About : tv stands for flat screens 65
Title : tv stands for flat screens 65
tv stands for flat screens 65
i'm very humbled to have everybody here today.when i put this program together several months ago they sent a – well, actually, i putit together 30 minutes ago, i finished it. when i submitted the idea for this programseveral months ago i went to the - they sent out an email saying if there's books on thetopic and everything submit them to the bookstore and they'll get them in for the visitors topossibly buy and i went to the bookstore manager and told her i’m doing something on nathanbedford forrest and she said well it'll never sell. i was like, okay. forrest doesn't sellhere. actually, based on that assumption i walked in there, so don't everybody breakdown the door when you get out of here, but i always begin the conversations with this.how much is this? i have two biographies that
they got in. one is by brian steel wills,it's called “the confederacy's greatest cavalryman: nathan bedford forrest.†itis predominantly on the civil war although it's got some pre- and post-war. this otherone is by jack hurst. this is the brown book it's $17.95, this one's $20. jack covers themost in the pre-war and the post-war. so if the klan really interests you this has themost on that time period even down to minute details like where he's sworn in and all thatstuff. so the pre- and post- war, when this book first came out i was mesmerized by it,because all the biographies, as they should, have focused on the war, but this one actuallyhad something outside. is there a guy buy the name of bill sach here? did he happento make it? bill sach, i think i've got the
name right. who is it? alright, well tellyour brother that i got his email or his posting with the video suggesting that i enter toa wrestler's theme song called the nature boy. ric flair, you know what i'm talkingabout, yeah! you will apologize to him for me not being able to comply with that, i didgo to the foundation and asked if fireworks were allowed inside the building, but i didn'tget anywhere with that. so if you would like to see what i’m talking about, you can goto youtube and type in ric flair intro. so i've got - my name is matt. i guess i shoulddo the - if you don't know, i’m a park ranger here. i think i know about everybody in theroom here today which is kind of cool. that’s gettysburg for you. it kind of gets to feellike family sometimes doesn't it when you
see the same faces again? it means springtimeis coming. so the park service - i’ve always been dinged in my career for not having atheme. so matt can never get his act together to have a cohesive idea to bring to the audienceto bring them closer to the resource. so in order to do that, i have come up with a theme,and it is the following: sometimes we all do things that, well, don't make sense. nowthat might not make sense to you right now, but it will make sense here shortly. i’vegot a lot of material to cover here and i’ll try to fly through it. you all know how ilike to meander though, in and out of the theme right here. what i’m going to tellyou about today, ladies and gentlemen, is obviously nathan bedford forrest, the guyon the screen right here. nathan bedford forrest
is kind of - i’m sure it happens in thenorth - but in the south there are regional heroes, such as in alabama, for some reason,portions of alabama are big joseph wheeler fans, a cavalryman. it might be pelham, theartilleryman from fredericksburg; he's big in some parts of alabama. in northern mississippi,you have nathan bedford forrest, you could say that. nathan bedford forrest, though,nationally, is one of the more controversial figures today and then to come out of thecivil war. he was controversial during the war, he was controversial after the war, andhe is controversial today. nothing gets the debate juices flowing faster than mentioningthe name of nathan bedford forrest. i’m going to start out with combat. what you'reabout to hear is going to seem like it's straight
out of a wild west novel. if you do not knowanything about nathan bedford forrest, you're going to think that all of this is fiction,and part of it, kind of like william wallace, a lot of legend, i should say, has grown upwith nathan bedford forrest, it has. what is fact from fiction? at the battle of shilohdid he really get shot at point blank range amidst the yankees and pull a soldier up afterthat behind him for a shield? i doubt it. i bet he was saying, “ouch, that hurt!â€but that's the type of stuff. nevertheless, forrest is a fascinating character. he isvery reserved in front of ladies, he is very hot tempered in combat to the point wherehe almost loses his common sense. and he has this vernacular, this drawl, which kind ofmakes him interesting too. he can't read,
he can't write, and yet he is going to learnthrough his backwoods and his own personal character how to fight warfare in the 1860s.we'll start with something probably most of you have never heard of before and this isthe meridian expedition of 1864. the meridian expedition is conducted in january and februaryof 1864. sherman actually returns, william t. sherman, actually returns here to vicksburg,mississippi, this is the bottom left of the map, and this is a precursor to his georgiacampaign and his march across georgia. he’s going to go here to vicksburg and he's goingto march straight across the state of mississippi to meridian and he's going to destroy therailroads and the infrastructure of mississippi along the way. he has about twenty thousandmen in order to do that and in true sherman
fashion, you can see, he takes two routesthere and back to maximize the destruction. his plan, though, and we'll get into nathanbedford forrest right here, is to have seventy-five hundred cavalrymen under william sooy smithcome down to the mobile and ohio railroad, remember, it's all about railroads, and comethrough this area and rendezvous with him at meridian. the two combined forces couldthen go into alabama, possibly to selma, or they could go south to mobile. remember, mobileis still an open port for the confederacy. so that's where we are. sherman is marchingacross here. he is supposed to rendezvous with sooy smith around the 1st of february.what ends up happening? william sooy smith gets off late. he awaits like two or threethousand cavalrymen to come in which slows
him up, and he does not get his column movinguntil february 11th. yeah, that's pretty bad. now, they quickly, when smith's column cameinto mississippi, they quickly digressed into looting and pillaging. they completely wentwild. he estimated that when he reached the mobile and ohio railroad, he had burned alreadybetween one and two million bushels of corn alone. also following him, you have to remember,and i'll show you this on the map in a second, the area which he's coming to in northeastmississippi is called the prairie belt or the black prairie. it's named that becauseof the soil, it's a very dark soil, but it’s very conducive to growing good crops, andthe confederacy, just like the shenandoah valley, is getting a lot of food out of northeastmississippi. so they want to destroy that,
the federals do, that is. so sooy smith iscoming down through there. when you've got a lot of agriculture there, you've obviouslygoing to have corn, you're going to have your food produce, etc., but you're also goingto have cotton. and when you have all this you're obviously going to have a lot of slaves.when sooy smith's column comes through north mississippi, thousands of slaves start followingthe union army through there. well now he's got a problem, because they're on horses andthese slaves are on foot. so what do you do with them? he’s already running behind time.boss-man wants him down at meridian asap and he's got thousands of slaves that are followingright now. and what are the slaves doing, and what are the union soldiers doing? youcan't control everybody. when they're about
to leave the farm, they're lighting the housesup. the union soldiers, when they come to forage, they're burning the barns down, etc.between the two, there's a lot of destruction going on in north mississippi at this time.now, coming to meet him is seventy-five hundred men is a guy by the name of nathan bedfordforrest. forrest did not have half the strength of the federals, nor did he initially knowthe objective of the union forces, but he guessed smith would eventually move towardsmeridian to join with sherman, and he guessed correctly. what he is wanting to do, and iapologize to the people in the back, i know you can't see anything on this map, but, it’sthe only map i could find with the detail. right here, for those of you up front wherethe red dot is, here is the railroad to orient
you. here is meridian, here is columbus, mississippi,and west point is right in here in this area. this is the black prairie area right throughhere. right here, ladies and gentleman, is houston and that is the hometown of yourstruly. houston, mississippi thank you, thank you very much. elvis actually played thereat the vfw. the vfw had the chance to lock him in for a three year contract and didn'tdo it, because they didn't think anybody would want to hear him. some of the old timers swearthat he left a matinee one day when the kids came out in houston and across the streetwas elvis presley on the back of a pickup truck just playing right there. alright, sothat has nothing to do with anything but i told you i would digress at some time. sooysmith's column is coming through here, they're
going to get to okolona which is right herein this area, once again, following the railroad. okolona was the depot right in this area tocollect all the supplies for the confederate army. matt used to drive from houston, whichis dry, over here to okolona. about twelve miles right through there and he would waitoutside the liquor store until some nice adult would come along and make a purchase for him.that’s where it all happened right there, okolona. a lot of good times over there. alwaysgood fights too between the two towns, you didn't want to stay long. so sooy smith'scolumn is coming down here. forrest is coming across mississippi from the west to the east,and he's wanting to catch sooy smith. now this is hard to see, but once again, it'sthe only map i have. there are streams running
through here. when you get around columbus,mississippi it gets to be a bottom land, and forrest knows the territory. you can neverput a price on knowing the territory and knowing your enemy, and knowing the strength. so whenforrest is coming down through there he figures, he guesses that smith is heading to meridian,so what he decides to do is send his forces on either side of smith's column and lurethe union cavalrymen towards columbus. he’s going to box them in though on these riversand these creeks down here, and when smith gets in that lowland he's going to jump himbecause you can't move fast when you're in mud, and that's exactly what he's up against.smith is beginning to feel the presence. he reaches west point, mississippi on february20th and it took him nine days to get down
there, and he gets to west point and he andforrest's advance command start skirmishing. now smith loses his nerve at this point. thisis a picture of ellis bridge. this is highway 50 coming out of west point and about a milebehind this picture is my uncle mike's beer store, mike’s quick stop. he’ll sell youeverything you need, right there; pack of smokes, anything, and they are cheaper thanpennsylvania. so this creek is flooded at the time and this is the only place to getacross it. smith gets to, well not specifically to the bank right here, but this is the bestshot i can get. he gets here and this is open at the time, it's being farmed i suppose,and he looks across through there and he sees the confederates and he doesn't know theirforce, he loses his nerve, and he decides
to turn back. he has got forrest outnumberedby two to one. of course, i know that, he doesn't, but the name of nathan bedford forrestwas worth enough to scare him off. now forrest always had a feel, if you know what i mean,a touch, for what was going on on the battlefield and he sensed that smith was giving up thefight before it had begun. this is the ellis bridge monument. i actually went to that dedication.it’s a skirmish i don't know why it rated a monument, but there you go. i was thereand it was weird. as the union troops start to withdraw, one of forrest's division commanders,brand new division commanders, james chalmers, got a chance to see nathan bedford forrestfor the first time in combat, and this is what he wrote.
“i had considerable curiosity to observegeneral forrest, but up to nine o’clock that morning, he had not appeared upon thescene. suddenly, out of a cloud of dust, accompanied by an orderly, he came dashing up the roadtoward the bridge. as he approached me and reined up his horse, and in rather a harsh,quick tone he asked me what the condition of affairs was at the front. as i had notbeen on the firing line and did not know anything definite, except that the firing indicatedquite a severe skirmish, i replied that colonel," this is his brother, "jeffrey forrest hadreported nothing to me beyond the fact that there was some skirmishing going on at thefront, and i added that i thought it was a very severe affair. forrest said quickly andwith evident impatience, ‘is that all you
know? then i’ll go there and find out myself.’â€now forrest is always, you'll hear this throughout the program, but i may not emphasize it, whereverforrest goes, forrest has between sixty and a hundred men that are his personal escort.i don't know if you'll call them a bodyguard, but they are handpicked men picked for theirfighting prowess. these men do not shirk, they are the best of his command, and to getinto forrest's personal escort was a high honor, kind of like the old guard with napoleonexcept a lot smaller. so anyway, forrest dashes off with his escort, he gets to the firingline, and he just charges, barrels right on ahead into the field into this wood line.guns blaze, smoke comes up, saddles are emptied, and forrest comes galloping back up to chalmers,reins up his horse, and all the empty saddles
are coming back. he turns to chalmers andhe says, “yup they were in there sure enough, weren't they?†it’s like a novel. to backup a little bit, on the other side of the bridge, when he first crossed on his way tothe front line, forrest encountered a frightened soldier running away from the battle. forrestproceeded to jump down from his horse, grab the man by the neck, hurl him to the ground,and then pick up a piece of brush and start whipping him on the behind. he then, afterhe got through with him, pulled him up to his feet, faced him to the front, and said,“now, goddamn you, you go back there and fight. you might as well get killed thereas here, for if you ever run away again you'll not get off so easy.†forrest would laterwrite, “the federals are retreating, smith
is retreating from here." he would later writein his report, "it is not my intention to attack them or to bring on a general engagement,but to develop their strength position and movement.†what did i tell you? forrestis trying to draw them in. however, since smith was retreating, "being unwilling thatthey should leave the country without a fight i ordered the advance of my column." in forrest'swords, in his home jargon right there, the “skeer†was on. forrest always had a rulethat once you got the “skeer,†the scare on the enemy, you kept it on the enemy. ifyou have a superior force and you get that force moving. if you're fighting, let me putit in simpler terms; if you're fighting somebody bigger than you, and you get them down, don'tever let them get up. that’s not a good
rule. there are no rules in fighting, alright?once you get your opponent going you want to keep pushing them right there, and he sensedthat. now forrest started pursuing them on february 10th, we're on the right hand sideof the map over there at the top, and he starts pushing them back towards okolona. he stoppedthe pursuit as nightfall came on and on february 22nd he would have his column moving again.smith's column moved pretty much throughout the night. forrest's column got a few hoursof sleep. smith is trying to get out of there; forrest is reserving his force’s strength,as they got to the outskirts of okolona. forrest always, and you'll see this throughout thisprogram, when he met an enemy, he would hit them in the front while he swung around tothe flank. he could always get a superior
force to move if he could get astride theirflank. once again, once you get the “skeer on ‘em, keep the skeer on ‘em.†when they get to the outskirts of okolona,the federal forces are deployed right there, forrest and them skirmish only briefly enoughfor forrest and the rest of the command to ride around the town. the union troops withdrawfrom okolona, they form on the other side, this is kind of a running battle. forrestpersonally rides up to one of his brigade's, bartow’s. he asks colonel bartow, “whereis the enemy's whole position?†bartow replied, “you see it general, and they are preparingto charge.†“then we will charge them,†and away he goes. forrest attacked, and toshow you he's human, he gets repulsed. he
quickly took a regiment, though, upon reforminghis men, that brigade, around the federal flank and the chase was on again. smith triedto reform his rear guard two more times, but forrest stayed on top of him, attacking andoutflanking him each time. sooy smith managed to reform his lines again, for a third time,a couple miles down the road, but by now jeffrey forrest, the general's youngest and favoritebrother, along with also being a brigade commander under his older brother, had taken over thepursuit along with the other confederate troops. what is he doing? forrest is bringing up freshtroops and pushing them. push, push, push. have you ever seen a cow dog in action? thedog's probably thirty pounds and the cow's probably fifteen hundred but what's the dogdo? just eats that cow's tail up until it
goes to where he wants it to. think of a chihuahua;a lot of bark to it. now while leading the attack, forrest's brother is hit in the throatand mortally wounded. yeah, that had to be bloody. forrest rode up around this time tofind his brother laying on the ground. dismounting, he took his brother in his arms and "was meltingwith grief." another account said he was just saying “jeffrey†over and over again whilehe was sitting there crying. this moment "was of short duration, however. in placing thedead man's hat over his face, he called for major strange of his staff to take chargeof the body, and looking around, called in a ringing, passionate voice to the bugle tosound the charge once more. the lull in the fighting had given the federals time to regroupand forrest and his command ran up against
five hundred federals standing along the crestof a plantation named after the ivy family.†forrest was in a rage over his brother's death.in fact, dr. cowan, j.b. cowan, was sent to fetch forrest because they thought he mightbe on a suicide mission. cowan spurred his mount forward and "in about a mile as i roundedthe short turn in the road, i came upon a scene which made my blood run cold. therein the road was general forrest and his escort and a few of the advanced guard of the forrestbrigade in a hand-to-hand fight with federals enough to have pulled them from their horses.at that moment, another confederate brigade rode up under bob mcculloch. the soldiershesitated at seeing the number of federals in their front but when they did, mccullochwaved his bloody hand above his head shouting,
‘my god men, will you see them kill yourgeneral? i will go to the rescue if not a man follows me.’ his men did follow him.by the time they had driven the federals back, forrest had killed or wounded three enemysoldiers." now the federals made one last stand, and i’ll show you how different peoplepaint it; same battle, different artist. "the federals made one last stand with three longand separate lines of cavalry. they charged the vanguard of forrest's advance, most ofwhom were dismounted. as the federals charged, dr. cowan urged forrest to get out of theroad. 'doctor,' forrest replied, 'if you are alarmed, you may get out of the way. i amas safe here as there.' a few minutes later, forrest's horse went down, struck by fiveballs with another three ricocheting off the
saddle. unscathed, forrest remounted and rodeanother a hundred and fifty yards before this one was killed. by this time, his favoritemount, king philip had arrived. this horse would become very animated seeing the colorblue and would rush at the enemy with its mouth open and its ears turned back." in fact,in the post-war years when the memphis police came to visit forrest, for some reason athis house, king philip was still alive. he was in the stable and the horse went ballisticwhen the policeman showed up in blue uniforms. the policemen remarked to forrest, “my god,general, even your horse hates the yankees.†so galloping through there, the federals chargedthree times and they are barely repulsed. "by this time, with the last line charged,hand-to-hand combat was on very freely. major
thomas tate of the general's staff had lockedhorns with a federal and tate had just found that his carbine was jammed, and he flungit in desperation at the federal soldier. figuring he was a goner, he was greatly relievedwhen the looming figure of forrest rode up and almost decapitated the man with one blowfrom his sword. the confederates repulsed the final assault and forrest galloped onahead.†he found a union hospital where a surgeon had run off in the midst of an amputationleaving a saw in the middle of the guy's leg. oh, you want something better? the guy wasconscious. forrest dismounts from his horse, goes and gets, i suppose it was laying there,a bottle of chloroform, which is your anesthesia, and applies it to the soldier to knock himout, and then he tells dr. cowan to finish
the operation from there. now once again,fact from legend. the legend has it that forrest finished the operation. i don't think so buti think he did apply chloroform. now the battle of okolona results in 144 confederates killed,wounded, and missing compared with smith's loss of 388. forrest explained it this way,his small loss, or half the loss: "we kept so close to them that the enemy overshot ourmen." now okolona, and this is the great thing about being in a rule - this is always a badword for a southerner. rural. rule. rural area. ru-el, madam. yes, a farming community! - is thatthis land is all pristine. the problem with the battle of okolona or the series of engagementsis that it's running, it's moving, it's fluid. it’s not as open as it once was so it'shard today to get a fix on exactly where jeffrey
was shot and ivy plantation and so forth butit's pristine. it’s kind of neat to see that rolling countryside. now i’m goingto back up a little bit right now and we're going to go back to the beginning, and i’lltell you where forrest's roots are coming from. now most of you have probably heardof nathan bedford forrest. nathan bedford forrest has been on everything. movies, magazines,books, i showed you a couple here. it gets to the point of saturation, but i’m surehe's a good sell if you slap him on the cover of a magazine. i imagine that the vast majority,though, of everybody's perceptions here have been influenced by one thing. "my mama namedme after the great civil war hero general nathan bedford forrest. she said we was relatedto him in some way. what he did was, he started
up this club called the ku klux klan, andthey all dressed up in their robes and bed sheets and they acted like a bunch of ghostsor spooks or something and they even put bed sheets on their horses and ride around. anyway,that's how i got my name, forrest gump. mama said the forrest part was to remind me thatsometimes we all do things that, well, just don't make no sense." the real forrest, toback up, is just dirt poor. he’s born in tennessee in 1821 in the backwoods that wasunforgiving and violent, in its own nature. he was named after his uncle; nathan, andthe county he was born in; bedford. nathan bedford. his father was a blacksmith and hismother looked after eleven children. all the women go "ooooo." only five sons reached adulthoodand like his parents forrest was large, standing
at 6 foot 2. what made him even more imposing,ladies and gentleman, in combat, is he would charge and he would stand up in the stirrupson his toes, that's the way he fought. so you take a 6' 2" man and put him on king philipand i’m sure he's something to behold upon a battlefield. forrest only received threemonths of formal schooling growing up, however, life taught him more lessons that taught himwell. he was gathering blackberries along with the rest of the kids and they encountereda rattlesnake and while the rest of the kids ran nathan picked up a stick and killed thesnake. he had learned “the value of the offense.†another learning experience occurredwhen bedford confronted a pack of dogs. in the past he and his friends had tossed rocksat the mean dogs as they galloped past the
house. on this occasion, the horse balkedand threw nathan to the ground, the boy, to the ground. bedford, nathan bedford, sprangup ready to fight. to his surprise, he found the dogs had run off. what did this teachhim? the element of surprise. the element of surprise coupled with a show of offensehad completely thrown his enemy off. as a teenager, bedford found work in his uncle'stailor shop. one day, five rowdy guys came in drinking pretty heavily. they started topester forrest to drink with them. growing tired of their taunting, he picked up a pairof shears that he was working with and pulled them apart holding each half in one hand.bedford then proceeded to charge which sent the five boys tumbling out the front door.he had learned the advantage of the offense
from that. now this is kind of interesting.forrest moves to memphis in 1851 where he dabbled in real estate, livestock, and alsoslave trading. his slave market grew to be one of the largest in memphis and with thatmoney forrest became a millionaire. between farming and buying and selling slaves - ican't really - i’m not an expert on slavery or anything like that. i suppose he wouldjust get a commission from buying and selling. my understanding is that the way the marketworked the deep south had cotton, and kentucky and places like kentucky, virginia, missouriwere - they didn't need that many slaves - so it's supply and demand. so what would theydo? people would buy them in kentucky and bring them to memphis and sell them for ahigher profit. of course, forrest is making
a commission off of that. if you think aboutwhere he began, with his humble beginnings, it's amazing that by 1858, he had risen fromthe lowest rungs of society to the top tier. of course, he had done that on other people'sbacks; it's a heck of a way to make a living. he even won a seat on the memphis board ofalderman. now forrest is going to enter the war late by most standards. he's going towait until june when tennessee leaves the union to join the confederacy. nathan bedfordforrest will enter the war as a private. forrest's connections in memphis, though, got him acommission to raise a cavalry outfit and by october of ‘61 he was a lieutenant coloneland by the end of the war, he would be lieutenant general. that’s quite a rise from private.there are many stories to tell about nathan
bedford forrest during the war, and we couldspend all day and we may do it yet. you going to write that one down? never know what peoplefind funny. i’ll pick you out a couple highlights. fort donelson, which is at the cumberlandriver, about twelve miles from fort henry, which is on the tennessee river. it’s basicallynorth of nashville, tennessee. forrest is in command of a regiment of cavalry. forrestis involved in the fighting when the confederates try to break out. general u.s. grant has surroundedfort donelson, the confederates counter-attack, they actually open up an escape route, andonce again, the confederates this time lose their nerve and they withdraw back into theirfortifications after winning the battle. nathan bedford forrest is - what is the job of cavalry?he’s supposed to go out and reconnoiter,
he's supposed to find intelligence. he comesback to headquarters to find the three top confederate generals talking about surrendering,this is at nighttime, and he is just aghast that this is actually happening. he arguesthat escape route is still open that there's a back road that is only flooded for abouta hundred yards waist-deep and we can take the command out tonight. but the generalshave had enough and they decide to surrender. forrest, still being present during the conversation,curtly informed everyone present "that i did not come here for the purposes of surrenderingmy command." and a few minutes later he had his officers assembled and he stated to them"boys, these men are talking about surrendering, and i am going to ride out of here and busthell wide open."
and rode out he did. with every confederatesoldier that he could get on horseback, two to a horse, some of the soldiers came out.was it the majority of the garrison? not even close, but the road was open and forrest,once again, took the initiative. he didn't take what people told him, his subordinates,his superiors or anybody else, about what was happening. he went and found out the situationhimself and he acted. forrest was at the battle of shiloh, the end of the battle. remember,the battle of shiloh is two days. what happens, briefly, the confederates win the first day,the union wins the second day. the night of the first day, forrest goes up front in thewoods, he scouts out, he can see union reinforcements coming ashore on the tennessee river. he goesback and throughout the night he is trying
to find somebody in command, somebody whowill order the confederate army to attack before it's too late. nobody knows forrest,he's not a known quantity, and here's this colonel standing in front of them advocatingmaking a night attack. nobody listens. not bragg, not beauregard, nobody else. what happens?next day the sun comes up and u.s. grant, he counter-attacks and the union wins thebattle. forrest was, to me, kind of like a patton in the sense that most of the soldiersrespected him as a fellow soldier but on many accounts, on a personal level, just flat hatedhis guts. he would kill you as fast as he would kill the enemy. and there is reallyno better illustration of that than this next story. in may of ’63, he was pursuing someunion raiders under abel streight. for some
reason, this union commander had the brightidea to outfit his men with mules, and he has about fifteen hundred men. forrest hasabout maybe half that. forrest catches up with him, he pounds it. just like okolonafolks, he pounds it night and day, constantly nipping at him, constantly at his heels. thefederals will get no sleep as long as forrest is on their trail. they will have to stayawake and in the saddle. eventually the federals tire out and what does forrest do? he pinsthem up, and then he does one of his favorite tactics. he flies a white flag and he sendsit in and says something like, “in order to save the useless effusion of blood, i demandthe surrender of your command.†so streight's sitting there, he doesn't know how many confederatesare out there, and forrest is bluffing, he
doesn't have enough men to take streight.but during that whole time forrest taught his command - and i don't know what the commandwould be called - he basically taught his command to make circles. he said it mightcome in handy one day. and so what did he do while he's talking to streight? there'sa hill behind them, and what did he do? he put the confederates into a circle and thatcircle started coming and going over the top of the hill and streight's sitting there watchingall that over forrest's shoulders and he goes, "my god how many artillery pieces do you have?i’ve counted eighteen so far." forrest never even blinks he goes, "i reckon that's allthat's kept up." streight surrenders to a force about a third of the size and when hefinds out that he's been snookered, he demands
to have his arms back and forrest pats himon the back and he says, "come now general, all is fair." now, to show you going backto the original point about how his men could hate his guts. during this raid, this manright here, a.w. gould, i’ll call him “gold†for simplicity, is a captain under forrest.he’s in command of a couple of cannons for forrest. well, streight is ambushing, beforethe surrender. he's setting up ambushes, the confederates are pursuing hard, and they'rerunning into these ambushes, and eventually, gould is going to lose two cannons. forrestis infuriated. there is nothing that makes forrest angrier than to lose some cannonsor to lose period. and he decides that this young gentleman has to go so he decides totransfer him out of his command. by this time,
forrest's command is up, this is a few monthslater, his command is up in columbia, tennessee, home of james k. polk. well gould hears aboutit and he comes to see forrest, and forrest steps out into the hallway, they're in a building,and forrest says, “yeah you're out of here,†and gould says, “the man that accuses meof cowardice cannot stand,†or something along those lines and he proceeds, he's gota duster on, to start to pull a pistol out of that duster to shoot to kill forrest. forrest seeing what's happening, reaches forthe duster and for the hand, and as he does, the gun goes off inside the jacket. the bulletcomes and hits him in one of the shoulders, i forget which one. but it hits him in oneof the shoulders right there. now that's got
to hurt to get a pistol ball like that atpoint blank range. while he's wrestling with the man's gun hand right here, he was lefthanded, while he's wrestling with it, forrest reaches down and picks up a pen knife, andwith his teeth, he opens it. and while he's wrestling with this guy over this gun, hetakes that pen knife and hits him in the side with it, right between the rib cage - i don'tknow how big the pen knife was - and the two men fall apart. gould goes across the street,forrest lays down, the doctors are summoned, et cetera, there's a whole bunch of commotiongoing on in this area, as you can imagine. gould is taken across and apparently whereforrest hit him, i don't understand anatomy, but blood is just coming out at every heartbeat;he must have hit him right in the right spot,
wherever he hit him. so anyway, the doctorhas got two fingers over gould's wound across the street. the other doctor goes to see aboutforrest. now forrest has been hit and the bullet comes up. i’ve got the actual medicalterm. you all are going to have to hit me. he was, excuse me, he was hit in the abdomenwhich was ultimately fatal. peritonitis. so the doctors are laying there, excuse me, forrestis laying there, and the doctors say to him, “you're going to die.†forrest gets upoff the table and he yells, “get out of my way." i won't put the exclamation points,"get out of my way. i’m mortally wounded and will kill the man who has shot me.â€his clothing in disarray, you can imagine, he hobbled into the street and borrowed, took,two pistols from some of his troopers, screaming
the whole time, “lookout, lookout.†thecrowd parted and forrest walked into the building across the street and started shooting atgould with those two pistols. he was going to kill him before he died. you see what i’mtalking about? sometimes it just doesn't make any sense. gould heard him coming. he tumblesoff the table, rolls out the backdoor, and forrest is shooting at him as he goes outthe back. the unfortunate thing about the whole thing is that when forrest shot throughthe backdoor, there was a building out there and the ball hit the brick wall and ricochetedinto another soldier's leg, which cost him his leg, but other than that though it wasfine. forrest went out there and cornered gould, who was on the ground at that time,and forrest came up to him and kicked his
foot with his own boot and he could tell thatgould was a dying man and he just said - just like that his temper went away. from there,he was taken to the galloway house where he expected to die. he didn't kill gould, i don'tguess he hit him, but he figured he was dying anyway. now the doctors are going to lookat nathan and they're going to follow the track of the ball, you all are going to haveto help me again, and they found that the ball had entered the abdomen but it had beendeflected by the gluteal muscle. where is that? no, it's not your gluteus maximus. topof the hip? thank you, doctor. and it ricocheted. the doctors told the general that his woundwas not serious. it was little more than a flesh wound for you monty python fans. theyoffered to cut the bullet out but forrest
refused saying, “no it is nothing but adamn little pistol ball, let it alone.†forrest did, though, at that point order thedoctors down to the nelson house hotel to take care of gould and despite the effortsof the doctors, gould would die two weeks later. he was 23 years old. all right, onemore story, we'll get back to ‘64, but this is a great one. who’s this man? braxton bragg. just becausei like all of you, i got him in color right. i found him about ten minutes before thispresentation. battle of chickamauga, that is around georgia right? right outside ofchattanooga. confederates win chickamauga. forrest is with the army of the tennesseeat the time; bragg is in charge of the army;
forrest is a subordinate, he never workedwell under other people. forrest - the confederates win the battle in part due to james longstreetand the confederate 1st corps that was here at gettysburg. bragg has scored a stunningvictory, but he doesn't know what he has. forrest goes to bragg and he urges him topursue the federal army. "keep the skeer on 'em." i don't know if he said those exactwords but that's what he meant to tell bragg in so many words, and bragg lets the fruitsof victory slip away from him. several months go by and bragg and forrest didn't get along.i don't know anybody that got along, really, with bragg. forrest in angst just says aboutbragg, “what does he fight battles for?†he just can't understand the man. if you'renot fighting for a total victory why are you
fighting? when bragg later issued orders transferringmany of forrest's men away from him, the general, forrest had had enough, and he went to seegeneral bragg. he walked into bragg’s tent and bragg offered his hand. forrest didn'tshake it. bragg sat back down in his chair behind his desk and forrest proceeds to takehis finger and puts it right in his face. he said to him, “i am not here to pass civilitiesor compliments with you, but on other business. i have stood your meanness as long as i intendto, and you have played the part of a damned scoundrel and a coward, and if you are anypart of a man, i would slap your jaws and force you to resent it. you may as well notissue any more orders to me for i will not obey them. and as i say to you that if youever again try to interfere with me or cross
my path it will be at the peril of your life.â€yeah. needless to say, forrest got a transfer. and that, ladies and gentlemen, is how nathanbedford forrest made it back to mississippi for the battle of okolona. is it tying allin? so forrest, in the spring of ’64 - now we've had the battle of okolona, now we'regoing past the battle of okolona - in march of ’64, forrest set off on a raid from westtennessee and kentucky. along the way, he captured - this is what a typical raid woulddo for him - he captured 612 federals and killed 79 while wounding another 102. hispersonal loss, his own command loss was 15 killed and 42 wounded. now coming back tomississippi through west tennessee, he picked out one last target. “there’s a federalforce of about five hundred or six hundred
men at fort pillow which i shall attend toin a day or two as they have horses and supplies which we need.†this was on april 4th. nowfort pillow is right here and this is the mississippi river. memphis is at the bottomof the map. fort pillow is part of the original river defenses, part of the original defensesin 1862 before memphis fell in june. they actually built fort pillow, it's named aftergideon pillow, the confederate general. it actually has, this is the best map i couldfind, which is not the best map, but it actually had a ring of fortifications that went aroundit; an outer ring and then it had an inner ring or an inner fort right there along theriver. now as forrest rode towards fort pillow, he had no idea that the impending collisionwould be more than a test of arms. on this
campaign, forrest and his men would encounterformer slaves now fighting as soldiers in the union army. i need not tell you my friendsthat this site for the confederate soldiers was an anathema. to exacerbate the situationthe white soldiers comprising the garrison at fort pillow were tennessee unionists, alright?the garrison had been accused of several acts of uncivilized warfare over the previous monthsand the fuse was lit for an explosive situation. now james chalmers’s command was the firstto arrive. i don't know if chalmers is up there or i’m looking at it upside - i guessi could look at this one right? chalmers is the bigger division commander. chalmers isgoing to push the federals back toward the inner half of the fortifications, not thatthey made that big of a fight right there.
confederate sharpshooters then began to pickoff the garrison of six hundred union men inside the fort. the biggest loss for thefederals came when the camp commander major lionel f. booth was killed and command passedto major william f. bradford. forrest arrived at 10:00 am. now in the short time that we've spent onnathan bedford forrest, what is the first thing that nathan bedford forrest is goingto do when he gets on the field? what will he do? he’ll look. he will reconnoiter.but yeah? attack. i could see that. i like your game. you’d get a lot of people killed,but that's alright. what does he do? he rides along. if forrest has time, he will reconnoiter.if he doesn't have time he'll just attack.
you can never go wrong attacking. he identifiedthe key terrain features and he set about to take advantage of them. what he saw rightthere was a ring, and this is hard to describe on this map, and if you ever go to fort pillow- and you've got to be going to fort pillow to be going fort pillow, the only thing outthere is a medium security prison which you'll pass on the way up there - but you've gotto go all the way up to the north before you turn west, there's only one road leading inand out of it. that’s the reason they put a prison there. if you think about it, ifyou can imagine it i should say, you see these stars right here? these are going to be theconfederate sharpshooters. these are actually ravines where you don't see any drawings.it doesn't show up very well but these hilltops
right here are going to dominate this area,meaning the confederate soldiers can shoot inside of fort pillow. over here, you havesome huts right up next to the fort. fort pillow is not expecting an attack; it's agarrison, it’s a camp. so they've got these cabins set up because they want to be comfortable.who would want to sleep in a tent all the time? so mcculloch is going to swing aroundhere and the federals are going to burn the first few cabins, but the confederates aregoing to get the possession of the majority of them. and what do they make the cabinsinto? forts, and they start shooting at fort pillow basically at point blank range. thisgoes on for an hour or so and the federals can't even raise up and shoot because theconfederates have them surrounded, they have
them pinned down. there is nothing to do.there is nothing left to do. what does forrest do? he calls a cease-firing and he sends ina white flag. “the conduct of the officers and men garrisoning fort pillow has been suchthat it entitles them to be treated as prisoners of war,†forrest wrote. “i demand theunconditional surrender of this garrison, promising you that they should be treatedas prisoners of war. should my demand be refused, i cannot be responsible for the fate of yourcommand.†captain w.a. goodman, chalmers' adjutant general and bearer of the note, saidlater that he clearly remembered the offer to treat the entire garrison as prisonersof war "because when the note was handed to me, there was some discussion about it amongthe officers present, and it was asked whether
it was intended to include the negro soldiersas well as the white. to which both general forrest and general chalmers replied thatit was so intended." captain w.a. goodman, chalmers' adjutant general and bearer of thenote, would later on go on to say that he went up to the federals and that major bradford,who is now in command, the union commander, tried to buy time by asking for an hour toconsider the terms. when this was reported to forrest, fearing a ruse to get union gunboatsupport, and there was a gunboat down there, replied that he had twenty minutes to makeup his mind. major bradford responded: "your demand does not have the desired effect."what do you think about that? "your demand does not have the desired effect." now youthink about nathan bedford forrest. what does
that mean to a guy like nathan bedford forrest?forrest responds "in plain and unmistakable english, will he fight or will he surrender?"no, came back the union response. alright, he got his answer. now here we get to thecrux of the whole fort pillow thing, the crux of it for me. this is my opinion, there'sa hundred different books on fort pillow. during the flag of truce, the two sides obviouslyquit firing, but they were in stone's throw of each other. you’ve got these troops,these confederate soldiers, and you've got these union soldiers within some places fiftyto seventy-five yards. they’re going to talk to each other. i'll give you a quote:"at the same time, the parapets of the fort were thronging with negro soldiers, intentlywatching the course of events and some of
whom were heard also to say, 'it was uselessto deny that general forrest was before him' for they knew him too well for that. and soclose were the lines that the white men of both sides were bantering each other fromtheir respective positions while some of the negroes indulged in provoking impudent cheers." a confederate sergeant in the 20th tennesseesaid that the federals "threatened that if we charged their breastworks to show no quarter."while a confederate correspondent stated the federals "boasted with an air of insultingdefiance that he," forrest, "could not take the place, and they asked for no quarter."so the flag of truce comes back, the union forces say no, and forrest ends up givingthe command to attack. with the rebel yell
all along the line to synchronize stuff, theconfederates charge up to the eight-foot walls, into the ditch, and they boost each otherover into the fort. major bradford was heard to cry out almost instantly, "boys save yourlives!" and all through this, the us flag continues to fly from the fort. these statementsare somewhat, and you know it's a combat so nothing ever jives completely here. what occurredinside of the fort is hard to ascertain in some cases. achilles clark, a soldier withthe 20th tennessee cavalry wrote to his sister immediately after the battle. “the slaughterwas awful. words cannot describe the scene. the poor deluded negroes would run up to ourmen, fall upon their knees and with uplifted hands scream for mercy, but they were orderedto their feet and then shot down. the white
men fared but little better. their fort turnedout to be a great slaughter pen. blood, human blood stood about in pools and brains couldhave been gathered up in any quantity. i, with several others, tried to stop the butchery,and at one time had partially succeeded but general forrest ordered them shot down likedogs and the carnage continued. finally our men became sick of blood and the firing ceased."confederate surgeon samuel h. caldwell wrote, “we are just from fort pillow which fortwe attacked on tuesday and carried by storm. it was garrisoned by four hundred white menand four hundred negroes, and out of the eight hundred," his numbers are a little off, "onlyone hundred and sixty-eight are now living, so you can guess how terrible was the slaughter.it was decidedly the most horrible sight that
i have ever witnessed. they refused to surrenderwhich incensed our men,†and here you go, to show you how you never know what exactlyhappens, “and if general forrest had not run between our men and the yanks with hispistol and saber drawn not a man would have been spared. we took about one hundred andtwenty-five white men and about forty-five negroes and the rest of the eight hundredare numbered with the dead. they sure lay heaped upon each other three days.†it wasactually far worse than you can imagine up under the bluff as the federals tried to getdown to the river to escape. the confederate correspondent said that the federals remindedhim of a drove of hogs trying to swim across a stream. "the mississippi river was crimsonwith the red blood of the flying foe, and
our soldiers grew sick and weary in the workof slaughter and were glad when the work was done." in twenty minutes, ladies and gentlemen,out of the five hundred and eighty man garrison, 66% of the blacks and 35% of the whites werekilled. 66% of the blacks were killed. whether a massacre did or did not occur is not indoubt. when you have a percentage so lopsided, there is no doubt that a lot of, as they werecalled at the time, united states colored troops were shot in that fight. the debatablepoint is how much forrest personally had to do with this. how can you have forrest orderingpeople shot down like dogs and then have him "run between our men and the yanks with hispistol drawn?" and there's the crux of fort pillow and nathan bedford forrest becausei don't have the answer. i don't know. i could
keep giving you accounts and accounts andaccounts, but everything contradicts itself. my personal opinion on it, on nathan bedfordforrest and fort pillow, as i said, there was a massacre. i don't think that forrestordered those men, those blacks to be shot. why? because there's two thousand confederatesthere. there’s a chain of command, and there's not one piece of evidence that those ordersfloated down. somebody would have said something about it. all we have are accounts of thefighting. now on the other hand, let's be honest here, did it bother forrest? i doubtit. i don't think it probably bothered him at all. now it's going to bother him laterwhen it gets out about fort pillow and what happened there but it does not bother himat the time. that’s the best i can do for
you as far as forrest and fort pillow. nowwhat it ended up doing for the usct is it actually backfired for nathan bedford forrest.if forrest was trying to send a message that blacks - that the white south i should say- would never tolerate blacks in arms, he sent the wrong message, because it actuallygalvanized, at the very least, the soldiers that had already joined the usct units tofight even harder. we’re about to look at brice’s crossroads to end up things here,but if you look at the crater at petersburg, what do the black troops shout as they chargeinto the crater at petersburg? remember fort pillow. it was a wide-ranging rallying cryfor the usct for the rest of the war. alright, one more battle. you all got the gas, howam i doing here? okay so this is my watch
and i’m currently trying to be a good personand i have all these texts. have you ever had fat tire beer? see what i get in the midstof these conversations that we're having right here? a little musical interlude? everybody'slike yeah man i’ve drank that, i haven't had, i have to go get some. okay! so thisis the best map i could get. i’m not very keen about it, but that's the way it goes.this is the best map i could get. i don't have time, i’m just going to cover one lastbattle, brice’s crossroads which is his best right here, but keep in mind, ladiesand gentlemen, that if you read about nathan bedford forrest, all of he fights that forresthas with the federal army in mississippi are over one thing. the federal government, specificallywilliam t. sherman, will do everything in
their power to do what? keep nathan bedfordforrest from riding from mississippi, up here to tennessee, to cut the railroad line thatsherman needs to get all the way back to kentucky. the worst nightmare of william t. shermanis that forrest gets into tennessee, and as he said, he would break the treasury and costten thousand lives if he could get that devil forrest away from tennessee. that’s a paraphraseso make sure you look up the actual quote. okay, so brice’s crossroads is part of thateffort to get him out of there or to keep him out of there. now the union column willbe under the command of this gentleman right here. this is june of ‘64. this is samuelsturgis. he has about forty-eight hundred infantry of which about twelve hundred wereusct. he has thirty-three hundred cavalry,
he has four hundred artillerymen, twenty-twocannon, and two hundred and fifty wagons. okay, he has about eight thousand men. someof the troops, a lot of the troops, were armed with the newest colt repeating rifles as wellas breech-loading carbines. on june 9th, sturgis's command were encamped about nine miles frombrice’s crossroads in mississippi, a vital road intersection that led to guntown, mississippiand the mobile and ohio railroad, remember that from okolona. on the other hand, forrest'sforces were of about half that size, about forty-five hundred men and eight cannon. thatis eight cannon versus twenty-two cannon. that is roughly four thousand versus eightthousand. to top it all off, forrest guessed wrong. he thought that sturgis and the unionforces would try to get astride the railroad
further north. so what does that mean? forrest'scommand is not together. it’s not concentrated. his furthest units from brice’s crossroadswere twenty-five miles away. on june 9th, forrest is ordered by stephen d. lee - ifyou ever go down to antietam and you walk out of the visitor center at antietam andyou walk up to the confederate guns, they are under the command of stephen d. lee, andnow lee is here in mississippi. it’s a small world. lee orders him to fall back to okolonato unite with other confederate forces. there was more open country around okolona as demonstratedat the beginning of this program by the battle there. however, intelligence reached forrestlate in the evening that union forces were nine miles from brice’s crossroads. whatdoes forrest know? he knows where the enemy
is. what does the enemy not know? where heis, exactly. although outnumbered, forrest felt the terrain offered him advantage andhe ordered forward his command. forrest explained his strategy to one of his subordinates. that’swhy you sat here the whole time john so you could hear this. here is the crux, why youcame out here to learn about nathan bedford forrest and his strategy, in this paragraph.now this is redneck jargon, but see if it makes sense to you. he turned to one of hissubordinates and he said, “i know they greatly outnumber the troops i have at hand, but theroad along which they will march is narrow and muddy and they will make slow progress.the country is densely wooded and the undergrowth so heavy that when we strike them, they willnot know how few men we have. the cavalry
will move out ahead of the infantry and shouldreach the crossroads three hours in advance. we can whip their cavalry in that time andas soon as the fight opens they will send back to have the infantry hurried up. it isgoing to be hot as hell and coming on a run for five or six miles over such roads theirinfantry will be so tired that we will ride right over them. i want everything to moveup as fast as possible. i will go ahead with lyon and the escort and open the fight.â€now most of you caught the reference to terrain but did you hear the reference to weather?as my fellow ranger over here, john nicholas, pointed out to me sitting by the door making,sure none of you get out of this building before i complete this program, john usedto be a bouncer part time when he wasn't killing
people for the greater good of america. hepointed out to me that brice’s crossroads is the only battle that at least he can thinkof where weather is used as a multiplying factor. it’s used as an asset. forrest iscounting on the weather to be his friend and he is counting on the weather to tire out.can you think of another instance of that? who would think of that? nobody asked you.and as i said, it's pretty much going to work out the way he foresaw it. now forrest hadhis command moving at 4:00 in the morning. sturgis moves out at 5:30; the union infantrymoves out at 7:00. the advance guard are going to collide at about 9:30 in the morning andthe federal cavalry arrive at the crossroads first and push down the baldwyn ferry road- a little upside down right here - is this
the crossroads i think? they’re going topush down this crossroads right here. as the federal cavalry pushes down the baldwyn road,the confederates are very heavily outnumbered. they only have about eight hundred cavalryversus thirty-three hundred union cavalry. forrest had a philosophy though, he said notspecifically at brice’s crossroads, but in general: "whenever you meet the enemy,no matter how few there are of you or how many of them, show fight. if you run awaythey will pursue and probably catch you. if you show fight they will think there are moreof you and will not push you half so hard," and forrest did just that. he took his eight hundred men, he's outnumberedwhat? four to one? what does he do? he forms
up an attacking line, he runs out there andsays, “hey, we're about to attack!†and what does the union do? they stop, and theyhesitate, because they don't know what's up ahead in those scrub oaks. that buys forrestan hour and that hour that it buys him brings up another confederate brigade of seven hundredmen, that's under rucker. now he's got fifteen hundred. forrest bluffs again, thirty-threehundred union versus fifteen hundred confederate. forrest bluffs again and buys more time. nowjohnson’s five hundred alabamians show up. forrest throws them on the confederate rightflank. by eleven o’clock, forrest was still without his largest brigade; almost half hisforce. bell’s brigade of twenty-seven hundred men had not arrived. he also lacked any artillery,doesn't have one piece of artillery. forrest
knew he was out of time though, he could feelit. he must defeat the cavalry before the infantry arrive. in typical forrest language,he told the staff officer, “tell bell to move up fast and fetch all he's got.†forrestthen attacked and this time it was for real. at noon the confederates went forward andsucceeded in pushing back the federal cavalry towards the crossroads. by 12:30 the unioncavalry was bent back on its heels and was calling for reinforcements. as forrest hadplanned, when the federal cavalry was attacked, they called for the infantry and the unioninfantry double-quicked to the crossroads for six miles. the last mile they did at arun. folks let me put that into context for my northern friends, okay? mississippi injune is like, the air there is like you could
take a knife and cut it. it is thick. thereis a reason southerners don't stir but in the morning and late in the evening, becauseit's too blasted hot to get out there and do that. these federals are wearing what?wool. and what's the going to make them do? sweat profusely. by the time they get up thereacross tishomingo creek up to the crossroads, they are tuckered out. now forrest's command,they are not super-humans, but they haven't been running either, they're on horseback,and so the infantry starts to deploy. forrest attacks them. as the infantry deploys, theunion cavalry withdraws. that’s a tactical error right there. now he's got, i don't know,probably thirty-five hundred union infantry if they're all deployed versus roughly aboutthe same, a little less than that of the confederates.
do you see how the odds have gone from fourto one to almost one to one because forrest is fighting them in detail? there was a lullin the fighting because finally forrest had bell's brigade on the field, which is hislargest brigade. bell is right here, his name's upside down. these are his units, they'reall kind of jumbled together, but they are in there. at two o’clock forrest launchedanother attack and when a gap appeared between bell and rucker – you all remember thisbecause i’m going to come back at the conclusion - when a gap appeared between bell and ruckerforrest put his escort into the fray. see his tactical reserve there? in turn, the federalscounter-attacked. they were here to fight too and at this point bartow’s 2nd tennessee,that's up at the top, look at what forrest
did. see this road? before bell even getshere as the fighting hours before, forrest has sent that regiment way up here to comein behind the federals by this road and now they're coming into position at the righttime at the right place. but they're only a regiment! so do you know what the 2nd tennesseedoes, bartow does? he has his bugle caller start sounding the charge in every differentdirection. if that's behind you and it's behind a set of woods and it's underneath a hill,how does that sound to you? that’s scary because you don't know what? you don't knowhow many is coming in behind you. it’s really not that many, but you see the game of bluff.the time is now four o’clock, we're up to the second line by the way, forget the firstline on the right. the men are exhausted on
both sides. i’ve described the heat to you,but like a prize fight, ladies and gentlemen, it was the last round and whoever could musterthe most strength could win. now a lull settled on the field. ladies and gentlemen at thistime, when everything, the fighting died down etc. if you were looking, if you were at theright place, you would have seen nathan bedford forrest on king philip galloping along thatline. once again, forrest is at the front and he is out there exhorting his men. hesays, “get up men, i have ordered bell to charge on the left. when you hear the gunsand the bugle sound, every man must charge and we will give them hell.†forrest thenrode back to the right flank, bell is on the left, he went back to the right flank, hisartillery had arrived, and i’m not kidding
you folks, forrest ordered his artillery tocharge. literally. and when morton, his artillery commander said, “are you sure you want todo this, my guns will be captured,†forrest responded to him, "the guns were meant tobe captured, so go ahead," alright? i’d like to thank angie for taking this picturefor me. it was blasted cold. to show you what you're looking at, this is forrest's line,and you can't see it very well, but this is the crossroads, here’s the baldwyn road,and here is the crossroads right up here. the federal infantry would have been in asemi-circle right along through here. you can see how open it is, through, acrossthese fields. forrest launches the last attack of the day and they start to push back. hesends troops, typical forrest, around the
flanks, and his cannons start to roll forward.double-shotted with canister rolling down the road, hand-driven by the men, directlyat the federals. within sixty yards, these cannons are firing double-shotted canister.the federal infantry line started to collapse. as the union forces started to panic withthe only escape route being across the tishomingo bridge. remember bull run? the same thingall over right here. the united states colored troops, remember those twelve hundred uscts?they came up to form the rear guard. they wore patches on their uniform that said rememberfort pillow. they fought as well as the white troops, but like the white troops, were soonretreating along with the rest of the column. during the ensuing retreat, sturgis was heardto have remarked, “if mr. forrest will leave
me alone i will certainly leave him alone.â€the casualties, ladies and gentlemen, for forrest's greatest victory for the union forceswere 223 killed, 394 wounded, and 1,623 missing, for a total out of 8,000 of 2,240. that’sroughly 26, 27, 28% of your force. that’s high, i mean that’s gettysburg standards.confederate casualties were 96 killed, 396 wounded, for a total of 492. forrest inflictedfive to one casualties. forrest captured 16 cannons, 1,500 stands of small arms, 300,000rounds of small arms ammo, 16 ambulances, 176 wagons, 161 mules, and 23 horses, alright?the confederate dead that were at brice’s crossroads were buried along here, and youknow, this is probably one of the meanest things i’ve seen, but there is a civiliancemetery next to this one and years ago someone
came in and vandalized it, i don't mean spraypaint, i mean pushed them over. you can see what they did to the tombstones. that’swhy they're all lopsided right there. but that's the confederate graves right here.now for those tired right now, we shall have small interlude. this - this is ben pickingone of the flags off the graves and running around the cemetery waving it. this is metrying to catch him. it’s an action shot right there. and then i had to explain tohim that we couldn't take that. that was not an easy conversation. this is me trying toget ben to put the flag down. and then this is the family picture. that’s the keeperright? you don't show the first two. i considered that bad luck, i wouldn't take that flag.in conclusion, ladies and gentlemen, i appreciate
your patience. forrest was wounded four timesin the war. he had twenty-nine horses shot out from underneath him, and he killed thirty-oneunion soldiers in hand to hand combat. no other general in the civil war can boast that.no other general has that kind of record. he always, always was at the front and neverasked his men to go anywhere he would not. in the post-war years, he became the leaderof, not the founder, of the kkk. everybody thinks he founded it, he did not found it,but he did mold it into, well nobody knows the numbers, but into a pretty large organization.forrest would head this secret organization until 1869 when it was disbanded. nevertheless,his involvement with the klan has overshadowed his military career to a certain extent. thefort pillow massacre also hounded him until
the end of his life. in his old age, forrestseemed to soften and he became, actually, right before he died, he became saved andremarked that he was saddened that his whole life had been filled with violence from aboy to his old age. his legacy today is still clouded and forrest still elicits strong opinionsfrom both sides. hero, villain, murderer, protector, racist, warrior. it depends onwho you talk to. he still is a good sell for magazines and books which are about to bebought, right? so i can prove the bookstore manager wrong. i can tell you, ladies andgentlemen - i'm glad you made it for this - i can tell you, at the very least, at thevery least, and i will argue this until the end of my days, that nathan bedford forrestis the recipient of the ugliest civil war
monument in the entire nation. that’s horrible.i don't know if you believe everything on the internet, but reportedly it has sevenbullet holes in it. it is located on i-65 south of nashville. even last year, a floridahigh school voted to change its name from forrest high. i think you sent me that article,you can tell her later when she's paying attention. in memphis, the park that contains his statueand burial site had its name changed recently from forrest park to health science or something.in selma, two worlds collide. a monument honoring him had the bust stolen from it, this bustright here, and has never been recovered. forrest is still with us and his legacy willalways be debated. now from a personal standpoint, sorry for the cloudiness of this, i was pleasedto find last year the picture of my great
great grandfather william lafayette hill,and he turned eighteen years of age in 1864. there were three kids in the family, threeboys in the family, the oldest died a glorious death of dysentery in 1862, the other brotherdied in pickett’s charge, and their baby, william lafayette hill turned eighteen in1864. you think about that. you already lost two and now he wants to go in the army. nowfamily stories, whatever that's worth, it's not written down, but i know he does existbecause we know where his grave is, states that the only way the family would allow williamlafayette hill to go to war, w.l. hill to go to war, was if he took his body servant,slave, body servant, but when i say body servant i mean i don't think they're farming i thinkthey're city folks, and generally they would
get, i don't know how old dave was, but they'reabout the same age, but dave and him went off to war. now today, w.l. hill is buriedin houston, mississippi, and if you go outside the chain-link fence to the other side, davehill is over there in that area. after the war he became, the slave, became a carpenter.and i went to the courthouse one time and i looked up a piece of - they were tearingdown a house that reportedly dave hill, the slave, the free dave hill built - and i wantto know if that was him. and on that deed from the 1870s, 1880s, dave hill made hismark. know what i mean? he made his x and it was right there. what did that tell me?that told me my ancestors didn't educate him formally, but this is the intriguing partand i’ll get on with it because i know i’m
running overtime. going back through the deeds,that land was originally my grandfather's and he sold it to dave hill and then davehill took a portion of that land and flipped it like a month or two later and made a profiton it. now what i don't know is if dave hill was that shrewd a businessman or if my grandfatherwas giving him a chance. he never gave anybody anything, he just gave them the opportunity.i don't know, i’ve always been intrigued by that. now in conclusion, going back to the battleof brice’s crossroads, you'll remember when rucker’s brigade broke, nathan bedford forrestcharged in there with his escort. i have to imagine that my eighteen-year-old ancestorsaw general forrest as he was running away.
and this was one person that was very happythat he did that day, okay? that’s pretty cool. alright, in conclusion, ladies and gentlemen,in family lore, william lafayette hill, when he went to memphis, they would stop by forrest'sstatue, that statue was erected in 1904. and i’ve often wondered, when i stand at forrest'sstatue, what my ancestor thought. family lore has it that my ancestor always saluted generalforrest when he was in memphis, that's kind of neat, but he must have read the same passagethat still stands on the statue today: "those hoof beats die not upon fame's crimson soilbut will ring through her song and her story. he fought like a titan and struck like a godand his dust is the ashes of our glory." thank you all very much. thank you. alright, ifyou all want to buy these books, i’ve got
two of them right here!