Nathan Bedford Forrest's critics have called him everything from a violent backwoodsman, illiterate redneck, and cruel slaver, to a crooked politician, unfaithful husband, and simple-minded hillbilly. However, traditional unreconstructed writers, like Southern historian and award-winning Tennessee author Colonel Lochlainn Seabrook, know that General Forrest was none of these things. In fact, he was quite the opposite, as is revealed in Mr. Seabrook's classic work: Nathan Bedford Forrest: Southern Hero, American Patriot.
As we learn in this enlightening little book, far from being an inhumane slave owner and trader, Forrest granted most of his servants their freedom even before Lincoln's War. Others he enlisted in his own command (half of dozen who served as his personal guards), then emancipated them in the fall of 1863 - the same year Lincoln issued his "military measure," the fake and illegal Emancipation Proclamation (which freed no slaves in either the North or the South). Forrest never separated servant families, refused to sell to cruel slavers, and was even responsible for reuniting divided black families.
Unlike Lincoln - who throughout his life repeatedly blocked black civil rights and aggressively campaigned for American apartheid and the deportation of all blacks out of the U.S. - after the War Forrest happily hired back his original servants with full civil rights, then called for the South to repopulate herself with new African immigrants. Neither the founder or leader of the KKK as pro-North and New South historians disingenuously teach, Forrest closed the anti-Yankee organization down in 1869 when it began to take on racist overtones. These and many other captivating facts are presented clearly and concisely by Colonel Seabrook, a cousin of Forrest, in this rousing defense of the Wizard of the Saddle, one of the greatest, most inspiring, beloved, romantic, complex, and intriguing figures in American history.
Lavishly illustrated and written in an easy-to-read style, at 120 pages it's perfect for Civil War museum shops, historic homes, or any tourist hot spot. Makes a great gift as well. Nathan Bedford Forrest includes 139 footnotes, a bibliography, and an index. Also available in hardcover. The foreword is by bestselling Southern educator James Ronald Kennedy, author of The South Was Right!
Civil War scholar Colonel Lochlainn Seabrook, a cousin of General Forrest, 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 which have introduced hundreds of thousands to the truth about the War for Southern Independence. He has penned nine books on Forrest, more than any other writer, and his screenplay of his Forrest biography A Rebel Born is being turned into a major motion picture. A seventh-generation Kentuckian of Appalachian heritage, Mr. 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!
His other titles include: The Great Yankee Coverup: What the North Doesn't Want You to Know About Lincoln's War; Confederacy 101: Amazing Facts You Never Knew About America's Oldest Political Tradition; Confederate Flag Facts: What Every American Should Know About Dixie's Southern Cross; Everything You Were Taught About American Slavery is Wrong, Ask a Southerner!; Give This Book to a Yankee: A Southern Guide to the Civil War for Northerners; and Honest Jeff and Dishonest Abe: A Southern Children's Guide to the Civil War.
