Nathan Bedford Forrest

His father died in 1837 and left him, at 16, a hardscrabble farm near Chapel Hill, Tennessee and eleven younger brothers and sisters. Several of them had already gone to typhoid. He had no schooling and no capital, and got both in the one trade that would take a Memphis man with nothing but nerve. From 1851 to 1860 Forrest bought and sold human beings out of a yard at 87 Adams Street, one of the four largest dealers in the city, and is believed to have sold thousands. In 1859 federal investigators established that 37 of them had been landed illegally from Africa by the slave ship Wanderer. By 1860 he held more than 3,000 acres of Mississippi cotton land and claimed a fortune of 1.5 million dollars.

He enlisted as a private on June 14, 1861, at 39, and finished the war a lieutenant general, a climb no other Confederate managed without formal military training. His men called him the Wizard of the Saddle. On April 12, 1864, his force took Fort Pillow on the Mississippi from a garrison of 557, of whom 262 were Black. The historians John Cimprich and Robert Mainfort Tap counted two-thirds of the Black soldiers killed against one-third of the white. Union survivors described men shot in the back as they ran for the river, wounded men shot where they lay, and men burned alive. Forrest's soldiers answered that the fleeing men had kept their weapons and kept turning to fire. Two years later he joined the Ku Klux Klan and was elected its first Grand Wizard.

What he ordered at Fort Pillow is still argued. The historian S.C. Gwynne put the careful version this way: no direct evidence suggests Forrest ordered the shooting of surrendering or unarmed men, and it is also impossible to exonerate him. The Klan record runs the same way. In 1869 he ordered the organization dissolved and its costumes destroyed, few Klansmen obeyed, and he later denied belonging to it at all. In his last public appearance, on July 5, 1875, he addressed the Independent Order of Pole-Bearers, a Black civic organization, accepted a bouquet from the daughter of one of its officers, kissed her on the cheek and spoke for Black advancement. Five months before he died he was working more than a hundred leased convicts on President's Island with bloodhounds, shotgun guards and corporal punishment.

His body has moved more than most. Buried at Elmwood Cemetery in Memphis on October 31, 1877, behind a funeral procession two miles long, he was dug up in 1904 and reburied under an equestrian statue in a park named for him. Memphis renamed the park, the state overruled the city's vote to remove the monument, and on December 20, 2017 a nonprofit that had just bought the land took the statue down anyway. The remains came out of the ground on June 3, 2021 and were reburied that September at Columbia, Tennessee. The same year the legislature moved his bust out of the State Capitol into the State Museum. His descendant Brett Forrest had argued publicly for the move.

Nathan Bedford Forrest's life against the full span of the corpus.

• Forrest's slave-trading business, 87 Adams Street, Memphis company
  One of the big four Memphis firms — its records burned in January 1860 1851
• The assault on Fort Pillow mission
  Two-thirds of the Black defenders were killed, against one-third of the white 1864
• The Ku Klux Klan under its first Grand Wizard company
  Elected in the spring of 1867 and withdrew in 1869 1867
• Letter ordering the Klan dissolved other
  It also ordered the costumes destroyed. Few Klansmen complied. 1869
• Presidency of the Marion & Memphis Railroad company
  The Selma-based line went bankrupt under him and left him nearly ruined 1873
• Speech to the Independent Order of Pole-Bearers speech
  His last public appearance — the New York Times called it a friendly speech 1875

• July 13, 1821 aged 0 Born near Chapel Hill, Tennessee, the eldest of twelve He had a twin sister, Fanny. Several siblings died of typhoid.
• 1837 aged ~16 His father dies and he takes over the family at 16
• 1851 aged ~30 Opens a slave-trading business in Memphis
• 1859 aged ~38 Federal investigators find he sold 37 people landed illegally from Africa They had been carried on the slave ship Wanderer.
• June 14, 1861 aged 39 Enlists in the Confederate Army as a private at 39
• April 12, 1864 aged 42 His force takes Fort Pillow Of 557 defenders, 262 were Black. Northern newspapers and Congress held him responsible for a massacre.
• 1867 aged ~46 Elected the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan
• July 5, 1875 aged 53 Addresses the Independent Order of Pole-Bearers in Memphis He accepted flowers from a young Black woman, kissed her cheek, and spoke for Black advancement.
• October 29, 1877 aged 56 Dies of complications of diabetes at his brother's Memphis house

• William Tecumseh Sherman 1820–1891
  Union general whose campaigns through Georgia and the Carolinas helped destroy the Confederacy’s capacity to wage war. hunted by
• Ulysses S. Grant 1822–1885
  18th President and Union Army general whose leadership was decisive in winning the Civil War. fought against
• Ida B. Wells 1862–1931
  Journalist and anti-lynching crusader whose investigative reporting exposed racial terror in the South. documented the terror in his city
• Frederick Douglass 1818–1895
  Former slave who became a leading abolitionist, orator, and advocate for equal rights. campaigned against the trade he ran
• W.E.B. Du Bois 1868–1963
  Sociologist, historian, and civil rights activist who was the first African American to earn a Harvard doctorate. wrote the Reconstruction he helped destroy