Though Nathan Bedford Forrest was not a writer, had little formal education, never authored a book, and was not a professional speaker, he did leave us with a number of witty comments, profound words, and sublime statements. Award-winning author, Southern historian, and Forrest scholar Colonel Lochlainn Seabrook has gathered together some of the more memorable and impressive of these and forged them into a small but fascinating work: The Quotable Nathan Bedford Forrest: Selections From the Writings and Speeches of the Confederacy's Most Brilliant Cavalryman.
Among the nearly 140 footnoted quotes included here are Forrest's thoughts on warfare, military rules, West Point graduates, education, friendship, and even drinking, gambling, cussing, and morality. Colonel Seabrook, author of the popular bestseller, A Rebel Born: A Defense of Nathan Bedford Forrest, has also included excerpts from newspaper interviews, Forrest's postwar appearance before the U.S. Joint Select Committee, and numerous examples of the General's personal notes and letters and, of course, his military dispatches and reports.
Much of what Forrest said was never written down but was recorded from the memory of those who associated with him. Particularly poignant is the inclusion of Forrest's black equal rights speech to the Independent Order of Pole Bearers, the forerunner of the modern NAACP, chronicled by a local reporter. From the General's own words we learn that he was not an "illiterate inbred hillbilly," a "monstrous racist," or a "cruel and violent slave owner," as the North and New South disingenuously continue to preach. Quite the opposite. He was not only, as Confederate General Richard Taylor said of him, a "tender-hearted, kindly man," he was also a true Southern gentleman, a fair and compassionate Rebel officer, a successful businessman, and a faithful husband who loved children, protected women, and gave charitably to war veterans, orphans, and widows. A conservative Southerner and a staunch supporter of states' rights who freed his slaves years before Abraham Lincoln issued his fraudulent Emancipation Proclamation, unlike the North, Forrest stood firmly behind our country's most sacred document, the Constitution-before, during, and after Lincoln's War.
The Quotable Nathan Bedford Forrest is a brief but important work that, like Seabrook's other three books on the General, will introduce him to new readers, help destroy the numerous absurd and slanderous Northern myths surrounding him, and bring him out of the shadows and into the mainstream of American history where he justly belongs. Obscured for the past 150 years, now discover the real man for yourself-in his own words. An attractive, unique, affordable, and popular tourist-friendly work that will appeal to both casual Civil War buffs and hardcore Civil War scholars alike, The Quotable Nathan Bedford Forrest is a must-read for all those interested in authentic American history. Available in paperback and hardcover.
Civil War scholar Lochlainn Seabrook, a descendant of the families of Alexander H. Stephens and John S. Mosby, is the most prolific and popular pro-South writer in the world today. Known as the "new Shelby Foote," he is a recipient of the prestigious Jefferson Davis Historical Gold Medal and the author of over 50 books that have introduced hundreds of thousands to the truth about the War for Southern Independence. A seventh-generation Kentuckian of Appalachian heritage and the sixth great-grandson of the Earl of Oxford, Colonel Seabrook has a forty-year background in American and Southern history, and is the author of the international blockbuster Everything You Were Taught About the Civil War is Wrong, Ask a Southerner!
