I have read your homepage about the Fort Pillow “massacre” and concur that while Forrest was not personally engaged in the killing he was extremely derelict in his duties as the commanding officer. He obviously knew about the atrocities on going ("the men are still a-killin them in the woods") is a part of his after action report.
IMO, Lee would have court-martialed him had he been under the his command in the Army of Northern Virginia. Bragg should have for gross insubordination when he defied his order to link up with Joe Wheeler (whom Forrest despised) after Chicamauga. It was only his superior record in whipping Yankees that consistently got him out of trouble.
It is a sad commentary, I believe, to his outstanding legacy after the war regarding the KKK as hardly anyone knows that he tried hard to disband the group for its violence and terrorism and really originally only helped organized it to counter carpetbagging corruption in the disenfranchised South after the War Between the States, rather than to torture black folks.
History of the period, unfortunately forgets (due to many liberal historians and college professors) that Radical Republicans during the period were as bad, if not worse, than that of some of the Southern after war groups in bullying freed slaves to vote for their candidates (obviously many of the freedmen would have voted for their former masters--if they would have been allowed to run). Such bullying tactics from Radical Republicans ranged from overt physical threats and hints that they and their families would be shipped off to Carribean Islands to threats of moving them from their cabins as former plantations were being grabbed up by carpetbagging speculators (ex-Confederate owners had to pay taxes in gold or yankee greenbacks, which, of course, they did not have). There was also the "40 acres and a mule" graft and bribes as well--which I'm certain you know about it.
