Nathan Bedford Forrest again demonstrated that so long as he was in the vicinity no Union supply line was safe. On September 23, 1864, near Athens, Alabama, he and 4500 troopers were engaged in destroying a Union controlled rail trestle. He easily beat a Union force that sallied from Fort Henderson to stop him. Taking Athens, he began an artillery barrage on Fort Henderson on the morning of the 24th. Convincing the Union commander that he had 8,000-10,000 men, a common Forrest trick, the garrison capitulated. Shortly after the capitulation, 350 men of the 18th Michigan and the 102nd Ohio had the misfortune to arrive by rail. Forrest promptly attacked them, and they surrendered after losing a third of their numbers.
The next day Forrest moved on the Sulphur Creek Trestle, guarded by a Union fort and two blockhouses. Unbelievably, the fort had been built below adjacent hills. Seizing the hills, Forrest launched an artillery bombardment that killed the Union garrison commander and killed or wounded 200 of the garrison. The remaining 800 Union troops surrended. In two days Forrest had inflicted 2,350 Union casualties, most of them prisoners, in exchange for 139 Confederate.
How sad it is that the political correctness police have made him a nonperson.Far more than Robert E Lee,he deserved recognition as the Souths greatest commanding officer.As a non West Pointer his contemporaries denied him recognition,then because of questionable accusations about The Fort Pillow massacre and the KKK,we ignore him today.
TQ: I agree. Whenever I think of Forrest, von Suppe’s “Light Cavalry Overture” runs through my alleged mind.
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His (I think) motto, “Get there fustest with the mostest.” says it all. Additionally, he had his troopers trained, motivated, experienced, hugely confident in his leadership abilities, and convinced that he would win every time and not waste their lives. He was the opposite of certain Union cav generals, e.g. Kilpatrick, whose nickname was “Kill cavalry.”
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Another cavalry CW phenom similarly maligned by subsequent events and professional envy was Custer.
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Patton was also dashingly victorious. He couldn’t keep his mouth in check or control himself and not slap soldiers. And, his politics rankled the commies in the Army and elsewhere. My friend’s (RIP) father (RIP) was a Lt. with Patton from France to Germany. He loved the man. The other brass hats, not so much.
“Get there first with the most men. Reported by General Basil W. Duke and Richard Taylor
Often erroneously reported as “Git thar fustest with the most mostest.” In The Quote Verifier : Who Said What, Where, and When (2006) by Ralph Keyes, p. 272, the phrase he used has also been reported to have been “I always make it a rule to get there first with the most men” and “I just took the short cut and got there first with the most men.””
Mr. Shaw: My father fought under the command of Patton in WW II. He thought well of him and was there at the Battle of the Bulge. Incidentally, Patton came from a large group of ancestors who wore the Grey. Forrest, in spite of KKK legends about him ( he quit the organization when it’s acts became violent) spoke out for racial reconciliation after the war. (See Polebearers) speech. If is unfortunate that he and his wife bodies had to be reinterred because of ignorant race hustlers in Memphis.
It took Maj. Gen. James H. Wilson’s “Yankee Blitzkrieg” in March 1865 to finally bring Forrest to heel. And Wilson had learned the hard way from Forrest before managing to do that.
An astonishing soldier. And his volcanic rebuke of Braxton Bragg is one of my favorite pieces of invective.
As a young man, while traveling across the country to attend law school in the South, I decided that it was a good time to visit Brice’s Crossroads since I was in the area. I had been fascinated by this battle since reading Wyeth’s book about Forrest. Since my primary experience with NPS battlefields had been Gettysburg, to say that I was disappointed is an understatement. Not completely surprising since battlefields are typically someone’s farm, but you really can’t get the sense of the battle.
He was a flawed man to be sure, as we all are, but for someone that is so completely vilified by our degraded culture, and as someone that fought long and hard for the Confederacy surrendering only in May, 1865, I still remember his directives to his troops when they surrendered.
“Reason dictates and humanity demands that no more blood be shed. Fully realizing and feeling that such is the case, it is your duty and mine to lay down our arms, submit to the “powers that be” and to aid in restoring peace and establishing law and order throughout the land.”
So my question is, if the election doesn’t go the way that certain leftists want it to go, will we be subjected to more “peaceful protests?” Unfortunately, I don’t expect them to accepts the results and “aid in restoring peace and establishing law and order..” Something tells me that they won’t live up to the standard of the man they vilify. I sincerely pray that I am wrong.
Sherman thought that Forrest was the most astonishing figure on both sides to come out of the War. He demonstrated that military genius is a God given gift, like musical genius, only quietly awaiting circumstances to bring it forth. And when the War was lost for the Confederacy, Forrest made no bones about it, saying that any Confederate who wished to go on fighting was fit only for a lunatic asylum.