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Nathan Bedford Forrest Quotes
1821–1877
Nathan Bedford Forrest (13 July 1821 – 29 October 1877) was a prominent Confederate Army general during the American Civil War and the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan from 1867 to 1869. Before the war, Forrest amassed substantial wealth as a cotton plantation owner, horse and cattle trader, real estate broker, and slave trader.
Random Nathan Bedford Forrest quote
17 quotes
If you surrender, you shall be treated as prisoners of war, but if I have to storm your works, you may expect no quarter.
War means fighting, and fighting means killing.
Get there first with the most men.
I never see a pen but I think of a snake.
That we are beaten is a self-evident fact, and any further resistance on our part would be justly regarded as the very height of folly and rashness.
This fight is against slavery; if we lose it, you will be made free.
Preserve untarnished the reputation you have so nobly won.
Every moment lost is worth the life of a thousand men.
I've got no respect for a young man who won't join the colors.
Men, you may all do as you damn please, but I'm a-goin' home.
I want to elevate you to take positions in law offices, in stores, on farms, and wherever you are capable of going.
Speech before the Pole-Bearers Association (1875)
Does the damned fool want to be blown up? Well, blow him up then. Give him hell, Captain Morton- as hot as you've got it, too.
There is no doubt we could soon wipe old Sherman off the face of the earth, John, if they'd give me enough men and you enough guns.
I am opposed to it under any and all circumstances, and in our convention urged our party not to commit themselves at all upon the subject.
When I entered the army I took forty-seven negroes into the army with me, and forty-five of them were surrendered with me. I said to them at the start: "This fight is against slavery; if we lose it, you will be made free."
Boys, do you hear that musketry and that artillery? It means that our friends are falling by the hundreds at the hands of the enemy, and here we are guarding a damned creek! Let's go and help them. What do you say?
The river was dyed with the blood of the slaughtered for two hundred yards. The approximate loss was upward of five hundred killed, but few of the officers escaping. My loss was about twenty killed. It is hoped that these facts will demonstrate to the Northern people that Negro soldiers cannot cope with Southerners.
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