Nathan Bedford Forrest , (born July 13, 1821, near Chapel Hill, Tennessee, U.S.—died October 29, 1877, Memphis, Tennessee), Confederate cavalry commander in the American Civil War (1861–65) who was often described as a “born military genius.” His rule of action, “Get there first with the most men,” became one of the most often quoted statements of the war. Forrest is also one of the most controversial figures from the Civil War era. His command was responsible for the massacre of African American Union troops stationed at Fort Pillow, Tennessee, in April 1864, and he served as the first grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan in the early years of Reconstruction.
Forrest was born into a poor family and spent his formative years in rural Tennessee and Mississippi. His hardscrabble background contributed to the development of an aggressive and sometimes violent disposition. With the untimely death of his father, Forrest became his family’s sole provider while still a teenager. Despite his nearly nonexistent formal education, he was able to secure a measure of financial stability for his family, and, when his mother remarried, he embarked on his own ventures. In 1845 Forrest married Mary Ann Montgomery. The two would have two children, only one of whom would survive to adulthood. Forrest eventually became a millionaire, having made a fortune trading livestock, brokering real estate, planting cotton, and especially selling slaves. By the outbreak of the Civil War, he was one of the richest men in Tennessee, if not all of the South.
Shortly after the start of the war, Forrest enlisted as a private in the Confederate army, but soon thereafter, at the behest of Tennessee’s governor, he raised and supplied a cavalry unit, earning a commission as a lieutenant colonel. In the war’s early months he earned a reputation as a doggedly, if sometimes brutally, determined commander who exercised a natural acumen for battlefield tactics. Forrest took part in the defense of Fort Donelson, Tennessee (February 1862), from which he and
