Saint or sinner: Nathan Bedford Forrest considered

For nearly a century and a half, America has been vexed with the question of Nathan Bedford Forrest: Was he a saint or a sinner?

Forrest was a general in the Confederate Army, a leader in a band of rangers that harassed and often defeated the Union Army in western Tennessee, northern Alabama and southern Kentucky. He drove William Tecumseh Sherman to distraction and scared the bejesus out of Chicago when rumors were rife that he was heading north, just has Lee had done in Pennsylvania.

Well, he was certainly sinner. Before the Civil War, as a businessman in Memphis and West Tennessee, he bought and sold slaves, and the site where he did that is well known in Memphis. During the war, he was a fierce and innovative fighter. Some have credited him with originating "guerrilla warfare," which was then an anathema to the acceptable rules of war. Forrest was the Confederate commander during the infamous siege of Ft. Pillow, where a number of black Union soldiers were massacred. How much Forrest had to do with this horror is loudly debated among partisans.

Then there was the Ku Klux Klan. Did Forrest originate it? Was he even a member? Did he eventually regret it and disavow it? The evidence is conflicting, and again, the mists of history obscure a clear view of the truth.

But for some Forrest is a saint. He embodies the fighting spirit that spurred the South to repudiate an oppressive government. He was patriotic, loyal and courageous. His reputation grew after the war as did the South's redefinition of its struggles into the romance of the Lost Cause, and his defenders became legion.

Paul Ashdown and Ed Caudill (two colleagues at the University of Tennessee and both good friends) have entered this fray with a book-length study of the image of Forrest titled The Myth of Nathan Bedford Forrest. This is the second of three books they have produced that study the myths surrounding John Singleton Mosby, Forrest, and William Tecumseh Sherman. (I have previously reviewed their book on Mosby and will take a look at the Sherman book at a later date.)

I talked with Ashdown about the series and asked particularly about the two Confederates in their study. Ashdown began by explaining why he and Caudill began the series with Mosby and then moved to Forrest (Click on the arrow to hear the audio: 4:00):

Forrest died in 1877, 12 years after the war ended. He showed little interest in tending to his reputation both during the war and afterwards. Yet, as Ashdown and Caudill write:

. . . . To this day, a mention of Nathan Bedford Forrest will often provoke a response that notes little more than his miliary genius and role in founding the Klan. The more knowledgeable individuals may even site a few details, such as Brice's Cross Roads and Fot Pillow. But it remains a simple frame of racism, war and untotored genius that guides even recent recognition of and response to his name.

The book -- the whole series, in fact -- is must reading for those who not only want to know about the Civil War but also want to understand its effect on the American mind.

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A larger version of the pen and ink drawing above can be found at First Inning Artworks.

The Writing Wright

Kill the Quarterback

Civil War images: Authors explore the Mosby Myth

• What we think about John Singleton Mosby is a mixture of what he did on the battlefields of the Civil War and the myth-making that occurred during and after the war. In this post, author Ed Caudill talks about his book on this expert image-maker.

What is real, and what just exists in our mind's eye, about our past?

Those were the questions two journalism historians had when they took on John Singleton Mosby, the famous Gray Ghost of the Confederate Army. What they produced is an insightful and interesting book titled The Mosby Myth: A Confederate Hero in Life and Legend.

Paul Ashdown and Ed Caudill (two colleagues and good friends) were fascintated by the fact that Mosby, a minor character in the gigantic events that occurred in America between 1861 and 1865, should have such a large place in the consciousness of America. Mosby is said to be the most famous non-general to emerge from the smoke of the war.

Even before the war ended, Mosby and his "raiders" had gained an outsized reputation due not just to their courageous exploits but also because of Mosby's careful attention to his own image. Ulysses Grant once ordered that they be executed immediately if they were caught.

I spoke with Caudill about how he and Ashdown came to write this book and asked how they chose Mosby as their first subject. Click on the arrow below to begin the audio (6:30):


The book, which was published in 2002, became the first in a series of three that explore the myths and images that surround Civil War characters:

• The Mosby Myth: A Confederate Hero in Life and Legend (2002) Amazon
  
  
• The Myth of Nathan Bedord Forrest (2005) Amazon
  
  
• Sherman's March in Myth and Memory (2008) Amazon

The authors explain how the myth of Mosby began in the days of battle and how it grew as the memory of the war faded and the images of the war emerged. Part of the Mosby magic was simply that he outlived most of his Civil War contempories, dying in 1916, and thus had many more opportunities to shape was generations thought about him.

The authors bring us into the present day with a look at the 1950s television series, The Gray Ghost, and the treatment of Mosby in modern novels and movies.

We will be exploring each of these book in subsequent post.

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See a full size image of the pen and ink drawing of Mosby (above) at First Inning Artworks.

Learn more about The Writing Wright, the book, at the WritingWright.com.

Learn more about Kill the Quarterback, the mystery novel by Jim Stovall, at KilltheQuarterback.com.