‘The Source’ February 2018 by Michael K. Shaffer

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Vol. 44, No. 2

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48 Pages, February 2018

The Confederate ‘Wizard of the Saddle’ Loses His Statue in Memphis

Gen. Nathan B. Forrest. By Stephen Davis Special to Civil War News Robert E. Lee commanded the Army of Northern Virginia. Jefferson Davis served as the Confederacy’s only president. Thomas J. Jackson earned the distinctive nickname of “Stonewall.” Nathan B. Forrest commanded Southern cavalry in the Civil War’s western theater. Different men, different paths to historical fame, but they have one thing in common. They all have memorial statues that have been removed from public parks in Southern cities. The recent removal of Forrest’s statue from a Memphis park leads to this reconsideration of the famous Tennessean’s life and legacy.

Antebellum Planter and Slave Trader The man who would become one of the Confederacy’s most famous generals was born in middle Tennessee on July 13, 1821. His father, William Forrest, was a country blacksmith who relocated the family to north Mississippi. Bedford, as he was called (Nathan was his grandfather’s name) was thirteen. When William died in 1837, young Bedford, still a

teen, became head of the family—his mother, five brothers and three sisters. There was not much time for education. Bedford probably had only a few months of formal schooling in Tennessee, and not more than that in Mississippi. Working the family’s small farm, he got his own education, “using the wilderness and frontier life as his teacher,” in the words of Brian Steel Wills, the general’s biographer. At the age of 21 he struck out on his own, about the time that his mother remarried. Moving to Hernando, Miss., he joined his uncle’s livestock and livery-stable business, working hard and earning a living. He got married in September 1845, began raising a family, and with them moved to Memphis in the spring of 1852. Soon Forrest started buying real estate and established a business of buying and selling slaves. He made a lot of money in the latter calling. Jack Hurst, another biographer, has estimated Forrest’s annual income in the late 1850’s from the sale of a thousand enslaved African-Americans to be at least $96,000, “a fabulous income.” “It is said Forrest was kind to his negroes; that he never separated members of a family,” wrote Lafcadio Hearn, the noted journalist years after the Civil War. Hurst is openly skeptical of this and other attestations to the slave trader’s “kindness”: “to be successful,” he writes, “a slave trader had to be known as humane.” In his landmark study, Slave Trading in the Old South (1931), Frederic Bancroft asserted, “when traders prospered, were honest, thrifty, and bought plantations, like Forrest…and many others, they enjoyed the essentials of respectability.”

This respectability as a prosperous Memphis businessman led to Forrest’s election as city alderman in 1858 and re-election in 1859. That year, however, he resigned from office, sold his slave business in Memphis, and began raising cotton on a 3,000-acre plantation in Coahoma County, Miss. He bought more land and slaves, and by the time of the war had become a wealthy Southern planter.

Raises a Cavalry Battalion

Tennessee seceded on June 8, 1861, two months after the Confederates’ firing on Fort Sumter. Forrest volunteered six days later as a private in a company of Tennessee mounted rifles. “Forrest did not remain a private long,” the noted historian Ed Bearss has written. According to Confederate Brig. Gen. James R. Chalmers, who rode with Forrest during the war, Tennessee governor Isham G. Harris knew Bedford well and summoned him to Memphis to raise a battalion of mounted troops. Forrest set out to buy arms and equipment with his own money, and advertised for volunteers. By early October, the battalion of eight companies had been raised and organized; Forrest was logically elected its lieutenant colonel. A few weeks later he and his battalion were sent to Fort Donelson, on the Cumberland River near the Kentucky border. Two more companies were added to Forrest’s battalion, bringing his command to regimental size (the 3rd Tennessee Cavalry), though its commander remained a lieutenant colonel. In February 1862, Union Brig. Gen. Ulysses Grant’s Army of the Tennessee advanced on Fort Donelson in conjunction with Northern gunboats. By the 12th the Confederate garrison under Brig.

Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest’s equestrian monument before removal. (John C . Spaziani) Gen. John B. Floyd was hemmed in; a Southern effort to break out failed on February 15. Floyd’s officers met and decided to surrender. Forrest, in charge of his regiment and several hundred other troopers, refused to give up and that night led his men out through enemy lines. The remaining garrison troops were surrendered to Grant the next day. Regimental reorganization in mid-March led to Forrest’s election as colonel. Several weeks later, following the Confederate defeat in the battle of Shiloh, Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard put Forrest in

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charge of his retreating army’s rearguard. Three months later, he was put in command of a mounted brigade, some 1,400 men. He led them against a Federal garrison at Murfreesboro, Tenn., on July 13. His threat to “have every man put to the sword” scared the Union commander into surrendering his garrison: 1,200 officers and men, a quarter-million dollars’ worth of arms, equipment, and wagons, plus four field pieces. A week later he was promoted

H Forrest

. . . . . . . . . . . see page 3

20 – This And That 10 – Through The Lens 35 – Small Talk-Trivia

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By Jack Melton Mark Twain once wrote of the Bible that it “has noble poetry in it; and some clever fables; and some blood-drenched history; and a wealth of obscenity; and upwards of a thousand lies.” Twain was being his irreverent self, of course, but the fact remains that no one has ever thought of changing the words of the Bible, the holiest book in Christendom. Instead, we’re changing history in this country every time the authorities remove an historical monument or a historical relic that offends some of our citizens. I think we can all agree that removing, erasing or changing the symbols of history has consequences beyond our ability to foresee. Our front-cover article has to do with the recent removal of the statue of Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest. We still don’t know how this story is going to end, because the national Addition to the article “Save Camp Letterman” in the Jan. 2018 issue on page 5. Gettysburg Battlefield Preservation Association (GBPA) is working with two developers to save the remaining parts of Camp Letterman. Please read the article on page 5 of the Jan. 2018 issue and write to S & A Homes, asking them to work with our group to save the 17 acres. Any inquiries can be addressed to info@gbpa.org.

conversation over the meaning of Civil War symbols is still ongoing and far from finished. I wish we could have an informed and civil discussion about Confederate monuments in the South, but I’m not optimistic. Sociologists have demonstrated repeatedly that people tend to accept—indeed, search for— “facts” that conform to their existing beliefs. We can pretend that the United States was not a slaveholding country, but we shouldn’t. Removing Forrest’s statue won’t erase the fact that in the nineteenth century the U.S. was the largest slaveholding country in the world. Removing Robert E. Lee’s or Jefferson Davis’ monuments will not change the fact that ours was the only major industrial country ever to fight a civil war over whether to abolish slavery. Removing Stonewall Jackson’s equestrian statue, for

that matter, will not cloak the fact that in the course of U.S. history, Americans have been slaveholders longer—from 1619 to 1865— than we have been “the land of the free.” Yes, I know that some of our citizens would enjoy the convenience of forgetting about some aspects of American history. But to remove vestiges of parts of the past that don’t suit us is to rewrite history. What’s next after that? In Mark Twain’s imagination, it would be to start rewriting the Bible. Now we hear that Civil War reenactments are being targeted for violence, causing organizers to consider cancelling them. We are in danger of having more Civil War events cancelled because of terrorism threats if we don’t work together to find a solution, or at least some common ground for discussion. I invite letters addressed to me as the editor in response to this commentary. My hope is that, through continued (and measured) cultural conversation, we can look for solutions to the problems we face as members of the Civil War community.

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L etters T o T he E ditor TO THE EDITOR I would like to congratulate you for the contents of the January 2018 Civil War News. An outstanding issue, particularly the reprint of Harold Holzer’s address at the 154th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address. It’s the most reasonable presentation that I’ve seen about the current issue of removing some civil war themed monuments from public display. This article should be republished by the mainstream media to a nationwide audience. It is a voice of reason. Not all of us are able to attend meetings like the one where this address was given. So it’s great that it’s being distributed by organizations such as CWN. Please keep up the good work. Carl Vest, Ph.D. Puyallup, Wash. TO THE EDITOR The Civil War News is the best

PUBLICATION on the market covering the Civil War! Great book reviews! Tom Yockey Florissant, Mo.

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contain special prefixes—‘H’ in the section for Hotchkiss, and ‘S’ in the Sherman Collection. Researchers will search online as described before, simply including the appropriate prefix in their search. Searching, for example: “LC Civil War Maps (2nd ed.)” S47, will yield Sherman’s map of the fortifications at Augusta, Ga., shown. Please note, this search method sometimes produces multiple hits, and users may need to scroll through the search results to locate the specific map they seek. Remember to check WorldCat http://www.worldcat.org/ for help in finding this book in a local library. This source, used in tandem with the website, will assist researchers in locating maps pertinent to their specific studies. Continued good luck in researching the Civil War!

By Michael K. Shaffer

Civil War Maps: An Annotated List of Maps and Atlases in the Library of Congress

Civil War Maps: An Annotated List of Maps and Atlases in the Library of Congress front cover.

Sample map of Port Hudson.

This month, continuing our look at various Civil War map sources, we dive into a helpful printed resource, which serves as a great compliment to using the Library of Congress ‘Civil War Maps’ website. Researchers can access this online collection at https://www.loc.gov/collections/ civil-war-maps. Thanks to the work of Richard W. Stephenson and the Geography and Map Division staff at the Library of Congress, publication of the second edition of Civil War Maps: An Annotated List of Maps and Atlases in the Library of Congress appeared in 1989. Researchers can adopt the offline/online approach in locating maps helpful to their work. The printed book contains descriptions of over 2,500 maps and atlases, including maps Federal cartographers created, along with Confederate-drawn maps.

Albemarle page. The book begins with a bibliography of various maps of the United States. Following this section, one will find each state, listed in alphabetical order. While the book contains images of several maps (see Port Hudson sample), the real value of this source rests in assisting researchers in mining the vast online collection. This writer discovered—after a most helpful conversation with the staff at the Library of Congress—a simplified-search method, which allows one to conduct searches using the reference numbers printed in the book. As our example, we will use a map of Albemarle Sound in North Carolina. The respective page listing Albermarle Sound, shown, indicates 306.7 as the reference number for this map. Once at the LOC website, https://www.loc.gov/collections/ civil-war-maps, enter the following search terms in this exact fashion: “LC Civil War Maps (2nd ed.)” 306.7. A tip at this point for additional searches. Before initiating the search for the Albemarle map, copy and paste the search terms just entered. This technique will simplify other searches, as one can paste the search terms, only changing the index number at the end each time. Also, remember to bookmark this site for quick reference in the future. The search results produce the map shown. Users can download the maps, in various resolutions, for future use. Stephenson and team also included two special collections in their printed work. The first, and the largest of all Confederate map sources at the LOC, is the ‘Hotchkiss Map Collection.’ Jedediah Hotchkiss

served as a topographical engineer with the Army of Northern Virginia, and 341 of his maps reside in the LOC. The book also includes 210 maps from the ‘Sherman Map Collection;’ various maps Major General William T. Sherman used during and after the American Civil War. The listings in both of these sections

Albemarle, N.C. Map 306.7.

Augusta, Ga. Map S47.

Michael K. Shaffer is a Civil War historian, author, lecturer, and instructor, who remains a member of the Society of Civil War Historians, Historians of the Civil War Western Theater, and the Georgia Association of Historians. Readers may contact him at mkscdr11@gmail.com, or to request speaking engagements via his website www.civilwarhistorian.net. Follow Michael on Facebook www.facebook.com/ michael.k.shaffer and Twitter @ michaelkshaffer.

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