FORREST NATHAN BEDFORD

Forrest Nathan Bedford

Forrest Nathan Bedford

Civil War and Reconstruction

The year 1864 saw the Civil War turn even uglier than it had in the previous two and a half years. Early in 1864, General Grant ended the prisoner-exchange system. Both sides attacked civilian facilities in daring raids that took Union troops to the edge of Richmond and Confederate troops to the northern outskirts of Washington, D.C. The war came to civilians in ways that had not been anticipated at the opening of the conflict. Union troops shelled and burned the Virginia Military Institute and other civilian properties; in response, Confederates burned the city of Chambersburg, Maryland. The reprisals continued when Union troops swept through the Shenandoah Valley intentionally destroying farms and livestock. Later, General William Tecumseh Sherman turned his troops loose to forage their way across Georgia, destroying homes, farms, tanneries, orchards, and whole towns. Sharpshooters and bushwhackers increasingly targeted individuals, acts that resembled murder more than warfare. The Union planting of a huge mine under Confederate lines outside Petersburg led to a debacle in which Union troops were slaughtered. The Confederate planting of torpedoes, or land mines, on roads in front of Union troops also demonstrated the desperation that had led both sides to abandon some of the traditional rules of war (Wyeth, 2001).

Forrest as a Leader

In the fall of 1862 Forrest organized a new brigade with local recruits and led them to several victories, the first near Lexington, Tennessee. He captured Trenton, Tennessee, along with a store of ammunition, then Union City, Tennessee. He destroyed the Mobile and Ohio Railroad near Jackson, Tennessee, preventing the Federal army from moving on Vicksburg. At Thompson's Station, Tennessee, on 5 March 1863, he defeated a Federal unit, capturing 1,500 prisoners, and at Brentwood, Tennessee, he captured another 700, including 35 officers. Forrest led the pursuit of General Abel Streight and captured him with his artillery and 1,200 men. Further successes at Chickamauga, Georgia, on 18 September 1863, at Okolona, Mississippi, in February 1864, and at Paducah, Kentucky, in March 1864 enhanced his reputation. The attack on Fort Pillow, 12 April 1864, was the battle that brought his name to the attention of the U.S. Congress and to the northern press (Jordan, 1999).

The bare facts of that attack were that 221 defenders were killed, 130 were wounded, and the remainder was captured. An uncounted number of civilians who had taken refuge in the fort were also killed. The high military casualty rate stunned the North, and rumors spread that Forrest had ordered a "Black Flag" or "no quarter," which led to the massacre of many of the African-American defenders. His troops pursued men into the woods and continued to fire on the fleeing defenders, killing many as they sought to escape. Later, Forrest's supporters and friendly biographers collected evidence from both Confederate and Union veterans of the battle to offset the conviction that he was personally responsible for the massacre. Nevertheless, the casualty figures and the testimony of many suggested it was the ...