Symposium Spotlight: Why Nathan Bedford Forrest Could Not Save Atlanta
Welcome back to our spotlight series, highlighting speakers and topics for our upcoming symposium. Over the coming weeks, we will continue previewing of our speaker’s presentations for the 2024 Emerging Civil War Symposium. This week we feature Brian Steel Wills’s Keynote topic.
“The Devil Take the Hindmost:” Why Nathan Bedford Forrest Could Not Save Atlanta
As the Union forces under William T. Sherman drove toward Atlanta and clashed with Joseph E. Johnston’s Army of Tennessee, the colorful and controversial Confederate cavalryman Nathan Bedford Forrest served the Confederacy in Mississippi. Johnston and Georgia governor Joseph Brown were among the most vociferous voices urging President Jefferson Davis and the Confederate War Department to release the vaunted horseman to disrupt Sherman’s ever-extending supply lines as he advanced into the state. Yet, the fiery red head had other plans for his celebrated adversary: Sherman kept Forrest busy with forces that threatened the region from Memphis. Although Forrest won a spectacular victory at Brice’s Cross Roads, fought at Tupelo/Harrisburg and raided Memphis, he could not detach his command to help prevent the fall of Atlanta.
Find more information and tickets for our 2024 Symposium by clicking here.
Looking forward to it. Last year’s presentation of Mosby’s impact on Gettysburg was great for me, looks like this will be, too.