abolitionist today should be grateful he did not have large forces under his command....which he did not because he was not a Pointer and had been born common
and btw....we are not re fighting the war...it’s over...if you don’t like our history then go find another thread where race baiters can breast beat till the cows come round...or try wideawakes...plenty of PC RINOs there
Forrest was in constant conflict mainly with Braxton Bragg. He got along fine with Dick Taylor.
Oh, and your reading of the Fort Pillow incident is, shall we say, selective and incomplete.
Total bullcrap, but that smear in the northern papers was the best the union forces could do to diminish Forrest, since they could never catch nor defeat him. So if you can't catch or defeat him, you create a false atrocity story about him. Par for the course. We understand.
furthermore, it denigrates the BRAVERY of the Black union soldiers, who mostly fought HONORABLY to their last breath.
face it,you've been LIED TO & made a FOOL of by those who wouldn't spit on you, if you caught fire.
free dixie,sw
‘Forrest was in constant conflict with superiors and subordinates and was a raider, mainly. He was demoted many times, ordered the massacre of all the Black prisoners at Fort Pillow.’
actually, all available documentation shows he tried to put a stop to the ‘massacre’ such as it was.
More blacks were killed at ‘The Crater’ than at Ft Pillow btw, in a rage that consumed the Confederates after the explosion.
What is your source that Forrest was ever demoted?
What is your source that he ordered the massacre of black soldiers?