Nathan Bedford Forrest Redeemed? Part II

Part I of this series examines a controversial speech by Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest in which he allegedly advocated for civil rights.

“When I can serve you I will do so, [. . .] and when you are oppressed I’ll come to your relief,” Forrest said as his voice echoed through the ears of his audience of Black men and women on July 5, 1875. [1] How could a former slave trader, Confederate general, and Ku Klux Klansman utter such progressive words? Historians have advanced several theories over the years.

One potential explanation for Forrest’s aberrant speech is that he never gave it at all. Some historians suggest that Lost Cause propagandists wrote the words and credited Forrest to improve his Northern image. However, this is highly unlikely. Both the Daily Memphis Avalanche and the Memphis Daily Appeal printed the Fourth of July speeches on the following day. While there are slight variations in wording, both transcriptions of Forrest’s speech convey the same meaning.[2] Not to mention, Colonel Mathew C. Gallaway was an editor with the Avalanche and was present on the stage with Forrest that day. If he did not censure General Gideon Pillow’s speech (which followed Forrest’s remarks with more vitriol toward African Americans and the North) for the next day’s issue, why would he have changed Forrest’s?

The claim that both newspapers altered or concocted Forrest’s speech to improve the general’s image to the people of the North is preposterous, given that both the Avalanche and the Appeal supported secession before the war and anti-Reconstruction policies after it. Nor was the speech embellished by Lost Causers in the succeeding decades, since it was printed in the Appeal and Avalanche the day following the picnic. Thus, Forrest’s speech fulfills the criterion of multiple attestation, and there is little doubt that he gave the speech as it appeared in both newspapers.

Other historians have offered the explanation that Forrest underwent a spiritual and moral awakening in the last years of his life, accounting for his radically different views on race.[3] However, much like the argument that Forrest never gave the speech, this notion is also flawed.

In his quasi-theological and psychological history of Nathan Bedford Forrest, Shane E. Kastler argues that the general’s 1875 speech coincided with Forrest’s increasing devotion to Christianity, encouraged by his wife Mary Ann Forrest.[4] “Forrest was a racist,” Kastler writes, “and any softening of his racial stand, especially in public, would have to be considered nearly miraculous.”[5] But Kastler holds that, by divine providence, the general stood “as the honored guest at a black civil rights function [. . . .] And in his speech before this group, he clearly showed the fruit of his Christian repentance.”[6] However, this analysis misses the mark on several aspects of the 1875 speech.

Firstly, the Independent Order of Pole Bearers was not a civil rights organization in the modern sense. And it was not a precursor to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) as some historians suggest.[7] That national organization grew out of the Niagara Movement.[8] Rather, the Independent Order of Pole Bearers was a mostly Black, local, and social organization with the purpose of uplifting the poor.[9] These types of organizations were common during the nineteenth century.[10] An article in the Memphis Commercial Appeal called the Pole Bearers a “religious, yet secret benevolent order existing among the negroes.”[11] While the organization did not advocate for civil rights on the national level (like the NAACP), it did commemorate important Black history events like the anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation.[12]

Secondly, Forrest’s conversion to Christianity probably did not coincide with a conversion to civil rights activism. The general’s change in temperament and devotion to religion late in his life is well speculated. Biographer Jack Hurst writes that by the 1870s Forrest “had accepted at last the Christian faith of his family’s women and begun to sound repentant.”[13] However, some scholars have also exaggerated the general’s religiosity over the years, so much that these writings make it difficult to approximate the strength of his beliefs. Ellison Capers, an Episcopal minister and former Confederate, chronicled Forrest as a Christian crusader who sought to “drive the unrighteous from the temple” despite the general’s well-known impious temperament.[14]

The 1870s did mark a change in the general’s fiery demeanor, though. Before his death, Forrest wrote his attorney and former Confederate comrade, “I am broken in health and in spirit, and have not long to live. My life has been a battle from the start. […] I have seen too much violence, and I want to close my days at peace with all the world, and I am now at peace with my Maker.”[15] While it is possible that Forrest delivered his speech to the Pole Bearers with this mentality, his religious conversion likely did not bring him to any strong realization of racial equality.

A closer look at his 1875 speech reveals such. Forrest makes no effort to address the evils of slavery. Instead, his speech serves as a set of Confederate apologetics. He calls the Southern people “more slandered and maligned than any [. . .] in the nation,” and explains that he is “misunderstood” by African Americans.[16] He does not repent for his role in the massacre at Fort Pillow, leadership of the Ku Klux Klan, or profiting from the slave trade but rather suggests that those actions are “misunderstood”.

Likewise, Forrest’s sentiment that “your interests are my interests” is very likely rooted in his belief that the South depended upon the Black labor force.[17] In an 1869 interview with the Louisville Courier-Journal, Forrest referred to African Americans as “the best laborers we have ever had in the South” and proposed that the United States should bring more from Africa.[18] “By pursuing a liberal policy to them we can benefit them and they us,” Forrest said, which echoes his “my interests are your interests” statement six years later to the Pole Bearers.[19]

While this 1869 interview precedes Forrest’s supposed religious conversion, much of his rhetoric bears a resemblance to the 1875 Fourth of July speech. In both the interview and speech, Forrest explained that he “always felt kind towards [African Americans], and always treated them kindly” while promoting their value to the workforce. Note in 1875 that he encouraged his audience of Pole Bearers to work in “law offices, in stores, on farms,” not as lawyers, entrepreneurs, and farm owners.[20]

Forrest was also not the only former Confederate to advocate this concept of “racial harmony.” John B. Gordon, a lieutenant general in Lee’s army and an alleged member of the Klan, expressed similar sentiments when he encouraged Blacks to “to educate themselves and their children, to be industrious, save money and purchase houses, and thus make themselves
respectable as property holders, and intelligent people.”[21] Gordon explained that “with submission to the laws, industry and economy, with union among yourselves, and courtesy and confidence toward the whites, you will reach these ends, and constitute an important element in the community.”[22]

It is important to note that, despite promoting Black education and “industriousness,” Gordon sharply opposed the Freedman’s Bureau and Union Leagues that sought to elevate African Americans. To men like Forrest and Gordon, racial harmony likely did not mean that Blacks and whites ought to be treated equally before the law. Instead, racial harmony meant maintaining peace between the races while keeping African Americans at a lower social status. Note that both Forrest and Gordon seem to offer their support of African Americans only if they prove themselves to be industrious and useful in the eyes of whites.

Regardless of his intentions, Forrest’s words received sharp criticism from some of his former Confederate comrades. Captain F. Edgeworth Eve, in particular, denounced the speech as an abomination to the South. Eve even motioned for the Confederate Cavalry Survivors’ Association to pass a resolution to express their “unmitigated disapproval of any such sentiments as these expressed by Gen. N.B. Forrest at a meeting of the Pole Bearers Society [. . .] that we allow no man to advocate, or even hint to the world, before any public assemblage, that he dare associate our mother’s, wives’, daughter’s or sisters names in the same category that he classes the females of the negro race.”[23] If Forrest responded to this criticism, he left no record of it.

A generous reading of Forrest’s Fourth of July speech may yield the conclusion that the general, near the end of his life, was determined to make the best of his shattered worldview with both his country and his “way of life” gone. Perhaps his newfound devotion to Christianity inspired him to bury his hatchets (slavery, the Klan, and the Confederacy) and move forward. But none of his writings, including the 1875 speech itself, indicate an enlightened commitment to civil rights. In all likelihood, Forrest believed Black men and women to be his inferiors until he died—like many people in nineteenth century America.

However, Forrest’s Fourth of July speech is also a reminder that, over time, an individual’s attitudes or beliefs can change. An aging and mellowed Forrest uttered words that his younger, firebrand self might have believed to be unthinkable. Perhaps that, at least, is reassuring.

[1] “The Fourth: An Old-Fashioned and Enthusiastic Celebration of the Natal Day of the Republic—Everybody at the Front,” The Memphis Daily Appeal, Memphis, TN, July 6, 1875, Newspapers.com (accessed December 29, 2023).

[2] “How the ‘Glorious Fourth’ was Observed In and About Memphis,” The Daily Memphis Avalanche, Memphis, TN, July 6, 1875, Newspapers.com (accessed November 5, 2023).

[3] Shane E. Kastler, Nathan Bedford Forrest’s Redemption (Gretna, LA: Pelican Publishing Company, 2010), 144.

[4] Kastler, Nathan Bedford Forrest’s Redemption, 136.

[5] Kastler, Nathan Bedford Forrest’s Redemption, 144.

[6] Kastler, Nathan Bedford Forrest’s Redemption, 144.

[7] “Forrest: Memphis’ first White Civil Rights Advocate,” General Nathan Bedford Forrest Historical Society, Memphis, Tennessee, (accessed December 30, 2023), https://www.tennessee-scv.org/ForrestHistSociety/forrest_speech.html#:~:text=The%20Independent%20Order%20of%20Pole,promote%20black%20voting%20rights%2C%20etc.

[8] Angela Jones, African American Civil Rights: Early Activism and the Niagara Movement (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-Clio, LLC, 2011), 71.

[9] “None Signed their Names,” The Memphis Commercial, Memphis, TN, January 29, 1893, Newspapers.com (accessed December 30, 2023).

[10] Don H. Doyle, “The Social Functions of Voluntary Associations in a Nineteenth-Century American Town,” Social Science History vol. I, no. 3 (Spring 1977), 333.

[11] “Independent Pole Bearers,” The Commercial Appeal, Memphis, TN, August 15, 1897, Newspapers.com (accessed December 30, 2023).

[12] Public Ledger, Memphis, TN, January 1, 1887, Newspapers.com (accessed December 30, 2023).

[13] Jack Hurst, Nathan Bedford Forrest: A Biography (New York: Alfred A. Kopf, Inc., 1993), 4.

[14] Charles Reagan Wilson, Baptized in Blood: The Religion of the Lost Cause (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1980), 57.

[15] John Allan Wyeth, That Devil Forrest: Life of General Nathan Bedford Forrest (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1989), 552; Rev. J.H. McNelly, “A Blessing for Gen. Forrest,” Confederate Veteran, vol. 7, (1899), 446; Rev. J. William Jones, Christ in the Camp, (Atlanta, GA: The Martin & Hoyt Co., 1887), 601.

[16] “The Fourth: An Old-Fashioned and Enthusiastic Celebration of the Natal Day of the Republic—Everybody at the Front,” The Memphis Daily Appeal, Memphis, TN, July 6, 1875, Newspapers.com (accessed December 29, 2023).

[17] “The Fourth,” The Memphis Daily Appeal, July 6, 1875.

[18] “An Interview with Gen. Forrest: Talk about the Negro and Railroads,” from the Louisville Courier-Journal reprinted in the Memphis Daily Appeal, Memphis, TN, March 12, 1869, Newspapers.com (accessed December 30, 2023).

[19] “An Interview with Gen. Forrest,” Memphis Daily Appeal, March 12, 1869.

[20] “The Fourth,” The Memphis Daily Appeal, July 6, 1875.

[21] Ralph Lowell Eckert, John Brown Gordon: Soldier, Southerner, American, (Baton Rouge: Louisiana University Press, 1993), 164.

[22] Eckert, John Brown Gordon, 164.

[23] “Ex-Confederates: Meeting of the Cavalry Survivors’ Association,” Augusta Chronicle, July 31, 1875, Newspapers.com (accessed February 6, 2024).