This is a subject that I'll admit I'm confused on because of hearing different things and I could use yalls help on this. I'm assuming it's a myth that Forest was really the founder and responsible for the violence towards Blacks. Also I remember reading something he said from an old newspaper and Iv'e heard this before about the possibility of people from the North coming down dressing up as Klansmen and starting a big ruckus in the south. I would beleive Forest was sincere in not being responsible for the killings considering what he said about the Black men that rode with him during the war saying no better Confederates ever lived or something along those lines. But the Klan originally it seams wasn't meant to be a race killing machine like many think but maybe an outside force did infiltrate that Klan then naking the one everyone knows and understands today. What are yalls thoughts on this ?
Forrest and the klan is a subject that needs its own forum! You picked a very juicy bone to chew.
Well, my dear General Lee, I think you have to forget most of what you've put in the introductory post. The first thing to consider is Parson Brownlow and his views on former Confederates. Forgiving he wasn't! Into outright persecuting the former rebels he was big time. He was also very cynical about the freedmen and had no conscience about using them for his purposes. Forrest was constantly in and out of court for this and that charge - the purpose being to destroy him financially. (That worked.) His view at this point was Brownlow's government was illegitimate, he was using both carpetbaggers and freedmen to oppress white former Confederates, and the ex-slaves would 'come home' after they saw they couldn't manage without whites. Forrest very much believed a new rebellion, at least in Tennessee, was inevitable and was looking for a group like the klan.
Forrest did not found the klan, and it was NEVER a benign group, but there were good reasons it was founded in Tennessee. Whether or not Forrest was a member is cloudy - he said in the later Congressional investigation that he was not and never had been. That was likely the truth. He never took the oath or attended the induction ceremony, but they took him in anyway! He was of the public stature and reputation they needed to get their group off the ground. To Forrest, this was an opportunity to covertly raise and train a combat force should it be needed. He really thought it would be. And, we have to understand that all Forrest's wealth was based on slavery - he definitely wanted the slaves back.
As time went on the klan got very violent and Forrest was unhappy that more radical, violent and uncontrollable elements had combined and were committing crimes, particularly against blacks. It was getting very bad and, naturally, the blacks formed some groups very much like the klan in self-defense. So, race war was added to everything else. Many bloody riots took place in the area. The violence against the freedmen was not a concern of Forrest's - he figured they'd head back to the fields and all would be as it was - but then the klan killed Seymour Barmore in 1869. Barmore was Brownlow's detective who was investigating the klan - he was said to have obtained a list of the leadership of the klan, which included Forrest's name. Somebody killed him and dumped him in the Mississippi River. Sooooo...Forrest was deeply concerned about that. Just a little before, they had killed a state senator. Forrest then ordered the klan dissolved.
By that time the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments had been ratified, Brownlow was off to be a senator in Washington, the Democrat party had won the elections in Tennessee and Grant was president. Forrest left the klan - his objectives had been achieved. However...the klan did not leave him. His family remained involved in it and for some time he tacitly supported it. That stopped altogether with the KKK Act of 1871. Grant should have come down much harder than he did - at least that's what Forrest thought. By then it was definitely not an organization he wanted to be associated with.
Way down yonder in Texas, when the KKK Act became federal law, Texas Ranger Leander McNelly went after William Hezekiah Forrest - the head of the klan in east Texas - and pinned an 18 year old murder on him. McNelly was something again, and he was determined to clean the klan off his land! A couple generations down the line, Forrest's grandson ran the klan in Georgia for many years. He was raised by his grandmother, who never ceased to believe the klansmen were noble knights determined to restore the beautiful way of life of the antebellum South... There were other people who certainly didn't share her romantic view, that's for sure!
Forrest himself, though, had an epiphany one day. He became a Christian, was baptised into the Presbyterian church in Memphis and it was the real deal. His good friend, Charles Armstrong, visited him after this conversion and was so surprised he told Forrest he did not recognize him as the same man. Forrest reflected on this a moment, then said, "No, Major, I am not the same man you knew so well. I am trying to be, and I hope I am, a better man."
He gave a famous speech at a barbecue only a couple years before his death - the Pole Bearers' Speech in 1875. There's a number of interpretations of that speech (and a number of versions of it!) but Forrest had met with his black counterpart - the leader of the Union League who, of course, was not the leader... - but they agreed that racial harmony and unity of purpose had to be established or both peoples would bite the dust hard. I believe Forrest was sincere in his address, which asked for harmony and better understanding between the two races, and acknowledged black people as Southerners like himself. He knew he was dying by that time and had little to gain politically at that point. He definitely ticked off his former buddies and veterans - letters were published in Southern papers condemning his words. He didn't retract them.
