Posted on 03/01/2010 12:32:35 PM PST by C19fan
Oh, come now... any slave dealer who has a clean, comfortable Jail that sleeps 300 can't be all bad.
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Questions to be Asked Candidates
5. Are you opposed to Negro equality both social and political?
6. Are you in favor of a white man's government in this country?
7. Are you in favor of constitutional liberty, and a government of equitable laws instead of a government of violence and oppression?
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9. Are you in favor of the reenfranchisement and emancipation of the white men of the South, and the restitution of the Southern people to all their rights, alike proprietary, civil, and political?
Forrest, in an interview with the Cincinnati Commercial, Cincinnati Commercial, August 28, 1868 stated:
"Yes, sir. It is a protective political military organization. I am willing to show any man the constitution of the society. The members are sworn to recognize the government of the United States. It does not say anything at all about the government of Tennessee. Its objects originally were protection against Loyal Leagues and the Grand Army of the Republic; but after it became general it was found that political matters and interests could best be promoted within it, and it was then made a political organization, giving its support, of course, to the democratic party...."
Forrest skillfully parsed his words. His deeds, however, establish that he was a racist. If he denounced the Klan, he was lying. He was a detestible man. Period.
>>>As far as being accused of war crimes at the Battle of Fort Pillow is concerned, he was not guilty.<<<
Really? “The fish is rotten from the head” fits this situatuion pretty well. So this testimony is 100% fabrication?
Later, a congressional committee questioned 21 black survivors of the massacre. The following is a transcription of three men’s testimony taken from pages 82-84 in James McPherson’s paperback version of Marching Toward Freedom (1994):
Sergeant Benjamin Robinson, (colored) company D, 6th United States heavy artillery, sworn and examined...
QUESTION: Were you at Fort Pillow in the fight there?
ANSWER: Yes, sir.
QUESTION: What did you see there?
ANSWER: I saw them shoot two white men right by the side of me after they had laid their guns down. They shot a black man clear over into the river. Then they hallooed to me to come up the hill, and I came up. They said, “Give me your money, you damned nigger.” I told him I did not have any. “Give me your money, or I will blow your brains out.” Then they told me to lie down, and I laid down, and they stripped everything off me.
QUESTION: This was the day of the fight?
ANSWER: Yes, sir
QUESTION: Go on. Did they shoot you?
ANSWER: Yes, sir. After they stripped me and took my money away from me they dragged me down flat on my stomach; I laid there till night, and they took me down to an old house, and said they would kill me the next morning. I got up and commenced crawling down the hill; I could not walk.
QUESTION: When were you shot?
ANSWER: About 3 o’clock.
QUESTION: Before they stripped you?
ANSWER: Yes, sir. They shot me before they said, “come up.”
QUESTION: After you had surrendered?
ANSWER: Yes, sir. They shot pretty nearly all of them after they surrendered.
Major Williams, (colored) private, company B, 6th United States heavy artillery, sworn and examined.
By the chairman:
QUESTION: Where were you raised?
ANSWER: In Tennessee and North Mississippi.
QUESTION: Where did you enlist?
ANSWER: In Memphis.
QUESTION: Were you in the fight at Fort Pillow?
ANSWER: Yes, sir.
QUESTION: What did you see done there?
ANSWER: We fought them right hard during the battle, and killed some of them. After a time they sent in a flag of truce.
QUESTION: When did you surrender?
ANSWER: I did not surrender until they all ran.
QUESTION: Were you wounded then?
ANSWER: Yes, sir. After the surrender.
QUESTION: Did you have any arms in your hands when they shot you?
ANSWER: No, sir. I was an artillery man. I had no arms.
Eli Carlton, (colored) private, company B, 6th United States heavy artillery, sworn and examined.
By the chairman:
QUESTION: Where were you raised?
ANSWER: In East Tennessee.
QUESTION: Have you been a slave?
ANSWER: Yes, sir.
QUESTION: Where did you join the army?
ANSWER: At Corinth, Mississippi, about a year ago.
QUESTION: Were you at Fort Pillow the time it was taken?
ANSWER: Yes, sir.
QUESTION: State what happened there.
ANSWER: I saw 23 men shot after they surrendered; I made 24; 17 of them laid right around me dead, and 6 below me.
QUESTION: Who shot them?
ANSWER: The Rebels; some white men were killed.
QUESTION: How many white men were killed?
ANSWER: Three or four.
QUESTION: Killed by privates?
ANSWER: Yes, sir; I did not see any officers kill any.
QUESTION: Were you shot with a musket or a pistol?
ANSWER: With a musket. I was hit once on the battlefield before we surrendered. They took me down to a little hospital under the hill. I was in the hospital when they shot me a second time. Some of our privates commenced talking. They said, “Do you fight with these God damned niggers?” They said, “Yes.” Then they
they said, “God damn you, then, we will shoot you,” and they shot one of them right down. They said, “I would not kill you, but, God damn you, you fight with these damned niggers, and we will kill you;” and they blew his brains out of his head.
Near the end of his life, he seems to have changed his views. He hadn’t rejected racism in 1868, but by 1875 he spoke to a gathering of blacks, saying “I came to meet you as friends, and welcome you to white people. I want you to come nearer to us. When I can serve you I will do so. We have but one flag, one country; let us stand together. We may differ in color, but not in sentiment.”
In Nov of 1875, after hearing a sermon (rare for Forrester), he told the pastor, “I am a fool that built on sand; I am a poor miserable sinner.” On the following day, Nov 15, he met and prayed with the minister, converting to Christianity after a lifetime of rejecting it.
Two years later, one of the former soldiers who knew him well remarked all the harshness seemed gone from him, and two months after that he was dead.
He was born extremely poor in a slave-owning society. He lived a violent and brutal life, but seems to have repented of it in his final years. What I object to is people who condemn those of the past - Jefferson, Washington, and even a man from the lowest levels of society like Forrest - without remembering that we grew up in very different times.
Would you, or I, have done better than Forrest if born in 1821 in the deep South? Maybe, but maybe not. As late as the 1930s, my Mom was raised in a county in Indiana where it was illegal for a black man to be in the county after sunset, and those who disobeyed would be beaten and left at the county border. I’m just not certain that many smug modern men would have behaved any better were our situations reversed.
I can understand how you might think I am a smug modern man. Perhaps my views are tempered by by the starvation of 7 million of my ancestors by the exported biggotry that took root in the south - only the few may enjoy the rights of an Englishman.
There are many who did better than Forrester, long before he set out on his destructive path. Pennsylvania passed An Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery in 1780. In Britain, William Wilberforce took on the cause of abolition in 1787 after the formation of the Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, in which he led the Parliamentary campaign to abolish the slave trade in the British Empire with the Slave Trade Act 1807. The British West Indies abolished slavery in 1827 and the French colonies abolished it 15 years later. Wilberforce lived to see in the Slavery Abolition Act 1833.
As far as home grown activism, how about Justice John Jay:
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/digital/jay/JaySlavery.html
Believe me, I am pleased that Forrest may have had a conversion in his later life.
What really set me off here is invoking the sphecter of Forrest's reputation as a warrior, when he was a war criminal and leader in racist terrorist organization, to keep modern day Washington in line. I have spent a good deal of time living in the Deep South. I have no patience for that type of attitude.
Thank you for your kind comments.
Actually, most of the defender’s at Rorke’s Drift were English. Of the 139 defenders, only 19 or so were welsh. The idea that the defenders were Welsh is an erroneuous assumption based on the fact that the 24th Regiment of Foot later became the South Wales Borderers following the Cardwell Reforms of 1881. However, prior to this, the regiment was an English regiment based in Warwickshire, and their regimental song was ‘the Warwickshire lads’ not ‘Men of Harlech’.
Rorke’s Drift really demonstrated that being ferocious warriors in the British Army were not the sole preserve of the Celt....
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