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}} Nathan Bedford Forrest (July 13, 1821 – October 29, 1877), called Bedford Forrest in his lifetime, was a lieutenant general in the Confederate Army during the American Civil War. He is remembered as a self-educated, brutal, and innovative cavalry leader during the war and as a leading Southern advocate in the postwar years. He was a pledged delegate from Tennessee to the New York Democratic national convention of 4 July 1868. He served as the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, but later distanced himself from the organization.〔Foner (1988) p. 342. Hurst (1993) pp. 285, 287–288. (. M. Lewis and J. Serbu, "Commemorating the KKK" ), ''Sociological Quarterly'', January 1999.〕 A cavalry and military commander in the war, Forrest is one of the war's most unusual figures. Although less educated than many of his fellow officers, before the war Forrest had already amassed a fortune as a planter, real estate investor, and slave trader. He was one of the few officers in either army to enlist as a private and be promoted to general officer and corps commander during the war. Although Forrest lacked formal military education, he had a gift for leadership, strategy and tactics. He created and established new doctrines for mobile forces, earning the nickname ''The Wizard of the Saddle''. Forrest was accused of war crimes at the Battle of Fort Pillow for allowing forces under his command to massacre hundreds of black Union Army and white Southern Unionist prisoners. Union Major General William T. Sherman investigated the allegations and did not charge Forrest with any improprieties. In their postwar writings, Confederate President Jefferson Davis and General Robert E. Lee both expressed their belief that the Confederate high command had failed to fully use Forrest's talents.〔Foote, p. 1053〕 ==Early life== Nathan Bedford Forrest was born to a poor Scotch-Irish American family in Bedford County, Tennessee. He and his twin sister, Fanny, were the two eldest of blacksmith William Forrest's 12 children with wife Miriam Beck. The Forrest family had migrated to Tennessee from Virginia, via North Carolina, during the second half of the 18th century, while the Beck family had moved from South Carolina to Tennessee around the same time.〔John Allan Wyath, ''That Devil Forrest,'' pp. 2–4〕 After the deaths of his father and Fanny to scarlet fever, Forrest at age 17 became head of the family. In 1841, Forrest went into business with his uncle Jonathan Forrest in Hernando, Mississippi. His uncle was killed there in 1845 during an argument with the Matlock brothers. In retaliation, Forrest shot and killed two of them with his two-shot pistol and wounded two others with a knife which had been thrown to him. One of the wounded Matlock men survived and served under Forrest during the Civil War. Forrest became a businessman, planter, and slaveholder. He owned several cotton plantations in the Delta region of West Tennessee. He was also a slave trader, at a time when demand was booming in the Deep South; he had his trading business based on Adams Street in Memphis. In 1858, Forrest (a Democrat), was elected a Memphis city alderman. Forrest supported his mother and put his younger brothers through college. By the time the American Civil War started in 1861, he had become a millionaire and one of the richest men in the South, having amassed a "personal fortune that he claimed was worth $1.5 million". Before the Civil War, Forrest was well known as a Memphis speculator and Mississippi gambler. He was for some time captain of a boat which ran between Memphis, Tennessee and Vicksburg, Mississippi. As his fortune increased he engaged in plantation speculation, and became the nominal owner of two plantations not far from Goodrich's Landing, above Vicksburg, where he worked some hundred or more slaves ... He was known to his acquaintances as a man of obscure origin and low associations, a shrewd speculator, negro trader, and duelist, but a man of great energy and brute courage. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Nathan Bedford Forrest」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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