Who was Nathan Bedford Forrest?

[thelakelander]

The governments were susceptible. The local political offices had been placed there by the Federal Government.  The only thing I could imagine would be close to comparison would be if we killed half the males in the town and then freed everyone in prison.  It sounds like utter chaos.  Forrest says himself, "There was very little law in those times."

Seriously?  Who exactly were the freed prisoners that Forrest and his buddies needed to provide law to....

[Cheshire Cat]

So Forrest wasnt just a terrorist, he was also a liar.  Awesome.

And I think if we discount the report and investigation, the contemporary accounts, the story of fellow Klansmen, the statements of the modern day Klan, and the testimony of victims, then you have to apply the same standards to any other part of this sad and rather revolting biography.

For example, would Sgarey's claims of 'heroism' or 'brilliant military' or 'valor' stand up to the same kind of standard of proof?

And for that matter, is there a signed document from the Mayor of Jacksonville, or the City Council, or any other Board of Trade that shows that Jacksonville was a part of the Confederacy?  Would SGarey's claims survive the kind of proof that he demands be presented solely in this one detail of a life and narrative that he asks we take on faith and as a 'base story'?

Stephen, he would likely be tried and convicted as a war criminal in today's world.  He certainly would not be seen as anything close to a hero.

[rbirds]

We do not have that smoking gun document directly linking NBF to Klan leadership.  We do have a primary source (the joint committee report) which strongly suggests NBF was indeed in charge and we have a letter described by its recipient as one written by a charter KKK member who unequivocally states Forrest was the Klan leader. Plus various Klan members claiming in print that Forrest was their leader.

In the absence of that smoking gun these other documents present a strong circumstantial case of the link between Forrest and the Klan. If you want to doubt the link then certainly you should do so. But just looking at what evidence there is of the link you can put together a pretty coherent case that NBF was indeed the head of the Klan during a period when this terrorist  organization committed some truly awful acts of murder and mayhem.

I think this discussion presents a pretty complete image of NBF, by the way, of a man who succeeded as a purveyor of forced labor before the war and an aggressive and successful soldier during the war.  But his habits did not serve him well in a postbellum American society.  He has remained a flashpoint since Shelby Foote talked him up in Ken Burns' "Civil War" series and we have just discussed our way through the legacy of Foote's advocacy of Forrest. Thirty pages of discussion and we never even broached the Fort Pillow controversy - not that I'm inviting a discussion of that slaughter of African-American Union soldiers.

In any case he is hardly a role model and probably doesn't deserve a school to remain in his name.

[Tacachale]

The governments were susceptible. The local political offices had been placed there by the Federal Government.  The only thing I could imagine would be close to comparison would be if we killed half the males in the town and then freed everyone in prison.  It sounds like utter chaos.  Forrest says himself, "There was very little law in those times."

Seriously?  Who exactly were the freed prisoners that Forrest and his buddies needed to provide law to....

Sgarey, you're comparing freeing slaves to releasing prison inmates? Holy shit man, that's a new low.

[Cheshire Cat]

The governments were susceptible. The local political offices had been placed there by the Federal Government.  The only thing I could imagine would be close to comparison would be if we killed half the males in the town and then freed everyone in prison.  It sounds like utter chaos.  Forrest says himself, "There was very little law in those times."

Seriously?  Who exactly were the freed prisoners that Forrest and his buddies needed to provide law to....

Sgarey, you're comparing freeing slaves to releasing prison inmates? Holy shit man, that's a new low.

Unfortunately it is not as low as he will go either I would imagine.  Sad, really sad.

[thelakelander]

One thing that isn't debatable is that the guy was a white supremacist and a member of the Pale Faces. In the quotes above, he says this himself.

On Independence Day 1868, Wesley Alexander banged his drum at the head of a column of colored schoolchildren. He was leading a procession of freedpeople from Columbia, Middle Tennessee, to a grand picnic on the outskirts of the city. Alexander, a Union veteran, surely was aware of the dangers inherent in so bold a demonstration of black civil rights and Yankee loyalty. Middle Tennessee was a region where Confederate sentiment remained strong and where blacks had been terrorized by white gangs loosely styled after the Ku Klux Klan of neighboring Pulaski. Columbia, in fact, had spawned its own white supremacist fraternity, the Order of Pale Faces, which since January 1868 had been chastising freedpeople and white Unionists in a campaign of terror aimed at ending Republican rule.

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/cwh/summary/v051/51.1harcourt.html

[Cheshire Cat]

One thing that isn't debatable is that the guy was a white supremacist and a member of the Pale Faces. In the quotes above, he says this himself.

On Independence Day 1868, Wesley Alexander banged his drum at the head of a column of colored schoolchildren. He was leading a procession of freedpeople from Columbia, Middle Tennessee, to a grand picnic on the outskirts of the city. Alexander, a Union veteran, surely was aware of the dangers inherent in so bold a demonstration of black civil rights and Yankee loyalty. Middle Tennessee was a region where Confederate sentiment remained strong and where blacks had been terrorized by white gangs loosely styled after the Ku Klux Klan of neighboring Pulaski. Columbia, in fact, had spawned its own white supremacist fraternity, the Order of Pale Faces, which since January 1868 had been chastising freedpeople and white Unionists in a campaign of terror aimed at ending Republican rule.

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/cwh/summary/v051/51.1harcourt.html

Isn't the Pale Faces just another name for the KKK?  Doesn't matter really.  They were themselves terrorists according to documents.

[thelakelander]

Doesn't matter one bit to me.  Many equate them as the same since the general reasoning for the group's existence was the exact same thing.  I think it's just an argument over semantics in this thread.  In any event, whatever the name we want to call it, the guy was still a white supremacist. No doubt, he was seen as a leader to a certain segment of the population as Sgarey suggest.  However, he was no better than Hilter to a large segment of the population during that era as well.

[Tacachale]

^And considering he has no ties to Jacksonville and the name was only chosen 94 years after the war, there's no compelling reason to keep it. Problem solved! Man that was easy, on to the next topic.

[rbirds]

According to testimony offered to the 1871 Joint Congressional Committee investigating the activities of the Klan the Pale Faces and KKK were synonymous. NBF said he was a member of the Pale Faces. 

Superintendent Vitti suggested that the name should be changed if the school stakeholders wished to . At least the, he said,  he wouldn't have to keep explaining the controversy whenever anyone asked where he was from.

[Cheshire Cat]

According to testimony offered to the 1871 Joint Congressional Committee investigating the activities of the Klan the Pale Faces and KKK were synonymous. NBF said he was a member of the Pale Faces. 

Superintendent Vitti suggested that the name should be changed if the school stakeholders wished to . At least the, he said,  he wouldn't have to keep explaining the controversy whenever anyone asked where he was from.

Well there we have it, the KKK and Pale Faces are synonymous.  Vitti did say that he would support the name change should it come before him. The final decision is in the hands of the School Board, even if for some reason Vitti no longer supported the name change.  The board has the final say and as such I doubt that more than half of them would vote to change their view about changing the name considering that all voted to move the change issue forward.  Nothing has surfaced to make the argument to change the name anything more than a shallow attempt to hold onto a vestige of "racism" via the name of Nathan B. Forrest in a city that man had no connection to.  I came across one online petition that was signed by some of the very old alumni of Nathan B. Forrest who only opposed the name change because that was what the school was called when they went there.  I doubt very seriously that many if not most of them have any idea who Forrest really was and that some have recently been deceived into thinking he was a good guy through the arguments of fanatics, fear mongers and faux websites with false and misleading information.  One threatened to sue because his class ring said Forrest high.  lol  Seriously, this is the depth of some of these concerns and all of them baseless because a name change now does not alter the fact that the school was Nathan B. Forrest when those people attended it.  Only future alum will be impacted and they are being educated to the truth about Forrest, his KKK/Pale Face terrorist associations, the massacre at Ft. Pillow, his keeping of slaves and the fact that he has no historical connection to Jacksonville.  Those are the facts and even the emotional attachment some have to the name is not a big enough argument to keep it.  Jacksonville is "not" a place that will go forward telling the world that we honor the racists or terrorists of history. 

[Sgarey123]

And here I thought we were done with all that nonsense.

Spin...spin...spin.

I proved it was theory. It is not provable. You can all retract all your misplaced aggression now.

[thelakelander]

Are you saying Forrest was lying under oath about his affiliation with a white supremacy group?

Forrest evades and wheedles in his testimony before Congress, picking his way around direct questions about his Klan associations. After a lengthy examination of what Forrest had testified to know in an earlier interview, the committee cited several other witnesses who said the Ku-Kluxers sometimes were called "Pale Faces".  Specifically, from page 9 of the report, "Some call them Pale Faces, some call them Ku-Klux; I believe they were under two names."

Then the report recounts Forrest's testimony where he admits belonging to the Pale Faces [pp. 9-10]. The questions come from the committee, answers are from Forrest:

Question:Did you hear of the Knights of the White Camelia there [in Louisiana. The White Camelia order was another white supremacist group similar and sometimes aligned with the KKK].
Answer: Yes, they were reported to be there.
Q: Were you ever a member of that order?
A: I was.
Q: You were a member of the Knights of the White Camelia?
A: No sir; I never was a member of the Knights of the White Camelia.
Q: What order was it that you were a member of?
A: An order they called the Pale Faces - a different order from that.
Q: Where was that organized?
A: I do not know.
Q: Where did you join it?
A: In Memphis.
Q: When?
A: It was in 1867; but that was a different order from this.
Q: What was that?
A: Something like Odd Fellowship, Masonry-orders of that sort-for the purpose of protecting the weak and defenseless, &c.
Q: Something on the same principles that the Ku-Klux afterward had.
A: Something similar to that, only it was a different order.... [he then describes a mission identical to the Klan's mission]

Here we see Forrest admitting membership in the Pale Faces. We've seen in other committee testimony that the organization "Pale Faces" is another name for the Ku Klux Klan. Has Forrest just admitted membership in the Klan? No but....

Forrest's testimony before the "Joint Select Committee to Inquire Into the Condition of Affairs of the Late Insurrectionary States" in 1871. The report can be found here: http://books.google.com/books?id=WIl4AAAAMAAJ&q=forrest#v=onepage&q&f=false.

[Cheshire Cat]

And all the way from Seattle this article today....This is such great coverage for Jacksonville.   

http://seattlemedium.com/time-for-jacksonville-to-sever-ties-to-ku-klux-klans-first-grand-wizard/

Time For Jacksonville To Sever Ties To Ku Klux Klan's First Grand Wizard
Posted on Nov 26 2013 - 9:34am by Seattle Medium


Jacksonville Public Schools Ku Klux Klan Nathan B. Forrest
Nathan B. Forrest

Nathan B. Forrest

By Opio Sokoni, MCSJ, JD

Special To The Medium

The City of Jacksonville, Florida was once called the bold new city of the South. It was a booming winter film capital and boasted a vibrant African-American community. On May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court held the country will no longer have separate educational facilities because they are inherently unequal. It said that de jure racial segregation violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution. The Warren Court's decision was unanimous (9 – 0).

After the Brown v. Board of Education decision, a mean shadow of racial enmity engulfed Jacksonville. By 1959, the Daughters of the Confederacy, out of spite, lobbied to change the name of Valhalla High School to honor the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan – Nathan B. Forrest.

Over the years, there had been unsuccessful attempts to rid the city of this name. Some tried to educate the public about other immoral expects of Forrest's life. For instance, he was the top ranking soldier on the scene during what has been called the most heinous acts of brutality during the U.S. Civil War. Nathan B. Forrest allowed his men to massacre soldiers at Fort Pillow that had surrendered. Hundreds of mostly African American troops would die, in addition to women and children. Ulysses S. Grant wrote in his memoirs of the incident that, "The river was dyed with the blood of the slaughtered for two hundred yards."

Before the war, Forrest had made a fortune selling human beings into slavery and employed slave catchers. After the war, he was responsible for being among the first to use Black prisoners to work on his vast property – the beginning of the chain gang.

Fast forward to 2013 and Jacksonville has come as far as it has ever before in changing the name. The high school which carries Forrest's name now has a majority of African Americans among its student body. It is also in the district of a Black school board member (Constance Hall) who recently called for a special vote to initiate a name change procedure. She has support from the new Superintendent Nikolai Vitti who has been embarrassed by having to address the issue while speaking abroad. The entire school board voted in favor of the name change procedure. After scheduled votes by alumni, students and faculty the Superintendent will make his recommendation to the board.

The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) has joined with the Jacksonville Progressive Coalition, the NAACP, Occupy Jacksonville, the Florida New Majority, LULAC, Change.org, Duval Progressives and more. We plan to appeal to the new spirit of the city. The coalition has included speeches and surveys, but now will involve street actions to educate the community and show movement in support of finally changing the name.

Imagine a high school in the city's heavily Jewish Mandarin neighborhood named after Hitler, or an elementary school in New York City honoring Osama Bin Laden? Many of us feel no different having a school in the city named after Forrest.

After all, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was martyred in the same state where Nathan B. Forrest made his mark – Tennessee. There is where Forrest's climate of hate flourished; before, during and after the Civil War. His ghost has infected that state and our city well after his death in 1877. Forrest has no connection to Jacksonville and must now be totally severed. Those who support his name staying on the school will thank us later. We are making this a city where their children and their grandchildren's grandchildren can co-exist as brothers and sisters with all races. Those who love this southern town are poised to move it in the right direction – forward.

[Cheshire Cat]

Are you saying Forrest was lying under oath about his affiliation with a white supremacy group?

Forrest evades and wheedles in his testimony before Congress, picking his way around direct questions about his Klan associations. After a lengthy examination of what Forrest had testified to know in an earlier interview, the committee cited several other witnesses who said the Ku-Kluxers sometimes were called "Pale Faces".  Specifically, from page 9 of the report, "Some call them Pale Faces, some call them Ku-Klux; I believe they were under two names."

Then the report recounts Forrest's testimony where he admits belonging to the Pale Faces [pp. 9-10]. The questions come from the committee, answers are from Forrest:

Question:Did you hear of the Knights of the White Camelia there [in Louisiana. The White Camelia order was another white supremacist group similar and sometimes aligned with the KKK].
Answer: Yes, they were reported to be there.
Q: Were you ever a member of that order?
A: I was.
Q: You were a member of the Knights of the White Camelia?
A: No sir; I never was a member of the Knights of the White Camelia.
Q: What order was it that you were a member of?
A: An order they called the Pale Faces - a different order from that.
Q: Where was that organized?
A: I do not know.
Q: Where did you join it?
A: In Memphis.
Q: When?
A: It was in 1867; but that was a different order from this.
Q: What was that?
A: Something like Odd Fellowship, Masonry-orders of that sort-for the purpose of protecting the weak and defenseless, &c.
Q: Something on the same principles that the Ku-Klux afterward had.
A: Something similar to that, only it was a different order.... [he then describes a mission identical to the Klan's mission]

Here we see Forrest admitting membership in the Pale Faces. We've seen in other committee testimony that the organization "Pale Faces" is another name for the Ku Klux Klan. Has Forrest just admitted membership in the Klan? No but....

Forrest's testimony before the "Joint Select Committee to Inquire Into the Condition of Affairs of the Late Insurrectionary States" in 1871. The report can be found here: http://books.google.com/books?id=WIl4AAAAMAAJ&q=forrest#v=onepage&q&f=false.

Ennis, this person does not know what he is saying nor does he care.  I stand by what I said earlier in the thread.  This is a game in which he attacks everyone while twisting any comment to serve his agenda which is fear based and one about control and bigotry. This is no longer about Nathan B. Forrest, but him and his inner dialog and playing out the fantasy that he is smarter and more informed than everyone here. No one who reads his drivel takes him seriously save himself.  He foolishly thinks that by calling everyone here intolerant, animals and much worse that he can divert everyone from the truth which is we have been listening to and debating a bigot and a fanatic.