Ted Cruz leads backlash after Tennessee gov signs proclamation honoring early KKK leader

Fox News ^ | Published July 12, 2019 Last Update 12 hrs ago | Vandana Rambaran

[conservative98]

Tennesse Gov. Bill Lee was under fire from Republicans and Democrats alike Friday after signing a proclamation designating Saturday, July 13 as Nathan Bedford Forrest Day, a state "day of special observance" honoring a Confederate general and early leader of the Klu Klux Klan.

"I signed the bill because the law requires that I do that and I haven’t looked at changing that law," Lee said Thursday according to reports by the Tennessean.

Senator Ted Cruz, R-Tx., took to Twitter to demand that the state "change the law."

"This is WRONG. Nathan Bedford Forrest was a Confederate general & a delegate to the 1868 Democratic Convention. He was also a slave trader & the 1st Grand Wizard of the KKK. Tennessee should not have an official day (tomorrow) honoring him," Cruz said.

[FLT-bird]

He may have left the KKK but he was active during its formative years....born of hatred and belief in the Lost Cause. No conservative today should think highly of any such democrat....the party if slavery and treachery. First. Last. Always

Once again. There is no evidence Forrest was ever even in the KKK much less its leader. None. He always denied it. There was no evidence put forth which would refute that. Also, it should be remembered what was going on during the Occupation. The vast majority of voters in the Southern states were disenfranchised. Occupation governments were put in power. They raised taxes by up to 300% right after a war when the region's economy was ruined. They then stole the money that was raised by these taxes. People who could not pay the sky high taxes had their land seized. The land was then bought up by crooked carpetbaggers and various Republican Party flunkies at knockdown prices. Surprise, Surprise, there was a violent reaction to this.

[kiryandil]

Ted's temporary Democrat fans over this are still going to call Cruz a racist at the end of the day. TODAY.

Cruz doesn't seem to understand the Media at all. His statement will be used to put another coat of paint on the "Republicans Are Raciss" pinata - using the Democrat Nathan Bedford Forrest.

Neat trick, that.

[Lurkinanloomin]

He still has dreams of usurping the Presidency.

[Mr Rogers]

“They didn’t press charges and there was no evidence because there was no such “massacre”.”

I know you Lost Causers like to pretend the South was as pure as the driven snow, but it simply is not true.

“About 8 a.m. the enemy sent in a flag of truce with a proposal from General Forrest that he would put me in possession of the fort and the country around until 5 p.m. for the purpose of burying our dead and removing our wounded, whom he had no means of attending to. I agreed to the terms proposed, and hailing the steamer Platte Valley, which vessel I had convoyed up from Memphis, I brought her alongside and had the wounded brought down from the fort and battle-field and placed on board of her. Details of rebel soldiers assisted us in this duty, and some soldiers and citizens on board the Platte Valley volunteered for the same purpose....

...All the wounded who had strength enough to speak agreed that after the fort was taken an indiscriminate slaughter of our troops was carried on by the enemy with a furious and vindictive savageness which was never equaled by the most merciless of the Indian tribes. Around on every side horrible testimony to the truth of this statement could be seen. Bodies with gaping wounds, some bayoneted through the eyes, some with skulls beaten through, others with hideous wounds as if their bowels had been ripped open with bowie-knives, plainly told that but little quarter was shown to our troops. Strewn from the fort to the river bank, in the ravines and hollows, behind logs and under the brush where they had crept for protection from the assassins who pursued them, we found bodies bayoneted, beaten, and shot to death, showing how cold-blooded and persistent was the slaughter of our unfortunate troops.

Of course, when a work is carried by assault there will always be more or less bloodshed, even when all resistance has ceased; but here there were unmistakable evidences of a massacre carried on long after any resistance could have been offered, with a cold-blooded barbarity and perseverance which nothing can palliate.” - W. FERGUSON, Acting Master, U.S. Navy, Comdg. U.S. Steamer Silver Cloud.

“We then landed at the fort, and I was sent out with a burial party to bury our dead. I found many of the dead lying close along by the water’s edge, where they had evidently sought safety; they could not offer any resistance from the places where they were, in holes and cavities along the banks; most of them had two wounds. I saw several colored soldiers of the Sixth United States Artillery, with their eyes punched out with bayonets; many of them were shot twice and bayonetted also. All those along the bank of the river were colored. The number of the colored near the river was about seventy. Going up into the fort, I saw there bodies partially consumed by fire. Whether burned before or after death I cannot say, anyway, there were several companies of rebels in the fort while these bodies were burning, and they could have pulled them out of the fire had they chosen to do so. One of the wounded negroes told me that “he hadn’t done a thing,” and when the rebels drove our men out of the fort, they (our men) threw away their guns and cried out that they surrendered, but they kept on shooting them down until they had shot all but a few. This is what they all say.

I had some conversation with rebel officers and they claim that our men would not surrender and in some few cases they “could not control their men,” who seemed determined to shoot down every negro soldier, whether he surrendered or not. This is a flimsy excuse, for after our colored troops had been driven from the fort, and they were surrounded by the rebels on all sides, it is apparent that they would do what all say they did,throw down their arms and beg for mercy.

I buried very few white men, the whole number buried by my party and the party from the gunboat “New Era” was about one hundred.” - ROBERT S. CRITCHELL, Acting Master’s Mate, U. S. N.

Both written the day after the battle. https://deadconfederates.com/2012/08/02/what-they-saw-at-fort-pillow/

“We will never really know whether Forrest directly ordered the massacre, but it seems unlikely. True, Confederate soldier Achilles Clark, who had no reason to lie, wrote to his wife that “I with several others tried to stop the butchery . . . , but Gen. Forrest ordered them [Negro and white Union troops] shot down like dogs, and the carnage continued.” But it is not clear whether Clark heard Forrest giving the orders or was just reporting hearsay. Many Confederates had been shouting “No quarter! No quarter!” and, as Shelby Foote points out, these shouts were “thought by some to be at Forrest’s command.” A Union soldier, Jacob Thompson, claimed to have seen Forrest order the killing, but when asked to describe the six-foot-two general, he called him “a little bit of a man.”

Perhaps the most convincing evidence that Forrest did not order the massacre is that he tried to stop it once it had begun. Historian Albert Castel quotes several eyewitnesses on both the Union and Confederate sides as saying that Forrest ordered his men to stop firing. In a letter to his wife three days after the battle, Confederate soldier Samuel Caldwell wrote that “if General Forrest had not run between our men & the Yanks with his pistol and sabre drawn not a man would have been spared.”

https://campusnet.sebts.edu/pluginfile.php/201781/mod_resource/content/10/CMS%20paper.pdf

For emphasis: In a letter to his wife three days after the battle, Confederate soldier Samuel Caldwell wrote that “if General Forrest had not run between our men & the Yanks with his pistol and sabre drawn not a man would have been spared.”

---

From Shelby Foote:

INTERVIEWER
Had you been alive during the Civil War, would you have fought for the Confederates?

FOOTE
No doubt about it. What’s more, I would fight for the Confederacy today if the circumstances were similar. There’s a great deal of misunderstanding about the Confederacy, the Confederate flag, slavery, the whole thing. The political correctness of today is no way to look at the middle of the nineteenth century. The Confederates fought for some substantially good things....

INTERVIEWER
Bedford Forrest’s picture hangs on your wall. He was an ex-slave trader, responsible for the Fort Pillow massacre of captured black soldiers, and after the war deeply involved in the Ku Klux Klan.

FOOTE
You could add that in hand-to-hand combat he killed thirty-one men, mostly in saber duels or pistol shootings, and he had thirty horses shot from under him. Forrest is one of the most attractive men who ever walked through the pages of history; he surmounted all kinds of things and you better read back again on the Fort Pillow massacre instead of some piece of propaganda about it. Fort Pillow was a beautiful operation, tactically speaking. Forrest did everything he could to stop the killing of those people who were in the act of surrendering and did stop it.

Forrest himself was never a bloodthirsty sort of man who enjoyed slaughter. He also took better care of his soldiers and his black teamsters than any other general I know of. He was a man who at the age of sixteen had to raise six younger brothers and sisters after the death of his blacksmith father. He became a slave trader because that was a way of making enough money to support all those people and to get wealthy. Forrest was worth about a million dollars when the war started, an alderman for the city of Memphis. He was by no means some cracker who came out of nowhere. All writers will have great sympathy with Forrest for something he said. He did not like to write and there are very few Forrest letters. He said, I never see a pen but I think of a snake.

https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/931/shelby-foote-the-art-of-fiction-no-158-shelby-foote

I see little value in debating a Lost Causer. Anyone who wants can figure out that Fort Pillow was NOT a shining moment of Southern Gentility.

PS: I admire Nathan Bedford Forrest. I don’t admire folks who pretend the South was incapable of atrocities, particularly against blacks. One might as well pretend the war had nothing to do with slavery...

[FLT-bird]

I know you Lost Causers like to pretend the South was as pure as the driven snow, but it simply is not true. I see little value in debating a Lost Causer. Anyone who wants can figure out that Fort Pillow was NOT a shining moment of Southern Gentility. PS: I admire Nathan Bedford Forrest. I don’t admire folks who pretend the South was incapable of atrocities, particularly against blacks. One might as well pretend the war had nothing to do with slavery...

I know you PC Revisionists like to pretend the war was "all about slavery" and like to pretend that there was some "massacre" at Ft. Pillow. The bottom line is the Northern dominated US Congress investigated it and found no evidence to support any charge against Forrest. Their own investigation involved testimony from Federal soldiers who participated in the battle and none of their testimony supported any claim of a "massacre" taking place there. But as always, I know you PC Revisionists will blindly cling to your dogma no matter what so I agree, there is little to be gained from any discussion with you about it.

[Mr Rogers]

“their own investigation involved testimony from Federal soldiers who participated in the battle and none of their testimony supported any claim of a “massacre” taking place there.”

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The Congressional investigation was biased. But it did NOT conclude nothing had happened!

“It will appear from the testimony thus taken, that the atrocities committed at Fort Pillow were not the result of passions excited by the heat of conflict, but were the results of a policy deliberately decided upon and unhesitatingly announced....It was at Fort Pillow, however, that the brutality and cruelty of the rebels were most fearfully exhibited.”

https://archive.org/details/fortpillowmassac00unit/page/n6

The report is quite lengthy. Feel free to read it all.

---

As soon as the rebels got to the top of the bank there commenced the most horrible slaughter that could possibly be conceived. Our boys when they saw that they were overpowered threw down their arms and held up, some their handkerchiefs & some their hands in token of surrender, but no sooner were they seen than they were shot down, & if one shot failed to kill them the bayonet or revolver did not. I lay behind a high log & could see our poor fellows bleeding and hear them cry “surrender[,]” [”]I surrender[,]” but they surrendered in vain for the rebels now ran down the bank and putting their revolvers right to their heads would blow out their brains or lift them up on bayonets and throw them headlong into the river below. One of them soon came to where I was laying [sic] with one of “Co C” boys. He pulled out his revolver and shot the soldier right in the head [,] scattering the blood & brains in my face & then putting his revolver right against my breast he said [,] “You’ll fight with the niggers again will you? You d—d yankee,” and he snapped his revolver, but she wouldn’t go off as he had shot the last load out when he killed the soldier by my side.

“Come up the hill,” he said & I went up with him in front of me. When I got near the top the soldiers wanted to shoot the d—d yankee but the fellow who took me told them no, that I was his property. I all the time just had to keep quiet. He said that he saw by my pants and vest that I must be a citizen. I told him that I was. Then he said [,] [”] I want your Greenbacks & that watch.[”] I told him I was a prisoner & would not let him rob me. He called to another soldier & borrowed his revolver & putting it up to my
face he said [,] “Shell out — shell out quick.” I shelled out.

Another little cuss came up to me after these fellows left me & said, ‘say mister I want them boots.’ I told him I would give them to him if he would get me a drink of beer as I was very dry. He went after the beer & I went to another part of the Fort & did not see him again.

I had as yet had no guard over me, & as I had a grey suit on except the blouse, & as the rebels killed our boys they would take off their coats & put them on, so that I now was dressed as they were[,] I now went to the top of the hill right amongst them & they thought I was one of their own men. I stood there & saw them shoot & bayonet our poor fellows after they surrendered. I saw them take off their clothes after they were dead. I saw them pick the pockets of the dead, & heard them laugh & cheer when they were shooting our boys who had jumped into the river to keep from being cut to pieces.

FORT PILLOW “MASSACRE”
Observations of a Minnesotan

http://collections.mnhs.org/MNHistoryMagazine/articles/43/v43i05p186-190.pdf

[FLT-bird]

I’ve read it. Yes it was biased. What does anybody expect given that practically all the voters in the Southern states had been disenfranchised.

Yet even this biased tribunal never even charged Forrest with anything - neither any kind of responsibility for any supposed “massacre” at Ft. Pillow or for any involvement with the KKK or any of its unlawful activities.

[Mr Rogers]

I believe FORREST was not responsible. That is very different from saying “none of their testimony supported any claim of a “massacre” taking place there”.

[right way right]

He has foolish blind ambition.
I don’t believe him much anymore.
I see his foolish grandstanding and he’s just too much of a fool.
He can really dish red meat on one day then the next, this.
Judgment made without regard to historical context.
This sucks, Ted.

[AAABEST]

Haha... I scrolled the thread wondering if you’d weigh in.

[Nifster]

Keep telling yourself that

[Lurkinanloomin]

Ted’s from Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

[FLT-bird]

Present your evidence then.

[Nifster]

Forrest became involved sometime in late 1866 or early 1867. A common report is that Forrest arrived in Nashville in April 1867 while the Klan was meeting at the Maxwell House Hotel, probably at the encouragement of a state Klan leader, former Confederate general George Gordon.[135] The organization had grown to the point where an experienced commander was needed, and Forrest was well-suited to the role. In Room 10 of the Maxwell, Forrest was sworn in as a member by John W. Morton.[136][137] Brian Steel Wills quotes two KKK members who identified Forrest as a Klan leader.[138] James R. Crowe stated, “After the order grew to large numbers we found it necessary to have someone of large experience to command. We chose General Forrest”.

[nathanbedford]

Some additional thoughts submitted exactly a month ago:

Iconoclasm Spasm

Some Thoughts on the Destruction of Statues of Confederate War Heroes

My consistent reaction over time to the destruction of statues of Confederate generals has been to regard them as spasms of the mob and the product of cultish ideology. More particularly in the instances of Robert E Lee or Nathan Bedford Forrest, the desecrations are the product of a generation of miss education

Historically, they have a broader meaning and a sinister impulse. The French Revolution stands as an example of iconoclasm as a tool of social control rather than a mere expression of ideological purity.

Statues are icons and for millennia icons have stood in the place of written language. They are a visible, physical symbol of what is to be respected, venerated or even worshiped. Often after an episode of iconoclastic destruction new icons are erected to represent the new values to be respected, venerated or worshiped.

So in the French Revolution we saw the deliberate destruction of churches as well as the physical destruction of the bodies of priests and nuns, we saw the decapitation of the statues of Kings along the façade of Notre Dame, we saw the decapitation of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. All this was part of the rabid anticlericalism of the French Revolution. But keep in mind, the destruction of religious icons in the course of the French Revolution was not limited to the initial adrenaline upheaval but extended for four years when one might have expected passions to have cooled.

Not surprisingly, after Robespierre had led the way in a blood spasm of murder and iconoclasm, he turned about and erected a new icon toward a supreme being and summoned the people to a festival. Shortly thereafter he was guillotined.

Robespierre had erected a new icon to represent a new supreme being who was to be celebrated, venerated or even worshiped. Napoleon came along and was not in doubt about what should be the object of iconic worship; statues of Napoleon together with paintings exaggerating his Imperial magnificence became abundant. The phrase, the man on horseback, suggests statues of Napoleon. Not coincidentally, the more the cult of Napoleon grew, the more intrusive waxed his secret police.

The point is that the iconoclasm unleashed by the storming of the Bastille, a solid fortress torn down to rubble in a fit of iconoclasm, was a tool of the revolution, as was the propaganda of Goebbels that served the ideology of Nazism. The Jacobins knew that the icons of their ideology must supplant those of the ancient regime so they changed the calendar, renamed the months and supplanted every icon of the ancient regime they could lay their hands on.

Czar Nicholas of Russia and his family learned to their sorrow, just as Louis XVI and Marie Annette learned to their sorrow, that living human bodies are also seen as icons that must be destroyed if the ideology they represent is to be successfully supplanted. Small wonder that figures of dead Confederate generals must also be executed, decapitated, and rendered into rubble.

Quite often the iconoclasm assumes the aura of religious indignation. That is the sort of iconoclasm we have seen when the Taliban smote graven images into bits but hopefully not out of history. We saw much the same during the Protestant Reformation among the nonconformist sects who effaced religious images from church walls. These examples are illustrative of an impulse to destroy an icon not just because its presence is repugnant but because the absence of an icon is needed to conform to the theology of Islam or nonconformist sects. We are reminded that the 30 Years War was one of the worst holocausts to be visited on Europe. The German town whence my ancestor left for America in its website today describes the carnage as worse than that experienced during the second world war.

The French Revolution justified its iconoclasm by declaring it stood for liberty, equality, fraternity -all certainly enlightened impulses. But regicide or the murder of priests and nuns can hardly be described as enlightened. The Taliban justify their iconoclasm because it obeys the diktat of Allah but they proffered the same justification when they severed the heads of women and children.

When 21st-century American Talibans smash Confederate icons, they are preening their virtue for all the world to see that they themselves are not racists. They will not admit the humanity of the men whose effigies they destroy. They must make way for a whole new reality and they must sweep away historical reality to do so. The destruction of Confederate statues is not just a reaction but also a tool for social control.

God help us if the tearing down of 19th-century men evolves into the destruction of 21st-century men. History tells us the temptation for the iconoclasts to indulge their ideology in blood and murder is very real.

[FLT-bird]

Forrest became involved sometime in late 1866 or early 1867. A common report is that Forrest arrived in Nashville in April 1867 while the Klan was meeting at the Maxwell House Hotel, probably at the encouragement of a state Klan leader, former Confederate general George Gordon.[135] The organization had grown to the point where an experienced commander was needed, and Forrest was well-suited to the role. In Room 10 of the Maxwell, Forrest was sworn in as a member by John W. Morton.[136][137] Brian Steel Wills quotes two KKK members who identified Forrest as a Klan leader.[138] James R. Crowe stated, “After the order grew to large numbers we found it necessary to have someone of large experience to command. We chose General Forrest”.

So the best you've got by way of evidence is a couple of Klan members claiming it....no written evidence and no widespread accounts of this. Did it ever occur to you that the Klan had a motivation to claim Forrest was leading them as a recruitment tool due to his status as a war hero? Forrest denied he was in it, spoke publicly multiple times on behalf of integrating Blacks into society and condemned the KKK's lawlessness.

[Nifster]

Oh Lordy you are hopeless

Forrest’s biographers all claim he was head of Memphis Klan Members of that Klan give testimony to the fact he was head of the Memphis Klan.....

Your effort to defend a thieving, traitorous man is beyond ridiculous

[FLT-bird]

Oh Lordy you are hopeless Forrest’s biographers all claim he was head of Memphis Klan Members of that Klan give testimony to the fact he was head of the Memphis Klan..... Your effort to defend a thieving, traitorous man is beyond ridiculous

Just as I figured, your commitment to the PC Revisionist dogma you cling to is all encompassing. Some of Forrest's biographer's have claimed he was head of the Memphis Klan certainly not all. A few members of the Memphis Klan said he was a member. There claims are the only "evidence" you've got and they have a motive to lie about it. Your efforts to simply regurgitate Yankee propaganda laughable. Again, all you've got are the claims of a couple of Klan members who had every reason to lie. That's it. You've got nothing else.

[Nifster]

Nothing revisionist about facts. Forrest was a slaver. He had a criminal history. He fought for the CSA. All his biographers plus those who were part of the organization he led for at least two years in Memphis say he was in the Klan

You don’t get to pretend that those things didn’t happen

[FLT-bird]

Nothing revisionist about facts. Forrest was a slaver. He had a criminal history. He fought for the CSA. All his biographers plus those who were part of the organization he led for at least two years in Memphis say he was in the Klan You don’t get to pretend that those things didn’t happen

The only "facts" you have are that a couple of Klansmen claimed Forrest was a member. Forrest himself denied it. You are simply regurgitating Yankee propaganda. Not all of his biographers claim he was even in the Klan much less was its leader. You don't get to pretend you have any evidence for your claims other than the word of a few Klansmen who had reason to lie.....because you don't have any actual evidence other than that.