Nathan Bedford Forrest: A Biography

by Jack Hurst

Overview

Amid the aristocratic ranks of the Confederate cavalry, Nathan Bedford Forrest was untutored, all but unlettered, and regarded as no more than a guerrilla. His tactic was the headlong charge, mounted with such swiftness and ferocity that General Sherman called him a "devil" who should "be hunted down and killed if it costs 10,000 lives and bankrupts the treasury." And in a war in which officers prided themselves on their decorum, Forrest habitually issued surrender-or-die ultimatums to the enemy and often intimidated his own superiors. After being in command at the notorious Fort Pillow Massacre, he went on to haunt the South as the first grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.

Now this epic figure is restored to human dimensions in an exemplary biography that puts both Forrest's genius and his savagery into the context of his time, chronicling his rise from frontiersman to slave trader, private to lieutenant general, Klansman to—eventually—New South businessman and racial moderate. Unflinching in its analysis and with extensive new research, Nathan Bedford Forrest is an invaluable and immensely readable addition to the literature of the Civil War.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780679748304
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	03/15/1994
Series:	Vintage Civil War Library
Edition description:	1st Vintage Civil War library ed
Pages:	448
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.89(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Jack Hurst is a historian and former journalist who has written for newspapers including the Chicago Tribune, Philadelphia Inquirer, and Nashville Tennessean. His books include Nathan Bedford Forrest: A Biography, Men of Fire: Grant, Forrest, and the Campaign That Decided the Civil War, and Born to Battle: Grant and Forrest—Shiloh, Vicksburg, and Chattanooga. A native of Maryville, Tennessee and a descendant of both Union and Confederate soldiers, he currently lives with his wife outside Nashville, Tennessee.

Editorial Reviews

Hurst presents a balanced, well-documented study of Nathan Bedford Forrest, whom many consider to be the most brilliant general of the Civil War. Hurst, a columnist for the Chicago Tribune , explores Forrest's entire career more thoroughly than other writers, devoting the first part of the book to Forrest's prewar occupation as a slave trader and the last to Forrest's involvements with the Ku Klux Klan and state politics as well as his attempts to regain the fortune he lost during the war. The author presents a detailed study of Forrest's wartime campaigns, from his brilliant exploits in battle to his controversies with his commanding officers and the debacle at Fort Pillow. With his guerrilla tactics Forrest revolutionized the way armies fought, but he was never fully accepted by his fellow generals because of his lack of military education. Overall, this is an outstanding study of one of the Civil War's more controversial generals. Essential.-- W. Walter Wicker, Louisiana Tech Univ., Ruston

Library Journal