why does everybody think Nathan bedford forrest was such a bad person?

Question

I was just wondering because he is my great great geat great uncle and i only hear bad things and how he was just a bad person

Answer 1

Your ancestor was a very great man and no matter what anyone else says about him,you can be proud of him.No one is perfect and the imperfections of historical figures are more apparent.Shelby Foote thinks Forrest was the best commander of the war between the states.Some excitable people like to wave the bloody shirt of Fort Pillow.Those folks need to realize that war is after all nothing but bloody murder.What a man really is can most often be discerned by what he is like toward the end of his life.In his latter days,Forrest apologized to Black people for the wrongs done to them.I do not know if Forrest's battle tactics are still studied,but they should be.If General Forrest was alive today,I would stand and salute him.And I grew up in the North.

Answer 2

April 12th, 1864 - Fort Pillow, Tenn.

One reason why people think Nathan B. Forrest was such a bad person was his involvement in the massacre at Fort Pillow.

Answer 3

Because they really don't understand who he was. They focus on the fact that he was a member of the Ku Klux Klan (which he later quit because it became violent), he was involved in the slave trade, (although he had this code about it, his former slaves remained loyal to him), and he was quite ruthless as a warrior.

I know a black man whose grandfather, a slave during the civil war, actually fight for N.B. Forrest. The side of histroy he can give, that of Black Confederates, is something you don't find in the history books.