I'm very humbled to have everybody here today. When I put this program together several months
ago they sent a – well, actually, I put it together 30 minutes ago, I finished it. When I submitted the idea for this program
several months ago I went to the - they sent out an email saying if there's books on the
topic and everything submit them to the bookstore and they'll get them in for the visitors to
possibly buy and I went to the bookstore manager and told her I’m doing something on Nathan
Bedford Forrest and she said well it'll never sell. I was like, okay. Forrest doesn't sell here. Actually, based on that assumption I walked
in there, so don't everybody break down the door when you get out of here, but I always
begin the conversations with this. How much is this? I have two biographies that they got in. One is by Brian Steel Wills, it's called “The
Confederacy's Greatest Cavalryman: Nathan Bedford Forrest.” It is predominantly on the Civil War although
it's got some pre- and post-war. This other one is by Jack Hurst. This is the brown book it's $17.95, this one's
$20. Jack covers the most in the pre-war and the
post-war. So if the Klan really interests you this has
the most on that time period even down to minute details like where he's sworn in and
all that stuff. So the pre- and post- war, when this book
first came out I was mesmerized by it, because all the biographies, as they should, have
focused on the war, but this one actually had something outside. Is there a guy buy the name of Bill Sach here? Did he happen to make it? Bill Sach, I think I've got the name right. Who is it? Alright, well tell your brother that I got
his email or his posting with the video suggesting that I enter to a wrestler's theme song called
the Nature Boy. Ric Flair, you know what I'm talking about,
yeah! You will apologize to him for me not being
able to comply with that, I did go to the Foundation and asked if fireworks were allowed
inside the building, but I didn't get anywhere with that. So if you would like to see what I’m talking
about, you can go to YouTube and type in Ric Flair intro. So I've got - my name is Matt. I guess I should do the - if you don't know,
I’m a park ranger here. I think I know about everybody in the room
here today which is kind of cool. That’s Gettysburg for you. It kind of gets to feel like family sometimes
doesn't it when you see the same faces again? It means springtime is coming. So the Park Service - I’ve always been dinged
in my career for not having a theme. So Matt can never get his act together to
have a cohesive idea to bring to the audience to bring them closer to the resource. So in order to do that, I have come up with
a theme, and it is the following: sometimes we all do things that, well, don't make sense. Now that might not make sense to you right
now, but it will make sense here shortly. I’ve got a lot of material to cover here
and I’ll try to fly through it. You all know how I like to meander though,
in and out of the theme right here. What I’m going to tell you about today,
ladies and gentlemen, is obviously Nathan Bedford Forrest, the guy on the screen right
here. Nathan Bedford Forrest is kind of - I’m
sure it happens in the North - but in the South there are regional heroes, such as in
Alabama, for some reason, portions of Alabama are big Joseph Wheeler fans, a cavalryman. It might be Pelham, the artilleryman from
Fredericksburg; he's big in some parts of Alabama. In northern Mississippi, you have Nathan Bedford
Forrest, you could say that. Nathan Bedford Forrest, though, nationally,
is one of the more controversial figures today and then to come out of the Civil War. He was controversial during the war, he was
controversial after the war, and he is controversial today. Nothing gets the debate juices flowing faster
than mentioning the name of Nathan Bedford Forrest. I’m going to start out with combat. What you're about to hear is going to seem
like it's straight out of a wild west novel. If you do not know anything about Nathan Bedford
Forrest, you're going to think that all of this is fiction, and part of it, kind of like
William Wallace, a lot of legend, I should say, has grown up with Nathan Bedford Forrest,
it has. What is fact from fiction? At the battle of Shiloh did he really get
shot at point blank range amidst the Yankees and pull a soldier up after that behind him
for a shield? I doubt it. I bet he was saying, “Ouch, that hurt!” But that's the type of stuff. Nevertheless, Forrest is a fascinating character. He is very reserved in front of ladies, he
is very hot tempered in combat to the point where he almost loses his common sense. And he has this vernacular, this drawl, which
kind of makes him interesting too. He can't read, he can't write, and yet he
is going to learn through his backwoods and his own personal character how to fight warfare
in the 1860s. We'll start with something probably most of
you have never heard of before and this is the Meridian Expedition of 1864. The Meridian Expedition is conducted in January
and February of 1864. Sherman actually returns, William T. Sherman,
actually returns here to Vicksburg, Mississippi, this is the bottom left of the map, and this
is a precursor to his Georgia Campaign and his march across Georgia. He’s going to go here to Vicksburg and he's
going to march straight across the state of Mississippi to Meridian and he's going to
destroy the railroads and the infrastructure of Mississippi along the way. He has about twenty thousand men in order
to do that and in true Sherman fashion, you can see, he takes two routes there and back
to maximize the destruction. His plan, though, and we'll get into Nathan
Bedford Forrest right here, is to have seventy-five hundred cavalrymen under William Sooy Smith
come down to the Mobile and Ohio Railroad, remember, it's all about railroads, and come
through this area and rendezvous with him at Meridian. The two combined forces could then go into
Alabama, possibly to Selma, or they could go south to Mobile. Remember, Mobile is still an open port for
the Confederacy. So that's where we are. Sherman is marching across here. He is supposed to rendezvous with Sooy Smith
around the 1st of February. What ends up happening? William Sooy Smith gets off late. He awaits like two or three thousand cavalrymen
to come in which slows him up, and he does not get his column moving until February 11th. Yeah, that's pretty bad. Now, they quickly, when Smith's column came
into Mississippi, they quickly digressed into looting and pillaging. They completely went wild. He estimated that when he reached the Mobile
and Ohio Railroad, he had burned already between one and two million bushels of corn alone. Also following him, you have to remember,
and I'll show you this on the map in a second, the area which he's coming to in northeast
Mississippi is called the Prairie Belt or the Black Prairie. It's named that because of the soil, it's
a very dark soil, but it’s very conducive to growing good crops, and the Confederacy,
just like the Shenandoah Valley, is getting a lot of food out of northeast Mississippi. So they want to destroy that, the Federals
do, that is. So Sooy Smith is coming down through there. When you've got a lot of agriculture there,
you've obviously going to have corn, you're going to have your food produce, etc., but
you're also going to have cotton. And when you have all this you're obviously
going to have a lot of slaves. When Sooy Smith's column comes through north
Mississippi, thousands of slaves start following the Union army through there. Well now he's got a problem, because they're
on horses and these slaves are on foot. So what do you do with them? He’s already running behind time. Boss-man wants him down at Meridian ASAP and
he's got thousands of slaves that are following right now. And what are the slaves doing, and what are
the Union soldiers doing? You can't control everybody. When they're about to leave the farm, they're
lighting the houses up. The Union soldiers, when they come to forage,
they're burning the barns down, etc. Between the two, there's a lot of destruction
going on in north Mississippi at this time. Now, coming to meet him is seventy-five hundred
men is a guy by the name of Nathan Bedford Forrest. Forrest did not have half the strength of
the Federals, nor did he initially know the objective of the Union forces, but he guessed
Smith would eventually move towards Meridian to join with Sherman, and he guessed correctly. What he is wanting to do, and I apologize
to the people in the back, I know you can't see anything on this map, but, it’s the
only map I could find with the detail. Right here, for those of you up front where
the red dot is, here is the railroad to orient you. Here is Meridian, here is Columbus, Mississippi,
and West Point is right in here in this area. This is the Black Prairie area right through
here. Right here, ladies and gentleman, is Houston
and that is the hometown of yours truly. Houston, Mississippi thank you, thank you
very much. Elvis actually played there at the VFW. The VFW had the chance to lock him in for
a three year contract and didn't do it, because they didn't think anybody would want to hear
him. Some of the old timers swear that he left
a matinee one day when the kids came out in Houston and across the street was Elvis Presley
on the back of a pickup truck just playing right there. Alright, so that has nothing to do with anything
but I told you I would digress at some time. Sooy Smith's column is coming through here,
they're going to get to Okolona which is right here in this area, once again, following the
railroad. Okolona was the depot right in this area to
collect all the supplies for the Confederate army. Matt used to drive from Houston, which is
dry, over here to Okolona. About twelve miles right through there and
he would wait outside the liquor store until some nice adult would come along and make
a purchase for him. That’s where it all happened right there,
Okolona. A lot of good times over there. Always good fights too between the two towns,
you didn't want to stay long. So Sooy Smith's column is coming down here. Forrest is coming across Mississippi from
the west to the east, and he's wanting to catch Sooy Smith. Now this is hard to see, but once again, it's
the only map I have. There are streams running through here. When you get around Columbus, Mississippi
it gets to be a bottom land, and Forrest knows the territory. You can never put a price on knowing the territory
and knowing your enemy, and knowing the strength. So when Forrest is coming down through there
he figures, he guesses that Smith is heading to Meridian, so what he decides to do is send
his forces on either side of Smith's column and lure the Union cavalrymen towards Columbus. He’s going to box them in though on these
rivers and these creeks down here, and when Smith gets in that lowland he's going to jump
him because you can't move fast when you're in mud, and that's exactly what he's up against. Smith is beginning to feel the presence. He reaches West Point, Mississippi on February
20th and it took him nine days to get down there, and he gets to West Point and he and
Forrest's advance command start skirmishing. Now Smith loses his nerve at this point. This is a picture of Ellis Bridge. This is Highway 50 coming out of West Point
and about a mile behind this picture is my uncle Mike's beer store, Mike’s Quick Stop. He’ll sell you everything you need, right
there; pack of smokes, anything, and they are cheaper than Pennsylvania. So this creek is flooded at the time and this
is the only place to get across it. Smith gets to, well not specifically to the
bank right here, but this is the best shot I can get. He gets here and this is open at the time,
it's being farmed I suppose, and he looks across through there and he sees the Confederates
and he doesn't know their force, he loses his nerve, and he decides to turn back. He has got Forrest outnumbered by two to one. Of course, I know that, he doesn't, but the
name of Nathan Bedford Forrest was worth enough to scare him off. Now Forrest always had a feel, if you know
what I mean, a touch, for what was going on on the battlefield and he sensed that Smith
was giving up the fight before it had begun. This is the Ellis Bridge Monument. I actually went to that dedication. It’s a skirmish I don't know why it rated
a monument, but there you go. I was there and it was weird. As the Union troops start to withdraw, one
of Forrest's division commanders, brand new division commanders, James Chalmers, got a
chance to see Nathan Bedford Forrest for the first time in combat, and this is what he
wrote. “I had considerable curiosity to observe
General Forrest, but up to nine o’clock that morning, he had not appeared upon the
scene. Suddenly, out of a cloud of dust, accompanied
by an orderly, he came dashing up the road toward the bridge. As he approached me and reined up his horse,
and in rather a harsh, quick tone he asked me what the condition of affairs was at the
front. As I had not been on the firing line and did
not know anything definite, except that the firing indicated quite a severe skirmish,
I replied that Colonel," this is his brother, "Jeffrey Forrest had reported nothing to me
beyond the fact that there was some skirmishing going on at the front, and I added that I
thought it was a very severe affair. Forrest said quickly and with evident impatience,
‘Is that all you know? Then I’ll go there and find out myself.’” Now Forrest is always, you'll hear this throughout
the program, but I may not emphasize it, wherever Forrest goes, Forrest has between sixty and
a hundred men that are his personal escort. I don't know if you'll call them a bodyguard,
but they are handpicked men picked for their fighting prowess. These men do not shirk, they are the best
of his command, and to get into Forrest's personal escort was a high honor, kind of
like the old guard with Napoleon except a lot smaller. So anyway, Forrest dashes off with his escort,
he gets to the firing line, and he just charges, barrels right on ahead into the field into
this wood line. Guns blaze, smoke comes up, saddles are emptied,
and Forrest comes galloping back up to Chalmers, reins up his horse, and all the empty saddles
are coming back. He turns to Chalmers and he says, “Yup they
were in there sure enough, weren't they?” It’s like a novel. To back up a little bit, on the other side
of the bridge, when he first crossed on his way to the front line, Forrest encountered
a frightened soldier running away from the battle. Forrest proceeded to jump down from his horse,
grab the man by the neck, hurl him to the ground, and then pick up a piece of brush
and start whipping him on the behind. He then, after he got through with him, pulled
him up to his feet, faced him to the front, and said, “Now, goddamn you, you go back
there and fight. You might as well get killed there as here,
for if you ever run away again you'll not get off so easy.” Forrest would later write, “The Federals
are retreating, Smith is retreating from here." He would later write in his report, "It is
not my intention to attack them or to bring on a general engagement, but to develop their
strength position and movement.” What did I tell you? Forrest is trying to draw them in. However, since Smith was retreating, "being
unwilling that they should leave the country without a fight I ordered the advance of my
column." In Forrest's words, in his home jargon right
there, the “skeer” was on. Forrest always had a rule that once you got
the “skeer,” the scare on the enemy, you kept it on the enemy. If you have a superior force and you get that
force moving. If you're fighting, let me put it in simpler
terms; if you're fighting somebody bigger than you, and you get them down, don't ever
let them get up. That’s not a good rule. There are no rules in fighting, alright? Once you get your opponent going you want
to keep pushing them right there, and he sensed that. Now Forrest started pursuing them on February
10th, we're on the right hand side of the map over there at the top, and he starts pushing
them back towards Okolona. He stopped the pursuit as nightfall came on
and on February 22nd he would have his column moving again. Smith's column moved pretty much throughout
the night. Forrest's column got a few hours of sleep. Smith is trying to get out of there; Forrest
is reserving his force’s strength, as they got to the outskirts of Okolona. Forrest always, and you'll see this throughout
this program, when he met an enemy, he would hit them in the front while he swung around
to the flank. He could always get a superior force to move
if he could get astride their flank. Once again, once you get the “skeer on ‘em,
keep the skeer on ‘em.” When they get to the outskirts of Okolona,
the Federal forces are deployed right there, Forrest and them skirmish only briefly enough
for Forrest and the rest of the command to ride around the town. The Union troops withdraw from Okolona, they
form on the other side, this is kind of a running battle. Forrest personally rides up to one of his
brigade's, Bartow’s. He asks Colonel Bartow, “Where is the enemy's
whole position?” Bartow replied, “You see it general, and
they are preparing to charge.” “Then we will charge them,” and away he
goes. Forrest attacked, and to show you he's human,
he gets repulsed. He quickly took a regiment, though, upon reforming
his men, that brigade, around the Federal flank and the chase was on again. Smith tried to reform his rear guard two more
times, but Forrest stayed on top of him, attacking and outflanking him each time. Sooy Smith managed to reform his lines again,
for a third time, a couple miles down the road, but by now Jeffrey Forrest, the general's
youngest and favorite brother, along with also being a brigade commander under his older
brother, had taken over the pursuit along with the other Confederate troops. What is he doing? Forrest is bringing up fresh troops and pushing
them. Push, push, push. Have you ever seen a cow dog in action? The dog's probably thirty pounds and the cow's
probably fifteen hundred but what's the dog do? Just eats that cow's tail up until it goes
to where he wants it to. Think of a Chihuahua; a lot of bark to it. Now while leading the attack, Forrest's brother
is hit in the throat and mortally wounded. Yeah, that had to be bloody. Forrest rode up around this time to find his
brother laying on the ground. Dismounting, he took his brother in his arms
and "was melting with grief." Another account said he was just saying “Jeffrey”
over and over again while he was sitting there crying. This moment "was of short duration, however. In placing the dead man's hat over his face,
he called for Major Strange of his staff to take charge of the body, and looking around,
called in a ringing, passionate voice to the bugle to sound the charge once more. The lull in the fighting had given the Federals
time to regroup and Forrest and his command ran up against five hundred Federals standing
along the crest of a plantation named after the Ivy family.” Forrest was in a rage over his brother's death. In fact, Dr. Cowan, J.B. Cowan, was sent to fetch Forrest because they
thought he might be on a suicide mission. Cowan spurred his mount forward and "in about
a mile as I rounded the short turn in the road, I came upon a scene which made my blood
run cold. There in the road was General Forrest and
his escort and a few of the advanced guard of the Forrest brigade in a hand-to-hand fight
with Federals enough to have pulled them from their horses. At that moment, another Confederate brigade
rode up under Bob McCulloch. The soldiers hesitated at seeing the number
of Federals in their front but when they did, McCulloch waved his bloody hand above his
head shouting, ‘My God men, will you see them kill your general? I will go to the rescue if not a man follows
me.’ His men did follow him. By the time they had driven the Federals back,
Forrest had killed or wounded three enemy soldiers." Now the Federals made one last stand, and
I’ll show you how different people paint it; same battle, different artist. "The Federals made one last stand with three
long and separate lines of cavalry. They charged the vanguard of Forrest's advance,
most of whom were dismounted. As the Federals charged, Dr. Cowan urged Forrest
to get out of the road. 'Doctor,' Forrest replied, 'If you are alarmed,
you may get out of the way. I am as safe here as there.' A few minutes later, Forrest's horse went
down, struck by five balls with another three ricocheting off the saddle. Unscathed, Forrest remounted and rode another
a hundred and fifty yards before this one was killed. By this time, his favorite mount, King Philip
had arrived. This horse would become very animated seeing
the color blue and would rush at the enemy with its mouth open and its ears turned back." In fact, in the post-war years when the Memphis
police came to visit Forrest, for some reason at his house, King Philip was still alive. He was in the stable and the horse went ballistic
when the policeman showed up in blue uniforms. The policemen remarked to Forrest, “My God,
general, even your horse hates the Yankees.” So galloping through there, the Federals charged
three times and they are barely repulsed. "By this time, with the last line charged,
hand-to-hand combat was on very freely. Major Thomas Tate of the general's staff had
locked horns with a Federal and Tate had just found that his carbine was jammed, and he
flung it in desperation at the Federal soldier. Figuring he was a goner, he was greatly relieved
when the looming figure of Forrest rode up and almost decapitated the man with one blow
from his sword. The Confederates repulsed the final assault
and Forrest galloped on ahead.” He found a Union hospital where a surgeon
had run off in the midst of an amputation leaving a saw in the middle of the guy's leg. Oh, you want something better? The guy was conscious. Forrest dismounts from his horse, goes and
gets, I suppose it was laying there, a bottle of chloroform, which is your anesthesia, and
applies it to the soldier to knock him out, and then he tells Dr. Cowan to finish the
operation from there. Now once again, fact from legend. The legend has it that Forrest finished the
operation. I don't think so but I think he did apply
chloroform. Now the battle of Okolona results in 144 Confederates
killed, wounded, and missing compared with Smith's loss of 388. Forrest explained it this way, his small loss,
or half the loss: "We kept so close to them that the enemy overshot our men." Now Okolona, and this is the great thing about
being in a rule - this is always a bad word for
a Southerner. RURAL. RULE. RURAL area. Ru-EL, madam. Yes, a farming community! - is that this land
is all pristine. The problem with the battle of Okolona or
the series of engagements is that it's running, it's moving, it's fluid. It’s not as open as it once was so it's
hard today to get a fix on exactly where Jeffrey was shot and Ivy Plantation and so forth but
it's pristine. It’s kind of neat to see that rolling countryside. Now I’m going to back up a little bit right
now and we're going to go back to the beginning, and I’ll tell you where Forrest's roots
are coming from. Now most of you have probably heard of Nathan
Bedford Forrest. Nathan Bedford Forrest has been on everything. Movies, magazines, books, I showed you a couple
here. It gets to the point of saturation, but I’m
sure he's a good sell if you slap him on the cover of a magazine. I imagine that the vast majority, though,
of everybody's perceptions here have been influenced by one thing. "My mama named me after the great Civil War
hero General Nathan Bedford Forrest. She said we was related to him in some way. What he did was, he started up this club called
the Ku Klux Klan, and they all dressed up in their robes and bed sheets and they acted
like a bunch of ghosts or spooks or something and they even put bed sheets on their horses
and ride around. Anyway, that's how I got my name, Forrest
Gump. Mama said the Forrest part was to remind me
that sometimes we all do things that, well, just don't make no sense." The real Forrest, to back up, is just dirt
poor. He’s born in Tennessee in 1821 in the backwoods
that was unforgiving and violent, in its own nature. He was named after his uncle; Nathan, and
the county he was born in; Bedford. Nathan Bedford. His father was a blacksmith and his mother
looked after eleven children. All the women go "ooooo." Only five sons reached adulthood and like
his parents Forrest was large, standing at 6 foot 2. What made him even more imposing, ladies and
gentleman, in combat, is he would charge and he would stand up in the stirrups on his toes,
that's the way he fought. So you take a 6' 2" man and put him on King
Philip and I’m sure he's something to behold upon a battlefield. Forrest only received three months of formal
schooling growing up, however, life taught him more lessons that taught him well. He was gathering blackberries along with the
rest of the kids and they encountered a rattlesnake and while the rest of the kids ran Nathan
picked up a stick and killed the snake. He had learned “the value of the offense.” Another learning experience occurred when
Bedford confronted a pack of dogs. In the past he and his friends had tossed
rocks at the mean dogs as they galloped past the house. On this occasion, the horse balked and threw
Nathan to the ground, the boy, to the ground. Bedford, Nathan Bedford, sprang up ready to
fight. To his surprise, he found the dogs had run
off. What did this teach him? The element of surprise. The element of surprise coupled with a show
of offense had completely thrown his enemy off. As a teenager, Bedford found work in his uncle's
tailor shop. One day, five rowdy guys came in drinking
pretty heavily. They started to pester Forrest to drink with
them. Growing tired of their taunting, he picked
up a pair of shears that he was working with and pulled them apart holding each half in
one hand. Bedford then proceeded to charge which sent
the five boys tumbling out the front door. He had learned the advantage of the offense
from that. Now this is kind of interesting. Forrest moves to Memphis in 1851 where he
dabbled in real estate, livestock, and also slave trading. His slave market grew to be one of the largest
in Memphis and with that money Forrest became a millionaire. Between farming and buying and selling slaves
- I can't really - I’m not an expert on slavery or anything like that. I suppose he would just get a commission from
buying and selling. My understanding is that the way the market
worked the Deep South had cotton, and Kentucky and places like Kentucky, Virginia, Missouri
were - they didn't need that many slaves - so it's supply and demand. So what would they do? People would buy them in Kentucky and bring
them to Memphis and sell them for a higher profit. Of course, Forrest is making a commission
off of that. If you think about where he began, with his
humble beginnings, it's amazing that by 1858, he had risen from the lowest rungs of society
to the top tier. Of course, he had done that on other people's
backs; it's a heck of a way to make a living. He even won a seat on the Memphis board of
Alderman. Now Forrest is going to enter the war late
by most standards. he's going to wait until June when Tennessee leaves the Union to join
the Confederacy. Nathan Bedford Forrest will enter the war
as a private. Forrest's connections in Memphis, though,
got him a commission to raise a cavalry outfit and by October of ‘61 he was a lieutenant
colonel and by the end of the war, he would be lieutenant general. That’s quite a rise from private. There are many stories to tell about Nathan
Bedford Forrest during the war, and we could spend all day and we may do it yet. You going to write that one down? Never know what people find funny. I’ll pick you out a couple highlights. Fort Donelson, which is at the Cumberland
River, about twelve miles from Fort Henry, which is on the Tennessee River. It’s basically north of Nashville, Tennessee. Forrest is in command of a regiment of cavalry. Forrest is involved in the fighting when the
Confederates try to break out. General U.S. Grant has surrounded Fort Donelson,
the Confederates counter-attack, they actually open up an escape route, and once again, the
Confederates this time lose their nerve and they withdraw back into their fortifications
after winning the battle. Nathan Bedford Forrest is - what is the job
of cavalry? He’s supposed to go out and reconnoiter,
he's supposed to find intelligence. He comes back to headquarters to find the
three top Confederate generals talking about surrendering, this is at nighttime, and he
is just aghast that this is actually happening. He argues that escape route is still open
that there's a back road that is only flooded for about a hundred yards waist-deep and we
can take the command out tonight. But the generals have had enough and they
decide to surrender. Forrest, still being present during the conversation,
curtly informed everyone present "That I did not come here for the purposes of surrendering
my command." And a few minutes later he had his officers
assembled and he stated to them "Boys, these men are talking about surrendering, and I
am going to ride out of here and bust hell wide open." And rode out he did. With every Confederate soldier that he could
get on horseback, two to a horse, some of the soldiers came out. Was it the majority of the garrison? Not even close, but the road was open and
Forrest, once again, took the initiative. He didn't take what people told him, his subordinates,
his superiors or anybody else, about what was happening. He went and found out the situation himself
and he acted. Forrest was at the Battle of Shiloh, the end
of the battle. Remember, the battle of Shiloh is two days. What happens, briefly, the Confederates win
the first day, the Union wins the second day. The night of the first day, Forrest goes up
front in the woods, he scouts out, he can see Union reinforcements coming ashore on
the Tennessee River. He goes back and throughout the night he is
trying to find somebody in command, somebody who will order the Confederate army to attack
before it's too late. Nobody knows Forrest, he's not a known quantity,
and here's this colonel standing in front of them advocating making a night attack. Nobody listens. Not Bragg, not Beauregard, nobody else. What happens? Next day the sun comes up and U.S. Grant,
he counter-attacks and the Union wins the battle. Forrest was, to me, kind of like a Patton
in the sense that most of the soldiers respected him as a fellow soldier but on many accounts,
on a personal level, just flat hated his guts. He would kill you as fast as he would kill
the enemy. And there is really no better illustration
of that than this next story. In May of ’63, he was pursuing some Union
raiders under Abel Streight. For some reason, this Union commander had
the bright idea to outfit his men with mules, and he has about fifteen hundred men. Forrest has about maybe half that. Forrest catches up with him, he pounds it. Just like Okolona folks, he pounds it night
and day, constantly nipping at him, constantly at his heels. The Federals will get no sleep as long as
Forrest is on their trail. They will have to stay awake and in the saddle. Eventually the Federals tire out and what
does Forrest do? He pins them up, and then he does one of his
favorite tactics. He flies a white flag and he sends it in and
says something like, “In order to save the useless effusion of blood, I demand the surrender
of your command.” So Streight's sitting there, he doesn't know
how many Confederates are out there, and Forrest is bluffing, he doesn't have enough men to
take Streight. But during that whole time Forrest taught
his command - and I don't know what the command would be called - he basically taught his
command to make circles. He said it might come in handy one day. And so what did he do while he's talking to
Streight? There's a hill behind them, and what did he
do? He put the Confederates into a circle and
that circle started coming and going over the top of the hill and Streight's sitting
there watching all that over Forrest's shoulders and he goes, "My god how many artillery pieces
do you have? I’ve counted eighteen so far." Forrest never even blinks he goes, "I reckon
that's all that's kept up." Streight surrenders to a force about a third
of the size and when he finds out that he's been snookered, he demands to have his arms
back and Forrest pats him on the back and he says, "Come now general, all is fair." Now, to show you going back to the original
point about how his men could hate his guts. During this raid, this man right here, A.W. Gould, I’ll call him “gold” for simplicity,
is a captain under Forrest. He’s in command of a couple of cannons for
Forrest. Well, Streight is ambushing, before the surrender. He's setting up ambushes, the Confederates
are pursuing hard, and they're running into these ambushes, and eventually, Gould is going
to lose two cannons. Forrest is infuriated. There is nothing that makes Forrest angrier
than to lose some cannons or to lose period. And he decides that this young gentleman has
to go so he decides to transfer him out of his command. By this time, Forrest's command is up, this
is a few months later, his command is up in Columbia, Tennessee, home of James K. Polk. Well Gould hears about it and he comes to
see Forrest, and Forrest steps out into the hallway, they're in a building, and Forrest
says, “yeah you're out of here,” and Gould says, “The man that accuses me of cowardice
cannot stand,” or something along those lines and he proceeds, he's got a duster on,
to start to pull a pistol out of that duster to shoot to kill Forrest. Forrest seeing what's happening, reaches for
the duster and for the hand, and as he does, the gun goes off inside the jacket. The bullet comes and hits him in one of the
shoulders, I forget which one. But it hits him in one of the shoulders right
there. Now that's got to hurt to get a pistol ball
like that at point blank range. While he's wrestling with the man's gun hand
right here, he was left handed, while he's wrestling with it, Forrest reaches down and
picks up a pen knife, and with his teeth, he opens it. And while he's wrestling with this guy over
this gun, he takes that pen knife and hits him in the side with it, right between the
rib cage - I don't know how big the pen knife was - and the two men fall apart. Gould goes across the street, Forrest lays
down, the doctors are summoned, et cetera, there's a whole bunch of commotion going on
in this area, as you can imagine. Gould is taken across and apparently where
Forrest hit him, I don't understand anatomy, but blood is just coming out at every heartbeat;
he must have hit him right in the right spot, wherever he hit him. So anyway, the doctor has got two fingers
over Gould's wound across the street. The other doctor goes to see about Forrest. Now Forrest has been hit and the bullet comes
up. I’ve got the actual medical term. You all are going to have to hit me. He was, excuse me, he was hit in the abdomen
which was ultimately fatal. Peritonitis. So the doctors are laying there, excuse me,
Forrest is laying there, and the doctors say to him, “You're going to die.” Forrest gets up off the table and he yells,
“Get out of my way." I won't put the exclamation points, "Get out
of my way. I’m mortally wounded and will kill the man
who has shot me.” His clothing in disarray, you can imagine,
he hobbled into the street and borrowed, took, two pistols from some of his troopers, screaming
the whole time, “Lookout, lookout.” The crowd parted and Forrest walked into the
building across the street and started shooting at Gould with those two pistols. He was going to kill him before he died. You see what I’m talking about? Sometimes it just doesn't make any sense. Gould heard him coming. He tumbles off the table, rolls out the backdoor,
and Forrest is shooting at him as he goes out the back. The unfortunate thing about the whole thing
is that when Forrest shot through the backdoor, there was a building out there and the ball
hit the brick wall and ricocheted into another soldier's leg, which cost him his leg, but
other than that though it was fine. Forrest went out there and cornered Gould,
who was on the ground at that time, and Forrest came up to him and kicked his foot with his
own boot and he could tell that Gould was a dying man and he just said - just like that
his temper went away. From there, he was taken to the Galloway House
where he expected to die. He didn't kill Gould, I don't guess he hit
him, but he figured he was dying anyway. Now the doctors are going to look at Nathan
and they're going to follow the track of the ball, you all are going to have to help me
again, and they found that the ball had entered the abdomen but it had been deflected by the
gluteal muscle. Where is that? No, it's not your gluteus maximus. Top of the hip? Thank you, doctor. And it ricocheted. The doctors told the general that his wound
was not serious. It was little more than a flesh wound for
you Monty Python fans. They offered to cut the bullet out but Forrest
refused saying, “No it is nothing but a damn little pistol ball, let it alone.” Forrest did, though, at that point order the
doctors down to the Nelson House Hotel to take care of Gould and despite the efforts
of the doctors, Gould would die two weeks later. He was 23 years old. All right, one more story, we'll get back
to ‘64, but this is a great one. Who’s this man? Braxton Bragg. Just because I like all of you, I got him
in color right. I found him about ten minutes before this
presentation. Battle of Chickamauga, that is around Georgia
right? Right outside of Chattanooga. Confederates win Chickamauga. Forrest is with the Army of the Tennessee
at the time; Bragg is in charge of the army; Forrest is a subordinate, he never worked
well under other people. Forrest - the Confederates win the battle
in part due to James Longstreet and the Confederate 1st Corps that was here at Gettysburg. Bragg has scored a stunning victory, but he
doesn't know what he has. Forrest goes to Bragg and he urges him to
pursue the Federal army. "Keep the skeer on 'em." I don't know if he said those exact words
but that's what he meant to tell Bragg in so many words, and Bragg lets the fruits of
victory slip away from him. Several months go by and Bragg and Forrest
didn't get along. I don't know anybody that got along, really,
with Bragg. Forrest in angst just says about Bragg, “What
does he fight battles for?” He just can't understand the man. If you're not fighting for a total victory
why are you fighting? When Bragg later issued orders transferring
many of Forrest's men away from him, the general, Forrest had had enough, and he went to see
General Bragg. He walked into Bragg’s tent and Bragg offered
his hand. Forrest didn't shake it. Bragg sat back down in his chair behind his
desk and Forrest proceeds to take his finger and puts it right in his face. He said to him, “I am not here to pass civilities
or compliments with you, but on other business. I have stood your meanness as long as I intend
to, and you have played the part of a damned scoundrel and a coward, and if you are any
part of a man, I would slap your jaws and force you to resent it. You may as well not issue any more orders
to me for I will not obey them. And as I say to you that if you ever again
try to interfere with me or cross my path it will be at the peril of your life.” Yeah. Needless to say, Forrest got a transfer. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how Nathan
Bedford Forrest made it back to Mississippi for the Battle of Okolona. Is it tying all in? So Forrest, in the spring of ’64 - now we've
had the Battle of Okolona, now we're going past the Battle of Okolona - in March of ’64,
Forrest set off on a raid from west Tennessee and Kentucky. Along the way, he captured - this is what
a typical raid would do for him - he captured 612 Federals and killed 79 while wounding
another 102. His personal loss, his own command loss was
15 killed and 42 wounded. Now coming back to Mississippi through west
Tennessee, he picked out one last target. “There’s a Federal force of about five
hundred or six hundred men at Fort Pillow which I shall attend to in a day or two as
they have horses and supplies which we need.” This was on April 4th. Now Fort Pillow is right here and this is
the Mississippi River. Memphis is at the bottom of the map. Fort Pillow is part of the original river
defenses, part of the original defenses in 1862 before Memphis fell in June. They actually built Fort Pillow, it's named
after Gideon Pillow, the Confederate general. It actually has, this is the best map I could
find, which is not the best map, but it actually had a ring of fortifications that went around
it; an outer ring and then it had an inner ring or an inner fort right there along the
river. Now as Forrest rode towards Fort Pillow, he
had no idea that the impending collision would be more than a test of arms. On this campaign, Forrest and his men would
encounter former slaves now fighting as soldiers in the Union army. I need not tell you my friends that this site
for the Confederate soldiers was an anathema. To exacerbate the situation the white soldiers
comprising the garrison at Fort Pillow were Tennessee Unionists, alright? The garrison had been accused of several acts
of uncivilized warfare over the previous months and the fuse was lit for an explosive situation. Now James Chalmers’s command was the first
to arrive. I don't know if Chalmers is up there or I’m
looking at it upside - I guess I could look at this one right? Chalmers is the bigger division commander. Chalmers is going to push the Federals back
toward the inner half of the fortifications, not that they made that big of a fight right
there. Confederate sharpshooters then began to pick
off the garrison of six hundred Union men inside the fort. The biggest loss for the Federals came when
the camp commander Major Lionel F. Booth was killed and command passed to Major William
F. Bradford. Forrest arrived at 10:00 AM. Now in the short time that we've spent on
Nathan Bedford Forrest, what is the first thing that Nathan Bedford Forrest is going
to do when he gets on the field? What will he do? He’ll look. He will reconnoiter. But yeah? Attack. I could see that. I like your game. You’d get a lot of people killed, but that's
alright. What does he do? He rides along. If Forrest has time, he will reconnoiter. If he doesn't have time he'll just attack. You can never go wrong attacking. He identified the key terrain features and
he set about to take advantage of them. What he saw right there was a ring, and this
is hard to describe on this map, and if you ever go to Fort Pillow - and you've got to
be going to Fort Pillow to be going Fort Pillow, the only thing out there is a medium security
prison which you'll pass on the way up there - but you've got to go all the way up to the
north before you turn west, there's only one road leading in and out of it. That’s the reason they put a prison there. If you think about it, if you can imagine
it I should say, you see these stars right here? These are going to be the Confederate sharpshooters. These are actually ravines where you don't
see any drawings. It doesn't show up very well but these hilltops
right here are going to dominate this area, meaning the Confederate soldiers can shoot
inside of Fort Pillow. Over here, you have some huts right up next
to the fort. Fort Pillow is not expecting an attack; it's
a garrison, it’s a camp. So they've got these cabins set up because
they want to be comfortable. Who would want to sleep in a tent all the
time? So McCulloch is going to swing around here
and the Federals are going to burn the first few cabins, but the Confederates are going
to get the possession of the majority of them. And what do they make the cabins into? Forts, and they start shooting at Fort Pillow
basically at point blank range. This goes on for an hour or so and the Federals
can't even raise up and shoot because the Confederates have them surrounded, they have
them pinned down. There is nothing to do. There is nothing left to do. What does Forrest do? He calls a cease-firing and he sends in a
white flag. “The conduct of the officers and men garrisoning
Fort Pillow has been such that it entitles them to be treated as prisoners of war,”
Forrest wrote. “I demand the unconditional surrender of
this garrison, promising you that they should be treated as prisoners of war. Should my demand be refused, I cannot be responsible
for the fate of your command.” Captain W.A. Goodman, Chalmers' adjutant general and bearer
of the note, said later that he clearly remembered the offer to treat the entire garrison as
prisoners of war "because when the note was handed to me, there was some discussion about
it among the officers present, and it was asked whether it was intended to include the
Negro soldiers as well as the white. To which both General Forrest and General
Chalmers replied that it was so intended." Captain W.A. Goodman, Chalmers' adjutant general and bearer
of the note, would later on go on to say that he went up to the Federals and that Major
Bradford, who is now in command, the Union commander, tried to buy time by asking for
an hour to consider the terms. When this was reported to Forrest, fearing
a ruse to get Union gunboat support, and there was a gunboat down there, replied that he
had twenty minutes to make up his mind. Major Bradford responded: "Your demand does
not have the desired effect." What do you think about that? "Your demand does not have the desired effect." Now you think about Nathan Bedford Forrest. What does that mean to a guy like Nathan Bedford
Forrest? Forrest responds "In plain and unmistakable
English, will he fight or will he surrender?" No, came back the Union response. Alright, he got his answer. Now here we get to the crux of the whole Fort
Pillow thing, the crux of it for me. This is my opinion, there's a hundred different
books on Fort Pillow. During the flag of truce, the two sides obviously
quit firing, but they were in stone's throw of each other. You’ve got these troops, these Confederate
soldiers, and you've got these Union soldiers within some places fifty to seventy-five yards. They’re going to talk to each other. I'll give you a quote: "At the same time,
the parapets of the fort were thronging with Negro soldiers, intently watching the course
of events and some of whom were heard also to say, 'it was useless to deny that general
Forrest was before him' for they knew him too well for that. And so close were the lines that the white
men of both sides were bantering each other from their respective positions while some
of the Negroes indulged in provoking impudent cheers." A Confederate sergeant in the 20th Tennessee
said that the Federals "threatened that if we charged their breastworks to show no quarter." While a Confederate correspondent stated the
Federals "boasted with an air of insulting defiance that he," Forrest, "could not take
the place, and they asked for no quarter." So the flag of truce comes back, the Union
forces say no, and Forrest ends up giving the command to attack. With the rebel yell all along the line to
synchronize stuff, the Confederates charge up to the eight-foot walls, into the ditch,
and they boost each other over into the fort. Major Bradford was heard to cry out almost
instantly, "boys save your lives!" And all through this, the US flag continues
to fly from the fort. These statements are somewhat, and you know
it's a combat so nothing ever jives completely here. What occurred inside of the fort is hard to
ascertain in some cases. Achilles Clark, a soldier with the 20th Tennessee
cavalry wrote to his sister immediately after the battle. “The slaughter was awful. words cannot describe the scene. The poor deluded Negroes would run up to our
men, fall upon their knees and with uplifted hands scream for mercy, but they were ordered
to their feet and then shot down. The white men fared but little better. Their fort turned out to be a great slaughter
pen. Blood, human blood stood about in pools and
brains could have been gathered up in any quantity. I, with several others, tried to stop the
butchery, and at one time had partially succeeded but general Forrest ordered them shot down
like dogs and the carnage continued. Finally our men became sick of blood and the
firing ceased." Confederate surgeon Samuel H. Caldwell wrote,
“We are just from Fort Pillow which fort we attacked on Tuesday and carried by storm. It was garrisoned by four hundred white men
and four hundred Negroes, and out of the eight hundred," his numbers are a little off, "only
one hundred and sixty-eight are now living, so you can guess how terrible was the slaughter. It was decidedly the most horrible sight that
I have ever witnessed. They refused to surrender which incensed our
men,” and here you go, to show you how you never know what exactly happens, “and if
general Forrest had not run between our men and the Yanks with his pistol and saber drawn
not a man would have been spared. We took about one hundred and twenty-five
white men and about forty-five Negroes and the rest of the eight hundred are numbered
with the dead. They sure lay heaped upon each other three
days.” It was actually far worse than you can imagine
up under the bluff as the Federals tried to get down to the river to escape. The Confederate correspondent said that the
Federals reminded him of a drove of hogs trying to swim across a stream. "The Mississippi River was crimson with the
red blood of the flying foe, and our soldiers grew sick and weary in the work of slaughter
and were glad when the work was done." In twenty minutes, ladies and gentlemen, out
of the five hundred and eighty man garrison, 66% of the blacks and 35% of the whites were
killed. 66% of the blacks were killed. Whether a massacre did or did not occur is
not in doubt. When you have a percentage so lopsided, there
is no doubt that a lot of, as they were called at the time, United States Colored Troops
were shot in that fight. The debatable point is how much Forrest personally
had to do with this. How can you have Forrest ordering people shot
down like dogs and then have him "run between our men and the Yanks with his pistol drawn?" And there's the crux of Fort Pillow and Nathan
Bedford Forrest because I don't have the answer. I don't know. I could keep giving you accounts and accounts
and accounts, but everything contradicts itself. My personal opinion on it, on Nathan Bedford
Forrest and Fort Pillow, as I said, there was a massacre. I don't think that Forrest ordered those men,
those blacks to be shot. Why? Because there's two thousand Confederates
there. There’s a chain of command, and there's
not one piece of evidence that those orders floated down. Somebody would have said something about it. All we have are accounts of the fighting. Now on the other hand, let's be honest here,
did it bother Forrest? I doubt it. I don't think it probably bothered him at
all. Now it's going to bother him later when it
gets out about Fort Pillow and what happened there but it does not bother him at the time. That’s the best I can do for you as far
as Forrest and Fort Pillow. Now what it ended up doing for the USCT is
it actually backfired for Nathan Bedford Forrest. If Forrest was trying to send a message that
blacks - that the white South I should say - would never tolerate blacks in arms, he
sent the wrong message, because it actually galvanized, at the very least, the soldiers
that had already joined the USCT units to fight even harder. We’re about to look at Brice’s Crossroads
to end up things here, but if you look at the crater at Petersburg, what do the black
troops shout as they charge into the crater at Petersburg? Remember Fort Pillow. It was a wide-ranging rallying cry for the
USCT for the rest of the war. Alright, one more battle. You all got the gas, how am I doing here? Okay so this is my watch and I’m currently
trying to be a good person and I have all these texts. Have you ever had Fat Tire beer? See what I get in the midst of these conversations
that we're having right here? A little musical interlude? Everybody's like yeah man I’ve drank that,
I haven't had, I have to go get some. Okay! So this is the best map I could get. I’m not very keen about it, but that's the
way it goes. This is the best map I could get. I don't have time, I’m just going to cover
one last battle, Brice’s Crossroads which is his best right here, but keep in mind,
ladies and gentlemen, that if you read about Nathan Bedford Forrest, all of he fights that
Forrest has with the Federal army in Mississippi are over one thing. The Federal government, specifically William
T. Sherman, will do everything in their power to do what? keep Nathan Bedford Forrest from riding from
Mississippi, up here to Tennessee, to cut the railroad line that Sherman needs to get
all the way back to Kentucky. The worst nightmare of William T. Sherman
is that Forrest gets into Tennessee, and as he said, he would break the treasury and cost
ten thousand lives if he could get that devil Forrest away from Tennessee. That’s a paraphrase so make sure you look
up the actual quote. Okay, so Brice’s Crossroads is part of that
effort to get him out of there or to keep him out of there. Now the Union column will be under the command
of this gentleman right here. This is June of ‘64. This is Samuel Sturgis. He has about forty-eight hundred infantry
of which about twelve hundred were USCT. He has thirty-three hundred cavalry, he has
four hundred artillerymen, twenty-two cannon, and two hundred and fifty wagons. Okay, he has about eight thousand men. Some of the troops, a lot of the troops, were
armed with the newest Colt repeating rifles as well as breech-loading carbines. On June 9th, Sturgis's command were encamped
about nine miles from Brice’s Crossroads in Mississippi, a vital road intersection
that led to Guntown, Mississippi and the Mobile and Ohio Railroad, remember that from Okolona. On the other hand, Forrest's forces were of
about half that size, about forty-five hundred men and eight cannon. That is eight cannon versus twenty-two cannon. That is roughly four thousand versus eight
thousand. To top it all off, Forrest guessed wrong. He thought that Sturgis and the Union forces
would try to get astride the railroad further north. So what does that mean? Forrest's command is not together. It’s not concentrated. His furthest units from Brice’s Crossroads
were twenty-five miles away. On June 9th, Forrest is ordered by Stephen
D. Lee - if you ever go down to Antietam and you walk out of the visitor center at Antietam
and you walk up to the Confederate guns, they are under the command of Stephen D. Lee, and
now Lee is here in Mississippi. It’s a small world. Lee orders him to fall back to Okolona to
unite with other Confederate forces. There was more open country around Okolona
as demonstrated at the beginning of this program by the battle there. However, intelligence reached Forrest late
in the evening that Union forces were nine miles from Brice’s Crossroads. What does Forrest know? He knows where the enemy is. What does the enemy not know? Where he is, exactly. Although outnumbered, Forrest felt the terrain
offered him advantage and he ordered forward his command. Forrest explained his strategy to one of his
subordinates. That’s why you sat here the whole time John
so you could hear this. Here is the crux, why you came out here to
learn about Nathan Bedford Forrest and his strategy, in this paragraph. Now this is redneck jargon, but see if it
makes sense to you. He turned to one of his subordinates and he
said, “I know they greatly outnumber the troops I have at hand, but the road along
which they will march is narrow and muddy and they will make slow progress. The country is densely wooded and the undergrowth
so heavy that when we strike them, they will not know how few men we have. The cavalry will move out ahead of the infantry
and should reach the crossroads three hours in advance. We can whip their cavalry in that time and
as soon as the fight opens they will send back to have the infantry hurried up. It is going to be hot as hell and coming on
a run for five or six miles over such roads their infantry will be so tired that we will
ride right over them. I want everything to move up as fast as possible. I will go ahead with Lyon and the escort and
open the fight.” Now most of you caught the reference to terrain
but did you hear the reference to weather? As my fellow ranger over here, John Nicholas,
pointed out to me sitting by the door making, sure none of you get out of this building
before I complete this program, John used to be a bouncer part time when he wasn't killing
people for the greater good of America. He pointed out to me that Brice’s Crossroads
is the only battle that at least he can think of where weather is used as a multiplying
factor. It’s used as an asset. Forrest is counting on the weather to be his
friend and he is counting on the weather to tire out. Can you think of another instance of that? Who would think of that? Nobody asked you. And as I said, it's pretty much going to work
out the way he foresaw it. Now Forrest had his command moving at 4:00
in the morning. Sturgis moves out at 5:30; the Union infantry
moves out at 7:00. The advance guard are going to collide at
about 9:30 in the morning and the Federal cavalry arrive at the crossroads first and
push down the Baldwyn Ferry road - a little upside down right here - is this the crossroads
I think? They’re going to push down this crossroads
right here. As the Federal cavalry pushes down the Baldwyn
road, the Confederates are very heavily outnumbered. They only have about eight hundred cavalry
versus thirty-three hundred Union cavalry. Forrest had a philosophy though, he said not
specifically at Brice’s Crossroads, but in general: "Whenever you meet the enemy,
no matter how few there are of you or how many of them, show fight. If you run away they will pursue and probably
catch you. If you show fight they will think there are
more of you and will not push you half so hard," and Forrest did just that. He took his eight hundred men, he's outnumbered
what? four to one? What does he do? He forms up an attacking line, he runs out
there and says, “Hey, we're about to attack!” And what does the Union do? They stop, and they hesitate, because they
don't know what's up ahead in those scrub oaks. That buys Forrest an hour and that hour that
it buys him brings up another Confederate brigade of seven hundred men, that's under
Rucker. Now he's got fifteen hundred. Forrest bluffs again, thirty-three hundred
Union versus fifteen hundred Confederate. Forrest bluffs again and buys more time. Now Johnson’s five hundred Alabamians show
up. Forrest throws them on the Confederate right
flank. By eleven o’clock, Forrest was still without
his largest brigade; almost half his force. Bell’s brigade of twenty-seven hundred men
had not arrived. He also lacked any artillery, doesn't have
one piece of artillery. Forrest knew he was out of time though, he
could feel it. He must defeat the cavalry before the infantry
arrive. In typical Forrest language, he told the staff
officer, “Tell Bell to move up fast and fetch all he's got.” Forrest then attacked and this time it was
for real. At noon the Confederates went forward and
succeeded in pushing back the Federal cavalry towards the crossroads. By 12:30 the Union cavalry was bent back on
its heels and was calling for reinforcements. As Forrest had planned, when the Federal cavalry
was attacked, they called for the infantry and the Union infantry double-quicked to the
crossroads for six miles. The last mile they did at a run. Folks let me put that into context for my
northern friends, okay? Mississippi in June is like, the air there
is like you could take a knife and cut it. It is thick. There is a reason Southerners don't stir but
in the morning and late in the evening, because it's too blasted hot to get out there and
do that. These Federals are wearing what? Wool. And what's the going to make them do? Sweat profusely. By the time they get up there across Tishomingo
Creek up to the crossroads, they are tuckered out. Now Forrest's command, they are not super-humans,
but they haven't been running either, they're on horseback, and so the infantry starts to
deploy. Forrest attacks them. As the infantry deploys, the Union cavalry
withdraws. That’s a tactical error right there. Now he's got, I don't know, probably thirty-five
hundred Union infantry if they're all deployed versus roughly about the same, a little less
than that of the Confederates. Do you see how the odds have gone from four
to one to almost one to one because Forrest is fighting them in detail? There was a lull in the fighting because finally
Forrest had Bell's brigade on the field, which is his largest brigade. Bell is right here, his name's upside down. These are his units, they're all kind of jumbled
together, but they are in there. At two o’clock Forrest launched another
attack and when a gap appeared between Bell and Rucker – you all remember this because
I’m going to come back at the conclusion - when a gap appeared between Bell and Rucker
Forrest put his escort into the fray. See his tactical reserve there? In turn, the Federals counter-attacked. They were here to fight too and at this point
Bartow’s 2nd Tennessee, that's up at the top, look at what Forrest did. See this road? Before Bell even gets here as the fighting
hours before, Forrest has sent that regiment way up here to come in behind the Federals
by this road and now they're coming into position at the right time at the right place. But they're only a regiment! So do you know what the 2nd Tennessee does,
Bartow does? He has his bugle caller start sounding the
charge in every different direction. If that's behind you and it's behind a set
of woods and it's underneath a hill, how does that sound to you? That’s scary because you don't know what? You don't know how many is coming in behind
you. It’s really not that many, but you see the
game of bluff. The time is now four o’clock, we're up to
the second line by the way, forget the first line on the right. The men are exhausted on both sides. I’ve described the heat to you, but like
a prize fight, ladies and gentlemen, it was the last round and whoever could muster the
most strength could win. Now a lull settled on the field. Ladies and gentlemen at this time, when everything,
the fighting died down etc. if you were looking, if you were at the right place, you would
have seen Nathan Bedford Forrest on King Philip galloping along that line. Once again, Forrest is at the front and he
is out there exhorting his men. He says, “Get up men, I have ordered Bell
to charge on the left. When you hear the guns and the bugle sound,
every man must charge and we will give them hell.” Forrest then rode back to the right flank,
Bell is on the left, he went back to the right flank, his artillery had arrived, and I’m
not kidding you folks, Forrest ordered his artillery to charge. Literally. And when Morton, his artillery commander said,
“Are you sure you want to do this, my guns will be captured,” Forrest responded to
him, "The guns were meant to be captured, so go ahead," alright? I’d like to thank Angie for taking this
picture for me. It was blasted cold. To show you what you're looking at, this is
Forrest's line, and you can't see it very well, but this is the crossroads, here’s
the Baldwyn Road, and here is the crossroads right up here. The Federal infantry would have been in a
semi-circle right along through here. You can see how open it is, through, across
these fields. Forrest launches the last attack of the day
and they start to push back. He sends troops, typical Forrest, around the
flanks, and his cannons start to roll forward. Double-shotted with canister rolling down
the road, hand-driven by the men, directly at the Federals. Within sixty yards, these cannons are firing
double-shotted canister. The Federal infantry line started to collapse. As the Union forces started to panic with
the only escape route being across the Tishomingo Bridge. Remember Bull Run? The same thing all over right here. The United States Colored Troops, remember
those twelve hundred USCTs? They came up to form the rear guard. They wore patches on their uniform that said
remember Fort Pillow. They fought as well as the white troops, but
like the white troops, were soon retreating along with the rest of the column. During the ensuing retreat, Sturgis was heard
to have remarked, “If Mr. Forrest will leave me alone I will certainly leave him alone.” The casualties, ladies and gentlemen, for
Forrest's greatest victory for the Union forces were 223 killed, 394 wounded, and 1,623 missing,
for a total out of 8,000 of 2,240. That’s roughly 26, 27, 28% of your force. That’s high, I mean that’s Gettysburg
standards. Confederate casualties were 96 killed, 396
wounded, for a total of 492. Forrest inflicted five to one casualties. Forrest captured 16 cannons, 1,500 stands
of small arms, 300,000 rounds of small arms ammo, 16 ambulances, 176 wagons, 161 mules,
and 23 horses, alright? The Confederate dead that were at Brice’s
Crossroads were buried along here, and you know, this is probably one of the meanest
things I’ve seen, but there is a civilian cemetery next to this one and years ago someone
came in and vandalized it, I don't mean spray paint, I mean pushed them over. You can see what they did to the tombstones. That’s why they're all lopsided right there. But that's the Confederate graves right here. Now for those tired right now, we shall have
small interlude. This - this is Ben picking one of the flags
off the graves and running around the cemetery waving it. This is me trying to catch him. It’s an action shot right there. And then I had to explain to him that we couldn't
take that. That was not an easy conversation. This is me trying to get Ben to put the flag
down. And then this is the family picture. That’s the keeper right? You don't show the first two. I considered that bad luck, I wouldn't take
that flag. In conclusion, ladies and gentlemen, I appreciate
your patience. Forrest was wounded four times in the war. He had twenty-nine horses shot out from underneath
him, and he killed thirty-one Union soldiers in hand to hand combat. No other general in the Civil War can boast
that. No other general has that kind of record. He always, always was at the front and never
asked his men to go anywhere he would not. In the post-war years, he became the leader
of, not the founder, of the KKK. Everybody thinks he founded it, he did not
found it, but he did mold it into, well nobody knows the numbers, but into a pretty large
organization. Forrest would head this secret organization
until 1869 when it was disbanded. Nevertheless, his involvement with the Klan
has overshadowed his military career to a certain extent. The Fort Pillow massacre also hounded him
until the end of his life. In his old age, Forrest seemed to soften and
he became, actually, right before he died, he became saved and remarked that he was saddened
that his whole life had been filled with violence from a boy to his old age. His legacy today is still clouded and Forrest
still elicits strong opinions from both sides. Hero, villain, murderer, protector, racist,
warrior. It depends on who you talk to. He still is a good sell for magazines and
books which are about to be bought, right? So I can prove the bookstore manager wrong. I can tell you, ladies and gentlemen - I'm
glad you made it for this - I can tell you, at the very least, at the very least, and
I will argue this until the end of my days, that Nathan Bedford Forrest is the recipient
of the ugliest Civil War monument in the entire nation. That’s horrible. I don't know if you believe everything on
the internet, but reportedly it has seven bullet holes in it. It is located on I-65 south of Nashville. Even last year, a Florida high school voted
to change its name from Forrest High. I think you sent me that article, you can
tell her later when she's paying attention. In Memphis, the park that contains his statue
and burial site had its name changed recently from Forrest Park to Health Science or something. In Selma, two worlds collide. A monument honoring him had the bust stolen
from it, this bust right here, and has never been recovered. Forrest is still with us and his legacy will
always be debated. Now from a personal standpoint, sorry for
the cloudiness of this, I was pleased to find last year the picture of my great great grandfather
William Lafayette Hill, and he turned eighteen years of age in 1864. There were three kids in the family, three
boys in the family, the oldest died a glorious death of dysentery in 1862, the other brother
died in Pickett’s Charge, and their baby, William Lafayette Hill turned eighteen in
1864. You think about that. You already lost two and now he wants to go
in the army. Now family stories, whatever that's worth,
it's not written down, but I know he does exist because we know where his grave is,
states that the only way the family would allow William Lafayette Hill to go to war,
W.L. Hill to go to war, was if he took his body
servant, slave, body servant, but when I say body servant I mean I don't think they're
farming I think they're city folks, and generally they would get, I don't know how old Dave
was, but they're about the same age, but Dave and him went off to war. Now today, W.L. Hill is buried in Houston, Mississippi, and
if you go outside the chain-link fence to the other side, Dave Hill is over there in
that area. After the war he became, the slave, became
a carpenter. And I went to the courthouse one time and
I looked up a piece of - they were tearing down a house that reportedly Dave Hill, the
slave, the free Dave Hill built - and I want to know if that was him. And on that deed from the 1870s, 1880s, Dave
Hill made his mark. Know what I mean? He made his X and it was right there. What did that tell me? That told me my ancestors didn't educate him
formally, but this is the intriguing part and I’ll get on with it because I know I’m
running overtime. Going back through the deeds, that land was
originally my grandfather's and he sold it to Dave Hill and then Dave Hill took a portion
of that land and flipped it like a month or two later and made a profit on it. Now what I don't know is if Dave Hill was
that shrewd a businessman or if my grandfather was giving him a chance. He never gave anybody anything, he just gave
them the opportunity. I don't know, I’ve always been intrigued
by that. Now in conclusion, going back to the battle
of Brice’s Crossroads, you'll remember when Rucker’s brigade broke, Nathan Bedford Forrest
charged in there with his escort. I have to imagine that my eighteen-year-old
ancestor saw General Forrest as he was running away. And this was one person that was very happy
that he did that day, okay? That’s pretty cool. Alright, in conclusion, ladies and gentlemen,
in family lore, William Lafayette Hill, when he went to Memphis, they would stop by Forrest's
statue, That statue was erected in 1904. And I’ve often wondered, when I stand at
Forrest's statue, what my ancestor thought. Family lore has it that my ancestor always
saluted general Forrest when he was in Memphis, that's kind of neat, but he must have read
the same passage that still stands on the statue today: "Those hoof beats die not upon
fame's crimson soil but will ring through her song and her story. He fought like a titan and struck like a god
and his dust is the ashes of our glory." Thank you all very much. Thank you. Alright, if you all want to buy these books,
I’ve got two of them right here!
