Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire memphis mayor wants to dig up General Forrest and his wife's graves and move them

People need to just chill out. The civil war was over 150 years ago, and no one is talking about bringing back slavery...why are people so up in a tiff??? Social media has created a feeding frenzy. Me personally, I don't care about the Rebel Flag one way or another. I totally get the points of both sides on that one, so whatever happens just happens. But good LAWD, now we're going to dig up someone who's been dead for 150 years and move them? If someone who has been dead for 150 years is causing you THAT much grief, you SERIOUSLY need to be medicated.

http://youwereliedtoabout.com/nbf.htm


No serious historian argues that Forrest organized the Ku Klux Klan. The Klan was begun by six men, whose names are known, in Pulaski, Tennessee. Intended to be a social club, the Klan quickly adopted political goals and began to oppose the Radical Republican plan for Reconstruction. Popular news media today ignore these well established facts, charging that Forrest founded the Klan, and academic historians do not speak out to correct the misinformation.

One prominent historian, Robert Selph Henry, states the issue clearly. Speaking of Forrest he says, His second public career, in the days after the war, however, rests entirely on tradition and legend, for most of what he did in those desperate days of struggle was never written down and some of it,no doubt, never told. The Klan was a secret organization and No man who could have known the fact of his own knowledge ever wrote it down and published it, but it is universally believed in the South, nevertheless, that Forrest was the Grand Wizard.[2] An even earlier historian, John Allan Wyeth, considered the matter of the Klan carefully before writing his biography of Forrest in 1899. Wyeth concluded that Forrest was not intimately involved in the Klan for a very simple reason: he was too obvious a candidate for the position of leader. Forrest felt it was inevitable that suspicion would focus on the Klan as it began to make an effective resistance to the policies of Reconstruction. Of all the men in the South who might be thought to be involved in the organization he knew he would be the first to be suspected of being its leader. Forrest was too good a strategist to occupy such an obvious position. Forrest readily admitted knowledge of the Klan but denied any personal involvement.[3]

Henry is quite honest and very accurate in saying that the Reconstruction Era Klan was, and is, surrounded by legend and mystery. He is true to historical sources in saying that the link of Forrest with the Klan is a matter of tradition and of folk belief, not of demonstrable historic fact. The firmly stated association of Forrest with the Klan is the position taken by more recent writers who have no more facts than Henry did but who choose to draw very different conclusions.

This means that the identification of Forrest as Grand Wizard of the Klan rests on sources written from memory long after the events of the 1860's at a time when the reputation of the Klan was very positive in the minds of many white Americans. No documentation exists which provides solid, historically accurate evidence of the association of Forrest with the Klan.

Nathan Bedford Forrest was a slave trader. That sounds bad to Twenty-first Century ears, but Forrest lived in the Nineteenth Century. His actions must be judged by the morals of that day, not ours.

Forrest was a plantation owner and that means in the minds of some, that he must have been an exploiter of his labor force. Forrest certainly owned plantations. "Plantation" means a place where something is planted; "plantation" is a synonym for "farm," although the denotation is that a "plantation" is larger than a "farm."

Nathan Bedford Forrest should not be viewed as anything more or less than he was----a man of the 19th Century who held the views, attitudes, and values of his time; a man who became a fierce warrior during the conflict of Civil War; and a man who stood for what was widely considered to be fair and reasonable treatment following the end of the fighting. Forrest was not a perfect man, nor was any other character of that era (or of this) but he deserves to be judged fairly, not with preconceived and prejudiced ideas.

Still don't make it right. miles

The Western side of the River has different folks than the Eastern side. Them Black folk in Forrest City ain't gonna be doing ANYTHING unruly.

[I was gonna say that that they "knows their place", but that sounds sorta racist]

Social media isn't the cause. It's just the vehicle.

If somebody calls you on the phone and says that you house is on fire, it wasn't caused by the phone.

Digging people up who have been buried for 150+ years; that's kinda crazy.

Los Angeles as is the case with most of Southern California has cemetery's with hundreds of Civil War veterans grave sites, and held in high regard. As to General Forest and why his and his wife's graves are located within a city park instead of a cemetery I have no idea, but would imagine there was once a good reason. Apparently that reason no longer exist, at least with its residents.


Phil

I see your from left coast cali, not a place i woukd ever live thankfully

Theyve trained yall to be tolerant over there huh

Not hardly, I have my views and opinions, and don't begrudge you yours, apparently that fact is not mutual... my heritage comes from the South, and like most of its citizens moved West in the early years.

Phil

In light of the liberalism running amok in the South right now, we have yet to see those in the South do a thing...so perhaps, hold that thought.