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To: Libloather
Kind of funny all around. Did they mention Forrest was a democrat?

In 1858, Forrest was elected a Memphis city alderman as a Democrat and served two consecutive terms. By the time the American Civil War started in 1861, he had become one of the richest men in the South, having amassed a "personal fortune that he claimed was worth $1.5 million". Forrest was well known as a Memphis speculator and Mississippi gambler. In 1859, he bought two large cotton plantations in Coahoma County, Mississippi, and a half-interest in another plantation in Arkansas; by October 1860 he owned at least 3,345 acres in Mississippi. Although scholars admire Forrest as a military strategist, he has remained a highly controversial figure in Southern history, especially for his role in the attack on Fort Pillow, his 1867–1869 leadership of the Ku Klux Klan, and his political influence as a Tennessee delegate at the 1868 Democratic National Convention.

Prominent ex-Confederates, including Forrest, the Grand Wizard of the Klan, and South Carolina's Wade Hampton, attended as delegates at the 1868 Democratic Convention, held at Tammany Hall in New York City. Forrest rode to the convention on a train that stopped in a small Northern town along the way, where he faced down a bully who wanted to fight the "damned butcher" of Fort Pillow. Former Governor of New York Horatio Seymour was nominated as the Democratic presidential candidate, while Forrest's friend, Frank Blair, Jr. was nominated as the Democratic vice presidential candidate, Seymour's running mate. The Seymour-Blair Democratic ticket's campaign slogan was: "Our Ticket, Our Motto, This Is a White Man's Country; Let White Men Rule." The Democratic Party platform denounced the Reconstruction Acts as unconstitutional, void, and revolutionary. The party advocated termination of the Freedman's Bureau and any government policy designed to aid blacks in the South. All of this worked into the Republican's hands, who focused on the Democratic Party's alleged disloyalty during and after the Civil War.


Democrat Party's alleged dislyoyalty...some things never change.
9 posted on 07/23/2018 3:36:19 AM PDT by wizwor
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To: wizwor

They said Forrest was a KKK leader. That meant he was a Democrat.


33 posted on 07/23/2018 6:23:13 AM PDT by Tell It Right (1st Thess. 5:21 -- Put everything to the test, hold fast to that which is true)
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