Forrest, Nathan Bedford

Forrest, Nathan Bedford

(1821–77) soldier; born in Bedford County, Tenn. With little formal education, he became a wealthy livestock dealer, planter, and slave trader. When the Civil War commenced, he enlisted as a private, but by October 1861 he was a lieutenant colonel in command of his own troop of cavalry. He participated in many of the early battles including Shiloh, but soon began to operate on his own, using his cavalry as a "strike force." His motto was the phrase attributed to him: "Git there fustest with the mostest." Aggressive and daring—he stabbed a would-be assailant to death after taking a near-fatal gunshot wound—he struck hard and often at Union lines in Tennessee and Kentucky from 1862–64; troops under his command carried out an infamous massacre of black Union troops at Fort Pillow, Tenn. After the war, he had to rebuild his fortune through planting and railroading. He served as grand wizard of the newly organized Ku Klux Klan (1867–69) but resigned in protest of some of its tactics.

The Cambridge Dictionary of American Biography, by John S. Bowman. Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995. Reproduced with permission.