The article is interesting --- I didn't know most of it

[countryguy]

Up until now, all I knew about Nathan Bedford Forrest, was that he was a confederate general, in the Civil War, and that he's generally credited as the creator of the KKK.   It would appear, I was sadly under informed.

https://www.knoxnews.com/story/opinion/columnists/george-korda/2018/01/10/nathan-bedford-forrest-instead-statue-demolition-why-not-turn-tables-racists/1019729001/

The author has a valid point.  I was a fan of Robert Byrd, even though I knew that, in his past, he had been a leader, at some level, in the KKK.  What I had seen of Sen. Byrd, he was a progressive legislator, who generally championed causes in which I believed.

But, if, as the author points out, we can forgive Robert Byrd for his early beliefs and behaviors -- why can't we forgive Bedford Forrest?  I'm not, really, referring to his service in the confederate army -- rather, to his conduct and professed beliefs later in his life.  Based on the article I linked to, he actually became a champion of racial equality.  Yes, he was the initial Grand Wizard of the KKK -- but, he condemned the violence done in its name, and even disbanded the organization, entirely, within a few years.

I'm all for removing statues of Nathan Bedford Forrest, as a confederate soldier and commander.  As far as I'm concerned, confederate soldiers are the definition of traitors -- they killed hundreds of thousands of American soldiers, and fired upon the Stars & Stripes, with the weapons of war.  To honor them, is to honor treason.

But, maybe we should all make an effort to learn more about some of the perceived "villians", in our history, before condemning them -- as it's obvious that I need to learn more about Nathan Bedford Forrest.

[hoosier88]

An admirable sentiment.  A lot of people - on both sides - died, starved, laid waste by disease, exposure & the horrors of war.  In the Civil War, when the South decided it could outfight the North; in WWII, when Imperial Japan decided the same about the Western World less Germany & Italy; in WWI when one miscalculation after another led to a series of bloodbaths.

I'll consider forgiving Nathan & the crew once we've buried the notion of the Peculiar Institution so deep that the stench no longer rises on humid days.

[Tabby]

Have to agree with Hoosier...I'm all for letting Forrest be put to rest and waiting for the racism of this nation to stop; mostly waiting for a republican uprising against Trumps' KKK stands.

[countryguy]

I agree with the author, tho ........... we're passing up an opportunity to shove the words of the man credited with founding the KKK, down the throats of not only the present KKK, but all white supremacists.

     "We were born on the same soil, breathe the same air, and live in the same land. Why, then, can we not live as brothers? .... We have but one flag, one country; let us stand together. We may differ in color, but not in sentiment."     (exerpted from his 1875 speech to the Order of the Pole-Bearers, an association of black southerners)

Pretty strong words, from the man most white separatists consider their hero.

[A159]

Well, in his early life, he was a businessman and slave trader. A badass too. A Dem as well. Ouch! I know back during the old days, Repub Party used to be Dems and Dem Party used to be Repubs before the switch. I just don't remember when that switch took place.

Hey, as a side note, if Trump was born 1821, he too prob would have been a businessman and slave trader.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathan_Bedford_Forrest
'Early life
 

Nathan Bedford Forrest was born in 1821 to a poor Scotch-Irish American family in Bedford County, Tennessee. He and his twin sister, Fanny, were the two eldest of blacksmith William Forrest's 12 children with wife Miriam Beck. The Forrest family had migrated to Tennessee from Virginia via North Carolina during the second half of the 18th century, while the Beck family had moved from South Carolina to Tennessee around the same time.[9] He lived in a log house (now preserved as the Nathan Bedford Forrest Boyhood Home) in Chapel Hill, Tennessee from 1830 to 1833.[10] After the deaths of his father and Fanny to scarlet fever, Forrest became head of the family at age 17.

In 1841, Forrest went into business with his uncle Jonathan Forrest in Hernando, Mississippi. His uncle was killed there in 1845 during an argument with the Matlock brothers. In retaliation, Forrest shot and killed two of them with his two-shot pistol and wounded two others with a knife which had been thrown to him. One of the wounded Matlock men survived and served under Forrest during the Civil War.[11]

Forrest became a businessman, planter, and slaveholder. He owned several cotton plantations in the Delta region of West Tennessee. He was also a slave trader, at a time when demand was booming in the Deep South; his trading business was based on Adams Street in Memphis. In 1858, Forrest was elected a Memphis city alderman as a Democrat.[12] Forrest supported his mother and put his younger brothers through college. By the time the American Civil War started in 1861, he had become a millionaire and one of the richest men in the South, having amassed a "personal fortune that he claimed was worth $1.5 million".[13]

Forrest was well known as a Memphis speculator and Mississippi gambler. He was for some time captain of a river boat which ran between Memphis and Vicksburg, Mississippi. As his fortune increased, he engaged in plantation speculation and became the nominal owner of two plantations not far from Goodrich's Landing, above Vicksburg, where he worked some hundred or more slaves. His obituary would say that "he was known to his acquaintances as a man of obscure origin and low associations, a shrewd speculator, negro trader, and duelist, but a man of great energy and brute courage".[14]

[Tabby]

I agree with the author, tho ........... we're passing up an opportunity to shove the words of the man credited with founding the KKK, down the throats of not only the present KKK, but all white supremacists.

     "We were born on the same soil, breathe the same air, and live in the same land. Why, then, can we not live as brothers? .... We have but one flag, one country; let us stand together. We may differ in color, but not in sentiment."     (exerpted from his 1875 speech to the Order of the Pole-Bearers, an association of black southerners)

Pretty strong words, from the man most white separatists consider their hero.

That on a plaque would be great!!!