“Nathan Bedford Forrest (July 13, 1821 – October 29, 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. In June 1861, he enlisted in the Confederate Army and became one of the few soldiers during the war to enlist as a private and be promoted to general without any prior military training. An expert cavalry leader, Forrest was given command of a corps and established new doctrines for mobile forces, earning the nickname “The Wizard of the Saddle”. He used his cavalry troops as mounted infantry and often deployed artillery as the lead in battle, thus helping to “revolutionize cavalry tactics”,[3] although the Confederate high command is seen by some commentators to have underappreciated his talents.[4] Although scholars generally acknowledge Forrest’s skills and acumen as a cavalry leader and military strategist, he has remained a controversial figure in Southern racial history for his main role in the massacre of several hundred Union soldiers at Fort Pillow, a majority of them black, coupled with his role following the war as a leader of the Klan.In April 1864, in what has been called “one of the bleakest, saddest events of American military history”,[5] troops under Forrest’s command at the Battle of Fort Pillow massacred hundreds of troops, composed of black soldiers and white Tennessean Southern Loyalists fighting for the Union, who had already surrendered. Forrest was blamed for the slaughter in the Union press, and this news may have strengthened the North’s resolve to win the war.”