Download The World's Greatest Generals: The Life and Career of Nathan Bedford Forrest AudioBook Free
"I got there first with the most men." (Nathan Bedford Forrest) Despite the fact that the Civil War was fought nearly 150 years ago, it remains a polarizing topic for the united states even today. And nowhere is this more apparent than in the life and legacy of Confederate Lieutenant Basic Nathan Bedford Forrest, the war's most controversial soldier. When the conflict broke out, Forrest enlisted in the army and was instructed to raise a battalion of cavalry. A self-made man with no formal military training, Forrest spent the entire conflict fighting in the Western theater, becoming the one person in the conflict to go up from the get ranking of private to lieutenant standard. By the finish of the conflict, Forrest was known throughout the South as the "Wizard of the Saddle", and anecdotes of his prowess in battle were legendary. In addition to being hurt multiple times in battle, Forrest has been acknowledged with having wiped out 30 Union military in fight and having 29 horses taken away from under him. History has properly accorded Forrest his place among the most courageous military of the Civil War, and he gained lots of command successes in the Western movie theater of the conflict. But Forrest was also at the head of Confederate troops accused of massacring a Union garrison comprised mostly of black military at Fort Pillow, and he was also a dominant slave trader, an overt racist, and likely a leader of the Ku Klux Klan following the Civil War. When he died in 1877, in part due to various conflict wounds, he was the nation's most notorious unreconstructed rebel. John E. Stanchack, an editor of the Civil War Times Illustrated, aptly noted in 1993, "Everything...about [Forrest] is bent to match some political or intellectual plan."
