Nathaniel Bedford Forrest now joins the likes of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson in having a holiday to commemorate him, newly proclaimed in law by Tennessee governor Bill Lee to be on July 13th. Forrest’s exploits are legendary to students of the War of Northern Aggression, as he is known as the fire breathing cavalryman who dove into combat and shattered Union lines time and again.
This is not a biographical piece on the man, however, this is the story of how Nathaniel Bedford Forrest brought me into the fold of Southern Nationalism and Identity Dixie. It was June 2015 and the controversy over the Confederate Battle Flag was raging, as was the debate over the monument to Forrest. At the time, I was still just a generic “American” treading water between right libertarian and emerging crypto fash elements of the “movement.” More than anything, I was an avowed student of military history, and in particular those firebranded cavalry commanders from Attila and Alexander up to Forrest and Patton. It was around this time that I saw other people, who were normally my ideological colleagues, expressing apathy or outright contempt for the memory and person of Nathaniel Bedford Forrest.
“Who cares, he was just some racist army guy,” or “I don’t really care if they take down a statue of some slave trader guy,” type of remarks peppered our discussions and I grew in outright hostility and fury towards people I formerly considered friends and cohorts. I began a spirited defense of Forrest in the form of several essay length effort-posts in various social media groups, arguing on his behalf. I was so zealous and aggressive I got myself banned from most of them. But, it was in this crusade that I was plucked up by others like me, who offered me a place among them, a place I accepted and have grown in gratitude and appreciation for.
In this way, Nathaniel Bedford Forrest has altered the course of my life rather dramatically. A history nerd’s hobby horse paved the way to an entire new world of intellectual and historical thought, a journey that has ultimately led me to where I am today. So, while many among Southern Nationalists and historians favor men like Lee or Jackson for their numerous admirable qualities, I will continue to find myself a zealous and passionate acolyte of the Wizard of the Saddle. He is to me forevermore the father of my nationalism, the way Lee and Washington are for so many others.
So, I say God bless Governor Bob Lee and I hope you enjoyed July 13th!
Are you gonna pull those pistols or whistle ‘Dixie’?
While I find Ol’ Bed fascinating, this holiday is not a new thing from the likes of a low t Governor Lee. Following a Washington Post article calling Lee racist he is now trying to get rid of the holiday.
Now there’s a shocker! Don’t tell me! – our intrepid governor dressed up in “black face” as a college freshman at Racism U., as well as attended an Old South party and parade at the same college of ill-repute dressed up as Ol’ Bed his own self, and is now “deeply ashamed” of himself for having engaged these deplorable acts. The horror! Lol.
Nice post. I personally derive a great deal of hope and satisfaction from the fact that at least 70% of Southerners polled want their monuments to their gallant forbears left alone. I wrote a little missive about this in Dec. of last year. To wit:
Poll: More than Two-Thirds of Southerners Want to Keep Confederate Monuments
Recall what I have said before about not judging an article by its headline. The post title I have chosen above is a play on the headline of an article that came across my news feed this morning. The headline in question reads as follows:
Poll: More than half of ‘southerners’ want some kind of action on Confederate monuments
Which of course gives the naive among us to believe, or at least to suspect, that a (an unspecified) majority of Southerners polled think their Confederate monuments ought to be removed from public places/do not support their continued existence in the South.
We are early informed in the article that the formerly unspecified majority who “want some kind of action” on Confederate Monuments amounts to 56% of Southerners polled. But let us delve further down the article and learn how this number is determined:
42% who simply say they want the memorials left alone added to the 28% who wish they remain, with the addition of a plaque ‘for historical context’, equals 70% of Southerners polled who want the memorials to remain in place, hence my post title. Additionally, the phrase “for context and historical interpretation” does not mean, as is supposed and intimated in the article (or at least in the headline) that those 28% want anything said about how “evil” antebellum slavery was or anything of the sort. More than likely what the majority of those people want to be stated in such a plaque is that the South didn’t go to war to preserve the ‘peculiar institution’ of slavery, but to save the Constitution and the Southern way of life. Which is the proper historical context.
Further down the article we read:
So only 28% of respondents want the memorials removed from their present places, 23% of whom want them placed into museums, and a paltry 5% of whom want them removed altogether. How many of you think that of that 28% minority who want the monuments removed, a large percentage actually have deep roots in the South, and can therefore rightly be denominated “Southerners?”
The great likelihood is that upwards of 85%-90% of real Southerners (from which I exclude the bastard grandchildren of Yankee Carpetbaggers currently living in the South) who were also respondents to the survey want their monuments left alone as they were when they were erected and as still exist today. They see no need to add a plaque or a marker for “historical perspective,” because they don’t really care what the historically illiterate Yankee SJW elements among them think about their honorable and heroic forbears. They know the truth and the truth hath made them free.
“real Southerners (from which I exclude the bastard grandchildren of Yankee Carpetbaggers currently living in the South)”
Perfectly stated. If your ancestors were not here before 1860 then you have a lot to prove if you want to be admitted into my ethnostate.
Sonora Jack,
A couple of things you may not be aware of. The Governor’s signature on the proclamation declaring Nathan Bedford Forrest’s birthday is required by State statute. Lee made the comment on the day he signed it, that he was doing so because it’s required by Tennessee law.
A couple of days later he stated that, He wants to work with the Legislature in the next session to get the Birthday Proclamation removed (done away with). In the same breath, he stated that the bust of Forrest, in the state capitol, was now under review, after stating, Prior to the election, that it was history and he couldn’t see moving it.
Needless to say, the last 3 or 4 days have seen a shitstorm of internet, email,twitter, and mail in protests by Heritage, history and local groups. Trying to placate the Twitter storm from liberals and Yankee transplants, he shot himself in the foot, they’re never gonna vote for him anyway.
Nathan Bedford Forrest is the epitome of everything dear to us, here in Tennessee. We won’t take it lightly or lying down. He and David Crockett are a couple of home grown heroes.
Sonora Jack,
A couple of things you may not be aware of. The Governor’s signature on the proclamation declaring Nathan Bedford Forrest’s birthday is required by State statute. Lee made the comment on the day he signed it, that he was doing so because it’s required by Tennessee law.
A couple of days later he stated that, He wants to work with the Legislature in the next session to get the Birthday Proclamation removed (done away with). In the same breath, he stated that the bust of Forrest, in the state capitol, was now under review, after stating, Prior to the election, that it was history and he couldn’t see moving it.
Needless to say, the last 3 or 4 days have seen a shitstorm of internet, email,twitter, and mail in protests by Heritage, history and local groups. Trying to placate the Twitter storm from liberals and Yankee transplants, he shot himself in the foot, they’re never gonna vote for him anyway.
Nathan Bedford Forrest is the epitome of everything dear to us, here in Tennessee. We won’t take it lightly or lying down. He and David Crockett are a couple of home grown heroes.
I get absolutely incensed at these foreigners wanting to tear down our history. There are a few in my area, Mostly the SJW types and blacks. Some of them are normal people though. I only hope they are ignorant and not fully drinking the cool-aid. There are still battle scars in my county for godsakes! A hollow near me has a cabin that still has .58 caliber holes in the walls. The inhabitants were murdered by Yankees just after the war. The father was shot and lynched, the teenage son was bayoneted. No one knows what happened to the wife. She was doubtless raped.
The war didnt end at Appomattox. They killed our soldiers for years after that just for who they were.