Memphis Clergy Want Confederate Statue Removed

Wasn't he instrumental in forming the KKK? If so, I'd put a statue of him in a far different category of "offensiveness" than Washington, Jefferson, Robert E. Lee, or even Jefferson Davis.

 

These people are wanting to be offended by everything. Now they want Hobby Lobby to remove "offensive" center pieces they sell because they are a flower vase with cotton plants in them and slaves picked cotton. It is just getting ridiculous.

 

He formed the Klan, but the Klan he formed was far different than what it became. He resigned membership when it became a terrorist organization. History, study it. It is your friend.

 

I checked several sources on N.B. Forrest. I'd already known that he was a highly respected military tactician, but found that - in effect - he translated the tactics of Francis Marion to a broader theater and larger scale engagements. His role in the post-battle killings at Fort Pillow are in dispute. Other than well-after-the-fact eyewitness memories (which I know from my own memory processes, can vary), there appears to be no solid evidence that he ordered the killings, or that he was present or even aware, though he must bear some responsibility for acts done by men under his command. As noted above, he resigned from the Klan after less than three years due to the direction that Klukkers had taken; more than that, he called for its abolition, and if he was truly Grand Wizard at the time (there is some disagreement), actually decreed that it would be abolished. By the 1870s he was calling for blacks and whites to live and work together, a position that brought condemnation from former friends. Like many figures in history, a complex man, and like all of us, one with flaws.

 

How long before the Jefferson Davis Highway in Virginia or Washington and Lee university there (where Lee is buried) get a name change? Maybe they'll even dig up Lee's bones, burn them, and grind them to powder?

Sometimes you just wonder....