Who was Nathan Bedford Forrest?

[thelakelander]

Ww2 was a big deal but it was not on our soil. You had Americans killing Americans. Brothers killing brothers. Mussolini was not American. The South was allowed to keep its heros to heal the wounds and create a successful surrender.

The comparison is juvenile and does not fit whatsoever.

Not that you are interested in facts that don't support your narrative but Jacksonville had less than 3,000 residents in 1860. By 1940, "pre-consolidation" Jacksonville's population had increased above 173,000. 

http://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0027/twps0027.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacksonville,_Florida

In other words, Macclenny is twice the size today that Jacksonville was during the Civil War. The St. Johns Shipbuilding Company's shipyard on Bay Street employed 10 times as many Jax residents alone in 1944 churning out liberty ships for WWII. That doesn't include all the military installations, shipbuilding and manufacturing companies that helped in the war effort.  That trickles down as far as bakeries in the Springfield Warehouse District supplying fresh baked goods for the war effort.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Johns_River_Shipbuilding_Company

The story may not be the same for Forrest's Tennessee but it's not illogical to suggest that WWII has had a greater impact on where this city is today.

[Sgarey123]

No one said WW2 did not have a big impact. It did.

Why do you think all those people moved into Jacksonville.

Excuse me but for a great deal of time I was the only opposition. This affords one to drive the narrative. I responded to all attacks...I will revist rbirds later aswell.

[thelakelander]

^See posts 435 and 443 above to get a better idea of the meaning of post 445. Anyway, I look forward to reading your rebuttal of post 394 (quoted below):

Sgarey123 suggests Forrest was not a member of the KKK and was not a racist.

Well, what do historians say about Forrest? A few examples followed by an interview with a former slave who witnessed KKK violence during the brief time Forrest led this organization.  This is the real person for whom his defenders stand up in this discussion:

1) Jack Hurst, "Nathan Bedford Forrest: A Biography". Random House, 1993. 

"Forrest is more remembered for an even greater mistake [the author is referring to the Ft. Pillow massacre]: his brief leadership in galvanizing the terror of the Ku Klux Klan." (p. 384)

"Forrest...had plainly tired [by 1875] of the race struggle, as well as of his own reputation as Fort Pillow's Butcher and the Klan's grand wizard. Living in a city whose only barbers were blacks, he had made it a postbellum practice never to patronize the same one twice in succession, lest a plot be hatched to slit his throat." (p. 366)

2) Owen J. Dwyer, "Symbolic Accretion and Commemoration", in the journal "Social & Cultural Geography" (2006) , pp. 419-435.

"Controversy has erupted in Selma, Alabama, over recent efforts to commemorate the career of Nathan Bedford Forrest, a Confederate cavalry officer and founding member of the original Ku Klux Klan. More generally, the controversy in Selma is emblematic of an enduring regional pattern in which contests over the future are couched in terms of the past. Relative to other media, monuments appear to be trustworthy and lasting. Despite this appearance of historical consensus and stability, the city's public spaces are the product of and conduit for ongoing politics."

3) David M. Chalmers, "Hooded Americanism: The First Century of the Ku Klux Klan, 1865-1965". Doubleday, 1965.

"According to Forrest, the Klan had been a law-and-order organization to restore authority to insecure and fearful Southern whites. The 'organization was got up to protect the weak, with no political intention at all." (p. 21).

4) Laura Martin Rose, "The Ku Klux Klan: or Invisible Empire". L. Graham Co. 1914. (a KKK sympathizer is the author of this book)

She includes a letter written to her by one of the last surviving charter members of the Ku Klux Klan. She quotes from the letter, dated October 25, 1908:

"The younger generation will never fully realize the risk we ran, and the sacrifices we made to free our beloved Southland from the hated rule of the 'Carpetbagger,' the worse negro and the home Yankee...After the order grew to large numbers, we found it was necessary to have someone of large experience to command. We chose General N.B. Forrest, who had joined our number. He was made a member and took the oath in the Room No. 10 of the Maxwell House at Nashvile, Tennessee, in the fall of 1866, nearly a year after we organized at Pulaski." (p. 22)

"The superstition of the negro is well known, and through this element in his makeup, the ku Klux Klan gained control. They made the negroes believe that they were the ghosts of their dead masters, and under the conviction that if they did wrong, spirits from the other world would visit them; the negroes became very quiet and subdued." (p. 19)

5) Court Carney, "The Contested Image of Nathan Bedford Forrest," in the "Journal of Southern History," (2001).

"A notorious slave trader and an early leader of the Ku Klux Klan, Nathan Bedford Forrest became an obvious target for African American anger and contempt." (p. 601).

"Although Forrest and others later insisted that the Klan functioned only as a political organization, racial terrorism became the hallmark of Klan activities. Forrest, however, lost interest in the Klan once it outgrew his immediate authority." (p. 603)

As far as KKK activities during the time Forrest was its leader, here is an interview of a former slave. The transcript is in the WPA Slave Narrative Project, North Carolina Narratives, Volume 11, Part 2, Federal Writer's Project, United States Work Projects Administration (USWPA); Manuscript Division, Library of Congress:


"I [Ben Johnson, born into slavery in 1848 and interviewed in 1933] was born in Orange County [North Carolina] and I belong to Mr. Glibert Gregg near Hillsboro. I don't know nothin' 'bout my mammy and daddy, but I had a brother Jim who was sold to dress young misses fer her weddin'. The tree is still standing where I set under an' watch them sell Jim. I set dar an' I cry an' cry, especially when they puts the chains on him an' carries him off, an' I ain't never felt so lonesome in my whole life. I ain't never hear from Jim since an' I wonder now sometimes if'en he's still living.

I knows that the master was good to us an' he fed an' clothed us good. We had our own garden an' we was gitten' long all right.

I seed a whole heap of Yankees when they comed to Hillsboro an' most of them ain't got no respect for God, man, nor the devil. I can't remember so much about them though cause we lives in town... an' we has a gyard.

The most that I can tell you 'bout is the Klu Klux. I never will forget when they hung Cy Guy. They hung him for a scandalous insult to a white woman an' they comed after him a hundred strong.

They tries him there in the woods, an' they scratches Cy's arm to get some blood, an' with that blood they writes that he shall hang 'tween the heavens and the earth till he is dead, dead, dead, and that any n***** what takes down the body shall be hanged too.

Well sir, the next morning there he hung, right over the road an' the sentence hanging over his head. Nobody would bother with that body for four days an' there it hung, swinging in the wind, but the fourth day the sheriff comes an' takes it down.

There was Ed an' Cindy, who before the war belonged to Mr Lynch an' after the war he told them to move. He gives them a month and they ain't gone, so the Ku Kluxes gets them.

It was on a cold night when they came and dragged the n*****s out of bed. They carried them down in the woods an' whup them, then they throes them in the pond, their bodies breakin' the ice. Ed comes out an' come to our house, but Cindy ain't been seen since.

Sam Allen in Caswell County was told to move an' after a month the hundred Ku Klux came a-totin' his casket an' they tells him that his time has come an' if he wants to tell his wife goodbye an' say his prayers; hurry up.

They set the coffin on two chairs an' Sam kisses his old woman who's a-crying, then he kneels down beside his bed with his head on the pillar an' his arms thrown out in front of him.

He sits there for a minute an' when he rose he had a long knife in his hand. Before he could be grabbed, he done kill two of the Klu Kluxes with the knife, an' he done gone out of the door. They ain't catch him neither, and the next night when they came back, determined to get him, they shot another n***** by accident.

Bob Boylan falls in love with another woman, so he burns his wife an' four youngsters up in their house.

The Ku Kluxes gets him, of course, an' they hangs him high on the old red oak on the Hillsboro Road, After they hanged him, his lawyer says to us boys: 'Bury him good, boys, just as good as you'd bury me if I was daid'

I shook hands with Bob before they hanged him an' I helped bury him too an' we bury him nice an' we all hopes that he done gone to glory."

__________________________________________

Truly a great person. We should name more stuff after him.

[Tacachale]

I tracked down the last three names from my list of middle and high schools whose names I couldn't track down. Lo and behold, all three were local figures.

High Schools
•   1868 Stanton College Preparatory School (Florida's first real African-American school, made 1-12 in 1917. It became a high school in the 1940s, moved to its current location in 1953 and became a magnet in 1981) – named for Edwin M. Stanton, Secretary of War under Abraham Lincoln
•   1922 Douglas Anderson School of the Arts (originally South Jacksonville School # 107, serving grades 1-9. It was renamed for Anderson in 1945 and became a high school from 1955-1968. It re-opened as an arts magnet in 1985)– originally an African-American school, named  for local civil rights leader Douglas Anderson
•   1923 Darnell-Cookman Middle/High School, School of the Medical Arts (became a high school following a merger of previous African-American schools; Bethune-Cookman University also grew out of this). Originally the Cookman Institute, the name commemorates its original founders, the reverends S.B. Darnell and Alfred Cookman.
•   1927: Andrew Jackson – named for Andrew Jackson, Jacksonville's namesake, military governor of Florida and U.S. president
•   1928: Robert E. Lee – named for leading Confederate general Robert E. Lee
•   1929 (rebuilt in 1949) Baldwin Middle-Senior High School – named for the town, itself named for Florida, Atlantic and Gulf Central Railroad president Dr. Abel Seymour Baldwin
•   1937: Duncan U. Fletcher High School – named for U.S. Senator and former Mayor of Jacksonville Duncan U. Fletcher, who secured the federal grant to build the school
•   1954: Paxon School for Advanced Studies (originally Paxon Field Junior-Senior High School; made a magnet in 1996) – named for the former Paxon Air Field where the school  is located
•   1955: Terry Parker High School – named for local philanthropist H. Terry Parker, who donated the land for the school
•   1956: Englewood High School – named for the Englewood neighborhood
•   1957: Jean Ribault High School – named for French explorer Jean Ribault, who visited Northeast Florida and the St. Johns River in 1562
•   1959: Nathan Bedford Forrest High School – named for Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest
•   1964: Samuel W. Wolfson – named for local businessman Samuel W. Wolfson, owner of the Jacksonville Braves and Suns
•   1965: William M. Raines High School – named for local educator William Marion Raines, principal of Matthew Gilbert High School from 1938-1950
•   1969 (Reorganized and renamed in 1997): Frank H. Peterson Academies of Technology – named for Westsude businessman Frank H. Peterson, a promoter of career education (link)
•   1970: Sandalwood High School – named for the neighborhood of Sandalwood
•   1971: Edward H. White High School – named for astronaut Edward Higgins White,  the first American to walk in space; killed in training in 1967
•   1977: A. Philip Randolph Academies of Technology – named for local civil rights and labor leader Asa Philip Randolph
•   1990: First Coast High School - named for the regional designation First Coast
•   1990: Mandarin High School – named for the neighborhood of Mandarin
•   2010: Atlantic Coast High School – general reference to the region
•   Duval High School: opened 1873, rebuilt in 1908 after the Great Fire, closed in 1927 as several more high schools were built. Named for the county, itself named for William Pope Duval, Florida's first non-military governor


Middle Schools
•   1923: Kirby-Smith Middle School (previously Kirby-Smith High School before 1992) – named for Edmond Kirby Smith, Confederate general from St. Augustine and subsequently an educator at Sewanee, the University of the South
•   1923 Darnell-Cookman Middle/High School, School of the Medical Arts – see above
•   1927 Matthew W. Gilbert Middle School (originally elementary; added junior high in 1939, renamed for Gilbert in 1950, became Gilbert Junior-Senior High School in 1952, then a junior high in 1971, with 7th grade only from 1972-1990) – named for Bethel Baptist Institutional Church pastor Matthew W. Gilbert, who founded the Florida Baptist Academy, an early African American school
•   1928 Julia E. Landon Middle School (originally Landon High School, made a middle school in 1964) – named for South Jacksonville educator Julia Landon
•   1929 (rebuilt in 1949): Baldwin Middle-Senior High School – see above
•   1940: Alfred I. DuPont Middle School (originally Alfred I. DuPont High School, transitioned to middle school in 1992) – named for Alfred I. DuPont, locally important business magnate and founder of the DuPont Trust and Nemours
•   1940: Lake Shore Middle School – named for the neighborhood of Lake Shore
•   1953: Eugene J. Butler Middle School (originally Eugene J. Butler Junior-Senior High School) – named for Eugene J. Butler, former principal at Gilbert High School (link)
•   1952: James Weldon Johnson Middle School – named for James Weldon Johnson, prominent author and civil rights leader from Jacksonville
•   1957: Paxon Middle School – split from Paxon Field Junior-Senior High School
•   1959: Jean Ribault Middle School – split from Jean Ribault High School
•   1961: Jefferson Davis Middle School – named for Confederate President Jefferson Davis
•   1961: Arlington Middle School – named for the neighborhood of Arlington
•   1963: Joseph Stilwell Middle School – named for Joseph Stilwell, World War II general born in Palatka
•   1964: Duncan U. Fletcher Middle School – split from Fletcher High School
•   1964: Fort Caroline Middle School – named for the nearby Fort Caroline monument, one of the first European settlements in the continental U.S.
•   1966: J.E.B. Stuart Middle School – named for Confederate general James Ewell Brown "J.E.B." Stuart
•   1969: Highlands Middle School (made magnet in 2005) – named for the neighborhood of Highlands
•   1977: Mayport Middle School – named for the neighborhood of Mayport
•   Before 1986: Southside Middle School – named for the neighborhood of Southside
•   1990: Mandarin Middle School – named for the neighborhood of Mandarin
•   1990: Landmark Middle School – appears to be a generic name
•   1998: Twin Lakes Academy Middle School – named for the two ponds located on the school grounds
•   1999?: Northwestern Middle School – named for the Northwestern region of Jacksonville
•   2000: LaVilla School of the Arts – named for the neighborhood of LaVilla
•   2002: Kernan Middle School – named for Kernan Boulevard, itself named for Kernan Hodges, local philanthropist and landowner with her husband George
•   2002: Oceanway Middle School (branched off of Oceanway Elementary) – named for the neighborhood of Oceanway
•   2004: John E. Ford K-8 (expanded from John E. Ford Elementary) – named for John E. Ford, longtime Bethel Baptist pastor and teacher at Florida Baptist Academy (link
•   2009: Westview K-8 – appears to be a generic reference


This means that the vast majority of our middle and high schools are named for people or places of local significance to Jacksonville and Northeast Florida. Not that it needs to be hammered home any more, but out of 47 middle and high schools, only six are named for someone with no connection to Jacksonville or Northeast Florida:

•Stanton College Preparatory School (1868) - Edwin M. Stanton, the sitting Secretary of War and a major Union figure in the Civil War
•Robert E. Lee High School (1928) - leading Confederate general
•Nathan Bedford Forrest High School (1959) - Confederate general
•Jefferson Davis Middle School (1961) - Confederate president
•JEB Stuart Middle School (1966) - Confederate general
•Ed White High School (1971) - astronaut Edward Higgins White, first American to walk in space; killed in training in 1967

The picture's pretty clear.

[thelakelander]

All Sgarey is doing is taking your list and labeling local individual as "southern" to suggest that the trend of naming schools is "southern leaders". Thus, he can then lump the few confederate schools into it. So, it doesn't matter if the person is Forrest or James Weldon Johnson or if either has any direct relationship to Jacksonville. Both are "southern-born" people that were viewed as leaders by certain groups.

[Cheshire Cat]

Ennis, I have puzzled quite a bit over the exchanges Sgarey has had with everyone on this forum and why he feels the need to ignore anything and everything that points to him being wrong in his views of this issue and how he is defending it.  What I realized is that his defensive attitude is really not about Forrest, the south or anything really to do with this issue. He has gone beyond the issue and is simply defending himself and his viewpoint at all costs and to the point of desperation.  Dug in his heels as it were and twisting any piece of information put before him into something with which to further defend himself and at the same time elevating himself as a sort of imaginary martyr of the south.  While the ongoing exchanges have offered multiple opportunities to add new facts and information to the argument about the name change it is pretty clear that Sgarey and others like him are simply afraid, very deeply afraid. He has constructed a reality for himself that is being threatened by the name change and this very conversation.  This is why he lashes out at everyone and listens to no one but himself or those who agree with his rigid beliefs regardless of their validity. 

The other human aspect that is being displayed through him and the few others who want to keep the Forrest name on our high school is the growing recognition that the world is changing and along with it attitudes are changing as well.  What was once embraced as the status quo when it comes to racial differences and perceived inferiority of one group making them less than another, is now seen and understood for what it is which is bigotry i.e. racism based upon nothing more than the color of ones skin.  That in and of itself is a sickness of human mind and spirit that most of Jacksonville is no longer willing to tolerate and that scares the hell out of some folk because their entire identity is tied up in a fantasy lived via the old south, the civil war and as an extension the control it afforded those who were not black. That privilege was long exercised in the south and in our own city via our politics, education system and our processes of development.  On the flip side their continues the destruction of communities to fit a certain ideal which was for many based in an ongoing attempt to keep the Blacks of the south in a defensive and controlled mode.  Ennis touched on this above when he spoke of the areas in our city like LaVilla or to the tragedy of Axe handle Saturday, all pure Jacksonville history. 

To this point I hope those in the community who support the name change, as well as the school board members who had the wisdom to vote unanimously to move the name change forward and Mr. Vitti who had the strength of character to know this change was long overdue will factor in what I have said above.  This is about the change of a name on one of our schools that is a statement to the nation and the world, that the people of Jacksonville do not hold with the ideals of a man like Nathan B. Forrest, who was a slave holder, facilitator of a major massacre and the founder of the KKK.  We are past that and cannot honor those values.  Jacksonville is evolving and that is horrifying to some but the evolution in mindset is long overdue.  Jacksonville will evolve and will always be entrenched in it's rich southern history, that is a given.  Enough of the hysteria about losing southern history or that which pretends Nathan B. Forrest was a hero or the claim that monuments are being lost. A school is not a monument, it is a place of education.  What is underneath all of this discussion is fear of change and fear of a loss of identity which for some is tied to an imaginary past which none of them lived through or had a part of yet are want to defend because it is easier to pretend at caring about history than it is to admit to harboring long held bigoted ideas and that is what Jacksonville is struggling to be free of. 

Certainly this post will result in a fevered response by Sgarey, likely a few insults as well which I will not read or be impacted by.  As to the views of my old friend Bob, well I give him a pass because I love him, he knows that. 

[Sgarey123]

Please ignore the sensationalist poster above ^^^ she has issues. She has been ignoring me so...quid pro quo.

All Sgarey is doing is taking your list and labeling local individual as "southern" to suggest that the trend of naming schools is "southern leaders". Thus, he can then lump the few confederate schools into it. So, it doesn't matter if the person is Forrest or James Weldon Johnson or if either has any direct relationship to Jacksonville. Both are "southern-born" people that were viewed as leaders by certain groups.

I am so proud of you for acknowledging/getting my point! That is good. You have to admit that it works. People were affiliated on a local, state, regional and national level.

Tacachale, I must admit I am impressed with all the work you did on that information. I did some of that research as well and some of those schools were not easy to find. It was very interesting though.  That being said we need to include the elementary school names. Also All the "exceptions" in your case were nationally known names.  Nathan Bedford Forrest was one of the most popular Generals because he was such a bad@ss.  Furthermore, if you recall I mentioned that there are a whole slew of names missing. The PS numbers represented a lot more names than are published. It is fascinating to look over the list and order and the time of history. It really allows one to get a glimpse of how people were thinking back then.  I would submit that NBF's school name does the same. I sure would like to see which ones were closed and shut down though. That would be interesting too.   It would be a cool book.

That other post is a monster...going to have to break it up.

[Sgarey123]

Rbirds did some research. He worked hard on it. It deserves some answers.  However I do not know how to contest quotes from books I have not read and I do not own.  I fear that by posting so many sources and quotes all at once that this discussion will diverge into chaos with several threads going on at the same time. Next time try to break it up so people will want to read it.

Please remember that I am not champion of Forrest so much as I am a champion of his right to a place in history, on that park, and on our school here in Jacksonville. I do not study this stuff for fun. I merely grew up in this culture and I will be dammed if people from somewhere else will change stuff set in stone or in place for 54 years.  What is happening is disgusting to me.

I believe that Authors of books are out to sell books. Especially those in the last 30 years. Their history is disconnected and unfounded. The hurst book (1993), Carney book (2001), Dwyer book (2006) are much like a hollywood movie of those times. They had to get published.  The older sources like Chalmer's quote could be true but would normally be considered "heresay."

Therefore I believe the best way to handle this is to provide the source everyone has been looking for....THE SOURCE of all this....Forrest's words spoken under oath.  We can analyze this forever.

In 1871, Gen. Forrest was called before a congressional Committee.  Forrest testified before Congress personally over four hours . Here's part of the transcript of Forrest's testimony to that 1871 hearing:

"The reports of Committees, House of Representatives, second session, forty-second congress," P. 6-449. 

Source: http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=moa;idno=ACA4911.0013.001;rgn=full%20text;view=toc;cc=moa

"The primary accusation before this board is that Gen. Forrest was a founder of The Klan, and its first Grand Wizard, So it shall address those accusations first." 

Forrest took the witness stand June 27th,1871. Building a railroad in Tennessee at the time, Gen Forrest stated he 'had done more , probably than any other man, to suppress these violence and difficulties and keep them down, had been vilified and abused in the (news) papers, and accused of things I never did while in the army and since.  He had nothing to hide, wanted to see this matter settled, our country quiet once more, and our people united and working together harmoniously.'

Asked if he knew of any men or combination of men violating the law or preventing the execution of the law: Gen Forest answered emphatically, 'No.' (A Committee member brought up a 'document' suggesting otherwise, the 1868 newspaper article from the "Cincinnati Commercial". That was their "evidence", a news article.)

Forrest stated ...any information he had on the Klan was information given to him by others.

Sen. Scott asked, 'Did you take any steps in organizing an association or society under that prescript (Klan constitution)?'

Forrest: 'I DID NOT'  Forrest further stated that '..he thought the Organization (Klan) started in middle Tennessee, although he did not know where. It is said I started it.'

Asked by Sen. Scott, 'Did you start it, Is that true?'

Forrest: 'No Sir, it is not.'

Asked if he had heard of the Knights of the white Camellia, a Klan-like organization in Louisiana,

Forrest: 'Yes, they were reported to be there.'

Senator: 'Were you a member of the order of the white Camellia?'

Forrest: 'No Sir, I never was a member of the Knights of the white Camellia.'

Asked about the Klan :

Forrest: 'It was a matter I knew very little about. All my efforts were addressed to stop it, disband it, and prevent it....I was trying to keep it down as much as possible.'

Forrest: 'I talked with different people that I believed were connected to it, and urged the disbandment of it, that it should be broken up.'"

http://www.flatfenders.com/scv/Forrest%20Defense.htm - where I found all of this.

I tried to read this whole transcript but it is 149 pages!

I know you guys will tear this up and figure out how to use it against Forrest. Keep in mind he was under oath and was being grilled by unfriendly people (sorta like me on this site).

[Sgarey123]

If the school board does happen to read this thread...please know that by removing Forrest from this school you discriminate against all people of Confederate heritage. A heritage that was encouraged by smart leaders to help a decimated and broken population rebuild and be proud.

It is one thing to honor someone. It is quite another to honor someone by dishonoring another.  So far throughout this entire unpleasant process I have found no concrete reason to justify renaming the school. I have only found reasons to keep it.

[Sgarey123]

Alright Mr. Dare,

You are killing me man. This is getting amusing. I just posted you a link to 149 pages of Forrest under oath. That is not enough for you? Seriously? 

I answered his post. If you do not like my answer then Ock can work on it after surgery.  You want to me discredit his sources? THAT IS WHAT THE 149 PAGES DO....duh.  It seems the http://youwereliedtoabout.com/nbf.htm site was accurate and all the books and videos selling hate were not. Go figure. Amazing how the people in the tribe know the tribal history the best. Amazing.

I do not have to attack all those authors personal lives. I do not have to say they are biased (they are). I provided evidence that says that their research is invalid. What source is better? The man's own testimony or several books written within the last 30 years from research?

The hardest one to discredit is the oldest one from 1914. However you have to think that she was selling something too back then. She was selling the KKK.  They used Nathan Bedford Forrest's good name to get membership.

It is understandable since he was so popular with the people.  I read 9 pages and I could completely envision why too. The man was pillar of strength holding up the remains of the South after a brutal invasion.

God Save General Nathan Bedford Forrest from the treachery of this modern and gullible time.

[Sgarey123]

Here is what my source said about Jack hurst (before Rbirds posted anything):

Jack Hurst, in his biography of Forrest, is more tentative in identifying Forrest as leader of the Klan. He points out that there are several versions of stories of how Forrest is said to have an involvement with the organization and that all these stories lack documentation. Hurst also points out that the Klan did not gain significant numbers of adherents until Congress passed a Reconstruction Act on March 2, 1867. This act divided ten of the former Confederate states into five military districts and stated they would be kept under martial law until they ratified the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution which granted citizenship to African Americans.[9]

9.   Jack Hurst, Nathan Bedford Forrest: A Biography, p. 289 ff.

Thats one...I think they are all in there. I guess you just have to "read" it. 

I could cut and past the entire article if you like but why? Read this....It goes over "the invisible empire" and Wills and every facet of how the modern historians are wrong. It is very thorough.

Here is the link again:   http://youwereliedtoabout.com/nbf.htm

[rbirds]

Thanks, sgarey123, for taking the time to respond. I have read through the material on your supplied link. The link is to an argument documenting some professional historians' and historical enthusiasts' treatment of NBF. The argument provides footnotes to cited material and attempts to treat the issue of NFB's association with the Klan through the works of those who have researched NBF's life.

As you have not read through all the material on NBF neither have I. Or probably anyone who has participated in this discussion, I would guess. So we all have our gaps in knowledge on the subject at hand. With that in mind we can proceed.

Forrest's testimony before the "Joint Select Committee to Inquire Into the Condition of Affairs of the Late Insurrectionary States" in 1871 is interesting. The report can be found where you found it in the University of Michigan archives but also is available as a scanned Google book at http://books.google.com/books?id=WIl4AAAAMAAJ&q=forrest#v=onepage&q&f=false . The Google version appears to be a bit more user-friendly, displaying the entire publication rather than retrieving a single page at at time as the UMich version does.

Forrest testified before this committee as sgarey123 describes. But the committee members became suspicious as Forrest denies that he has any association with the Klan even as he describes some of their operations in great detail. So suspicious did the committee become that when they designed the report they put the Klan constitution in the left-hand column and then matched Forrest's testimony in the right-hand column. In this way the report demonstrates that where the Klan constitution - or as Forrest insisted on calling them, the Klan "precepts" - instructs members to keep secret particular details of Klan procedures, Forrest claimed to know those details. These details included passwords and special Klan gestures.

The intention of reporting on some of Forrest's testimony in this way is to show that he knows details of Klan operations that only Klan members could know. The constitution warns members to reveal these details at the risk of unspecified penalties. Under the assumption that no member WOULD reveal those details the reader is left with the impression that Forrest knows those details because he WAS a member of the Klan.

Sgarey123 is correct to say that Forrest does not claim membership in the Klan, a detail I got wrong in an earlier post. But the committee, through the way it reported some of his testimony, appears convinced he really was because of what he admitted knowing about the Klan. Forrest demonstrated that he knew how large the Klan was, when it was founded, when it was formally dissolved, what the members were up to and why it was dissolved. They also describe the sworn testimony of several former Klan members who swear that Forrest was the head of the organization. And, when questioned about Klan operations, each of them used similar language to describe Klan operations, language --  similar to each other and similar to the language Forrest used to describe Klan operations.

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....

This is a circumstantial connection. But circumstantial evidence has convicted many a perpetrator.

If you have some spare time, on the bye and bye, the committee report makes for some harrowing reading of how the Klan operated. These were domestic terrorists, more dangerous and efficient than what Homeland Security and the FBI rounds up these days.

Sgarey123, both in the material he provides a link to and in his posts, rightly points out that Forrest's connection to the Klan is not iron-clad. That is, no historian can pick out a piece of paper from their pile of papers that makes a direct connection between Forrest and the Klan: no membership form, no Klan-published document with Forrest's name at the top, etc. But there is his testimony that sure sounds like he admits membership despite the evasive language and picking his way around organizational names.

Then there is the letter I've cited written by a charter KKK member to a member of the Daughters of Confederate Veterans who specifically identifies Forrest as head of the Klan.  Many historians allude to this letter either in the DCV member's book or in books that refer to the letter.

So, can we say with 100% confidence that Forrest was either a member or leader of the Klan for several years? No. But given what evidence we have we can justify a strong suspicion that he was the leader.  Historians take the evidence given to them and try to make logical connections between the evidence and events they are certain of. Most of them believe Forrest indeed was the KKK leader.

I'd say he was as well. But, given the nature of the evidence we have, one can argue that we don't really, really know absolutely.

[Sgarey123]

What little I read through the testimony I garnished that Nathan Bedford Forrest was a widely popular person back then. People were looking to him for leadership. They needed help. I would not put it past people to try and use him for nefarious purposes.

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."

The committee was not friendly. They were trying their very best to trip him up. I have to admit while reading through it I even got confused a few times.

There is plenty of proof about the Battle of Ft. Pillow. It was in the link I posted. 

Jacksonville does not need a signed document. There is a monument in the center of the town with letters carved in stone (here we go again).

Here is a fairly early historians take:

"An even earlier historian, John Allan Wyeth, considered the matter of the Klan carefully before writing his biography of Forrest in 1899. Wyeth concluded that Forrest was not intimately involved in the Klan for a very simple reason: he was too obvious a candidate for the position of leader. Forrest felt it was inevitable that suspicion would focus on the Klan as it began to make an effective resistance to the policies of Reconstruction. Of all the men in the South who might be thought to be involved in the organization he knew he would be the first to be suspected of being its leader. Forrest was too good a strategist to occupy such an obvious position. Forrest readily admitted knowledge of the Klan but denied any personal involvement.[3] " 

They go into extreme detail on the motives of authors and sources of the day. It is quite interesting.  However the smoking gun is this:

All the sources cited ignore the fact that there is another person who it is claimed ,held the post of Grand Wizard of the Klan. In an unpublished manuscript Mrs. George W. Gordon claims that her husband was supreme head of the Reconstruction-era Klan. General George W. Gordon was from Pulaski, he was often identified with the Klan and later personally claimed to have been involved with the group. His business affairs caused him to travel extensively in Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi following the war and some of his Klan regalia is in the possession of the Tennessee State Museum.[7]

Here is how he descibes the modern day sources:

"No documentation, but an authoritative statement may still be made, says Horn.! This is not the rules of historical evidence learned in any graduate course on historiography; this is not the way history is supposed to be written. When the only "evidence" is folk belief and two statements made by old men at a time when it was to their own interest to say what they did no "authoritative" statement can be made and still be called history.

Brian Wills and Stanley Horn's books, like that of Wade, are properly called "secondary sources" by historians; that is, they are books written by people who were not present at the events they are describing, they are basing their description and analysis of the historical events on what other people have said. Clearly, most history books are "secondary sources." Good history, well-written secondary sources, use "primary sources" as the basis of their description and conclusion. A "primary source" is something written at the time an event happened. A "primary source" may be written by an eye-witness or by a person who was alive at the time of the event. Wills, like all other Forrest biographers, does not cite a single primary source to document that Forrest was a member of or the head of the Klan. The closest any biographer can come to a primary source connecting Forrest to the Klan is the appendix of the1909 book by John Morton and the 1930 article in the Confederate Veteran. The rest of the "evidence" connecting Forrest to the Klan is circumstantial."

Either way my only goal here is not to convince everyone but to show that there is reasonable doubt of this association. Again this is theory! That is not enough to dishonor this man to make some unstudied and manipulated people unhappy. It is rather interesting because Forrest was being used by BOTH SIDES. He still is. This is precisely why he is such a teachable icon. If everyone wants to use him why do we not use him to teach children too.

I want to thank you Rbirds for making me delve deeper into this. I was getting worn down by antics and if Ock hadn't showed up I would probably have dropped from this site by now. But now we have intellectual discourse again. It is good to see.

[Sgarey123]

Here is what they were saying in Canada:


http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/48023

[thelakelander]

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'?

So we're attempting to preserve the racially motivated naming of an originally illegal all-white school in honor of a guy who had nothing to do with Jax, had KKK (Pale Faces, whatever) affiliations, and who danced his way around providing direct answers under oath? What a hero for Jax.