April 4, 2020 - The Political Cesspool - James Edwards
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You're listening to the Liberty News Radio Network, and this is the political cesspool.
15 years after the Mexican War, many of the going across the South and worldwide as the South's foremost populist conservative radio program.
And here to guide you through the murky waters of the political test pool is your host, James Edwards.
Same West Point officers would answer the call of duty once again.
Political differences so divided our nation that a war between the states was inevitable.
Brother against brother, North against South.
One of the greatest military geniuses of all times had no formal training, yet he rose from the rank of a private to lieutenant general.
His name was Nathan Bedford Forrest.
That devil force must be hunted down and killed if it costs 10,000 lives and bankrupts the federal treasury.
On the day after the Battle of Shiloh, rebels were falling back real slow.
And old William the Constitution, with three begins of men, thought he might attack those rebels once again.
You know he wants to fight, and he's about to get one.
There's one man who stood in Sherman's way.
He said, Yankee, this just ain't your day.
Old Nathan Bedford Forrest, 300 by side.
Said, boys, it's time to ride.
Come live, ride with the devil, for what is Yankee your pain.
Come live, ride with the devil.
The devil is landing your grave.
Well, ladies and gentlemen, you know, here on Confederate History Month, this is a radio program based in Tennessee, and one of our greatest heroes in the state of Tennessee's history is, of course, Confederate Lieutenant General Nathan Bedford Forrest.
And because of that, for at least the last couple of years, if not longer, Gene Andrews has been on the first show of Confederate History Month for the last few installments.
And he's back again tonight.
Gene Andrews, of course, a retired history teacher who served as a combat officer with the 3rd Marine Division in Vietnam, a former commander of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, the Tennessee Division.
Gene now serves as the caretaker of the Nathan Bedford Forrest Boyhood Home.
And he's going to return this hour to talk about one of our greatest heroes, Gene.
Happy Confederate History Month to you, my friend.
It's always great to have you, especially in April.
James, thank you very much.
Certainly appreciate the invitation to be on the show.
And I'm doing very well in spite of the virus.
Oh, that's why you didn't want me in the studio tonight.
Okay, I understand.
Well, Keith was coughing.
He's got a comedy routine going on now, too.
He's the jack of all trades.
Yeah, Keith was coughing in the first hour.
We had to send him to the green room for a while.
Anyway, but listen, hey, you know, our guest in the previous hour, which was the first hour of Confederate History Month, our Confederate History Month series this year, was Paul Angel, editor of the Barnes Review.
And he was talking about one of your articles for the defending Dixie issue.
He had no idea you were going to also be on the show tonight.
Yeah, he didn't know, but we knew.
Yes, sir.
They were very nice to allow me to write an article and present the truth on what happened just up the river from y'all at Fort Pillow there.
And they did an excellent job with that and refuting all the lies and misinformation that been used down through the years to slander Farson.
And the so-called Fort Pillow Massacre, I'm sure you're aware of just war propaganda.
It was just basically a lie to try to stir up anti-South sentiment in the North and revive the war effort in the North.
Also to try to swing the election in 1864.
Yes, sir.
Yes.
It was also used to try, you know, it was a piece to try to find something to stir up the electorate in the North regarding the 1864 presidential campaign.
Well, and Gene's talked about this.
Now, here's the thing you've got to remember, folks.
Just because we're in Confederate History Month right now, you know, we've got 16 years of archives at thepoliticalscessible.org.
So what I would encourage you to do is go back to last year and the year before and the year before.
Go back every April as far as you can.
Gene Andrews has been appearing in April for a long, long time on this show.
He appears throughout the year.
It speaks at every host in public.
I tell you that.
When we plan an event, the first thing I do is I call Gene and say, Gene, do you want to do it?
And if he says yes, then we go forward with the conference.
If not, you know, it's Dyson.
But listen, that Andrews guy.
Well, I was just going to say, Gene, I was just going to say, we've done full hours of you breaking down Fort Pillow and the life and times of Nathan Bedford Forrest, and people should check that out in the archives.
Well, thank you.
Appreciate that.
But we all know that Andrew's guy works cheap, so that's why he gets on the program a lot.
Listen, Gene, I'm sorry.
I had a little bit of technical difficulty in my headset.
Okay.
What I wanted to ask you, I'm sorry, very quickly.
The last time you were on, which was a month or two ago, we were talking about the reinternment of General Forrest.
Now, we had a lot of people email us.
Before we get into the interview proper tonight, I want to quickly cover this.
We made mention of it last week, but we didn't have a lot of details to give.
We have about two minutes before our next break.
You were last on.
There's going to be a reinternment of General Forrest.
His grave is going to be moved.
There's going to be a ceremony.
When we mentioned this last time, many, many listeners emailed me saying they wanted to come.
It has been postponed.
Yes.
And you're going to give us the details now.
We want people to know this.
Okay, it was postponed, not necessarily because of the virus, but because the city of Memphis and the politicos down there had been dragging their feet.
You have to go before a judge and have a judge sign off on an order to remove a body.
And so they were supposed to have done the paperwork.
They agreed to it.
The body of General Forrest and his wife, Mary Ann Montgomery, were going to be moved from Forrest Park and reinterred at the Sons of Confederate Veterans International Headquarters at Elm Springs in Columbia, Tennessee.
But the city of Memphis never signed off on it.
And they were supposed to do this in December and then January.
And then they kept screwing around, screwing around, making excuses, you know, typical political hacks.
And then the coronavirus came along and they shut down all the political offices in Memphis, including the judge's office that would have to sign off on it.
So now it's been postponed indefinitely, but we think we're going to try to get it in the latter part of July or sometime in August this summer.
So that's where we are.
The destiny.
All right.
Yeah, go ahead.
I'm sorry.
No, I'm sorry, Gene, but just to be clear, because so many people, after your last appearance, had said they were making plans to go to Columbia, Tennessee for the reinterment or the Chapel Hill where he would be laying in state at the end of May.
We want to let you know that it has been postponed for sure.
So cancel plans for May and stay tuned.
And the absolute date has not been set in stone yet, correct?
That is correct.
Yes, we're looking at it was supposed to be May 23rd for the reinterment there and the ceremony there at Elm Springs.
But that has been postponed not necessarily because of the virus so much as because it was the city of Memphis dragging their feet and screwing around.
And so we look at it into July sometime in August this summer, we hope.
Well, I'll tell you what we'll do, folks, is we will have Gene back on when the absolute date is set.
But for right now, if you were planning to travel to Tennessee for the Forrest ceremony in May, cancel that and stay tuned.
We'll let you know.
But when we come back, we're going to continue to celebrate the life of General Forrest on Confederate History Month 2020 here at TPC.
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On the day at Battle of Shiloh, rebels were falling back real slow.
And old William the Constitution, with three beginnings of men, thought he might attack the rebels once again.
You know he wants to fight, and he's about to get one.
There's one man that stood in Sherman's wing.
He said, Yankee, this just ain't your day.
One Nathan Bettle Crossed, 300 by side.
Said, boys, it's time to ride.
Come on, ride with the devil, for what is Yankee Ukraine?
Now, you're probably wondering, folks, why did I play that twice back to back?
Well, there's a good reason for that.
This is the week of the anniversary of the Battle of Shiloh, April 6, 1862.
My great-great-great-grandfather was there.
And the Battle of Fallen Timbers, which is referenced in that song, which was Forrest covering the retreat of the Confederate Army.
Which is one of the most magnificent stories of Forrest that there ever was amongst, you know, he really is like a mythological god, except he really existed and he really did do those things.
But, you know, one of my great-great-great-grandfathers fought at the Battle of Shiloh, and I'm very proud of that.
I am so proud of that.
That was 1860.
That was this week, 1862.
And Keith, they said the South never smiled again after Shiloh, but I smile every time I think about that sacrifice.
Well, my great-grandfather was in Forrest's 15th Tennessee Cavalry and fought to the end of the war with him.
Isn't it interesting?
You know, we talk so much, Gene, about genetic predisposition.
And isn't it interesting that after all these years through time and space, we still find each other.
And here we are tonight.
Yours truly, Keith Alexander.
You, Gene, of course, with your illustrious Confederate ancestry.
1862 was a long time ago, but here in the current year, the descendants of those brave Confederates are still rallying together.
And I love that.
And Gene, we love you.
Well, I think the thing is, the more we look at the history of this country and the direction this country is going today, the more we realize that the people that formed the Confederate government in 1861 and then the soldiers that joined in late 61, 62 or whenever, they were on the right track.
They knew what they were doing.
They knew this country needed to be turned around and go back to the original Constitution.
And so we can see that our ancestors and those people that formed that government were way ahead of the curve in realizing what had happened to the United States government from 1787 to 1861.
And they said, you know, they're not going to change in the Northeast.
There's no way they're going to change.
We need to just get away from that.
And I don't think they use this phrase, but they said, we need to get off the Titanic and get a lifeboat while we can and get out of here.
Well, what they needed to do, Gene, was they needed a divorce, but they preferred an uncontested divorce like most people that get a divorce do.
But Lincoln wasn't going to have that.
He provoked intentionally Southern troops to fire upon Union troops.
And we do know that Sam Dixon's ancestor was the one who lit that fuse, according to the story he tells.
Is that right?
At any rate.
That's what he tells me.
He swears it's true.
And quite frankly, like Gene was saying, I think secession looks more and more like the only answer to the differences that exist between the North and the South.
Or at least blue state America and Red State America.
Before we get into our forest segment of the program, going back to the virus again, you know, we were told we were supposed to wear a mask when we were out in public.
So I made a mask out of a small Confederate battle flag, and I mean— I bet you did.
It got a lot of thumbs up today when I went to the grocery store and buy the post office.
So we're flying the flag thanks to the coronavirus.
And I told people, a guy was stopping me and asked me about it.
I said, I'm not worried about the coronavirus.
I'm trying to keep from getting the Yankee virus.
I said, I don't want to catch something that's going to make me talk with a whiny accent.
And, y'all, my God, it's so hot down here.
And why do you people talk like that down here?
That's the virus I don't want to get right there.
Amen, Gene.
Yeah, look, I don't like the hidden humidity, but I'd rather suffer it any day than talk like that.
You got me.
Hey, because, you know, we descended from the Scottish Islands, for God's sake.
You know, the windswept isles of the UK, what now is Britannia.
So we weren't made for this weather, but I'll tell you, I'll take it over a Yankee any day.
Anyway, hey, Gene, you know, as we say here, Tennessee has three great heroes, Nathan Bedford Forrest, Davy Crockett, and Jack Daniels.
And so, but we can only celebrate one on Confederate History Month.
And so it's going to be the general Forrest.
Listen, I mean, this guy, you couldn't make it up.
I mean, I don't think, and I've said this, and the SPLC has quoted me on this.
His true story rivals that of any mythological god.
Born into poverty, a family of 12 children, he rises to become a self-made millionaire in business, which is hard enough for anybody to do.
I mean, I've certainly never been able to do it.
And then, so no formal education to become a self-made millionaire in business.
Then, with no formal military training, enlists, even though he was exempt from doing so, he enlists in the Confederate Army as a soldier of the lowest rank, a private.
He was a private.
And then he grows to become one of the greatest military tacticians in the history of warfare.
Some total history of warfare, not in the Civil War of all time, with no military training.
That's Nathan Bedford Forrest.
That is a guy you can win with.
Oh, absolutely.
Absolutely.
I want to give you a quote.
This is, and I highly recommend this book.
I'm not selling books, but I highly recommend it.
Samuel Mitchum came out with a book a couple of years ago about Forrest called Bust Hell Wide Open, which came from that quote from Fort Donaldson.
And in that book, Dr. Mitchum said, in the Western theater of the war, the professionally trained West Point generals hardly ever won, while the untrained amateur hardly ever lost, referring to Forrest.
And I think that's a great capsulization of what happened in the Western theater of the war.
He just had that innate knack of seeing a situation on a battlefield or judging the terrain or the military situation and just instinctively knowing what to do and get away from this West Point tactics that so many of the officers were using then.
And he just used common sense and beat the living daylights out of them.
Well, Gene, that's a very interesting point.
You know, Lincoln, for all of his faults, was willing to give people that were not, you know, the cream of West Point an opportunity to lead.
He said of Grant, he said, I can't spare him.
This man will fight.
And they said that he's a drunkard.
He's this, that, and the other.
He said, well, I don't know what he's drinking, but we need to order a barrel of it for every general in the Union Army.
Now, contrast that with Jefferson Davis keeping an inept commander with West Point credentials, Braxton bragging control of the Western theater for way too long, and then replacing him with John Bell Hood, who was said to have a heart of a line and the head of wood.
And he could have had, you know, why wasn't Nathan Bedford Forrest promoted?
And if he had been promoted, would that have made a difference?
Look, we would have substituted him for Stonewall after the tragic accident.
But what say you, Gene?
Well, Forrest knew the strategy.
He knew how to win in the Western Theater of the War.
And he wrote to Davis on several occasions, giving him the information and suggesting or giving him a plan to stop these huge armies that were ripping and roaring through the Western theater, through Tennessee and Mississippi and Alabama.
And Forrest understood the South could never win a war of attrition.
We could fight these big, huge bloodbaths like Chickamauga and Gettysburg and all that.
We could never win the war because we couldn't replace the losses we took.
But Forrest knew how to fight the war with a smaller amount of men and manpower and supplies and win.
Folks, Gene Andrews, the incomparable Gene Andrews, there is no better authority on the life of General Nathan Bedford Forrest than this man.
And we're so thankful to have him this and every Confederate History Month series we do.
We'll be back with him right after this.
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Some members of Congress are happy that President Trump has fired the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community.
Michael Atkins was appointed by President Trump.
This sidelines an independent watchdog who played a key role in his impeachment.
He says he had every right to do it.
I thought he did a terrible job.
Absolutely terrible.
He took a whistleblower report, which turned out to be a fake report.
It was fake.
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He took a fake report and he brought it to Congress.
Congressional critics say the firing will have a chilling effect.
Democrat Adam Schiff is chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.
He says what the president is doing now is illegal.
While the statute requires that Congress get 30 days' notice before the president would remove an inspector general, he has put the inspector general immediately on administrative leave.
Congressman Adam Schiff was on MSNBC.
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Now, Forest, he shouted from all the hill.
Said, boys, give him hot lead and cold steel.
And he gave his reveal, then he led a charge.
That's when old Sherman, he swole home.
He looked real close.
I think he broke out my cornstruct.
Said, man, run that devil down.
He's coming after me just to stand your ground.
But fear took control.
The Yankees did not.
The devil's work on this day is done.
Yeah, come on.
Right with the day For your sins yanky pain Right with the day Evil is one of you.
Well, you're probably wondering who sings that fantastic song.
Well, the name of the artist is Rick Revelle.
Now, a follow-up question is probably, has he ever appeared on the Political Assessment's Confederate History Month coverage?
Of course, the answer is yes.
Yes, he has.
What a great song.
What a great tribute to one of the greatest Americans, Nathan Bedford Forrest.
Now, let me say one thing real quick before we toss it back to Keith and Gene.
There was a recent interview that I did.
I had the recent opportunity to sit down with a French magazine to talk about Southern history and culture.
And Nathan Bedford Forrest was a focal point of that interview.
Now, that interview, which I gave, I believe back in January, has just been published just in time for Confederate History Month.
Now, I posted it to our Twitter account at James Edwards TPC.
Now, it has been translated into the French language.
Now, whether you can read the language or not, the point is that TPC has become a well-known around the world as an entity that capably serves as an advocate for Dixie and her people.
And there were two people that I consulted with for this interview to help me along my way, and they were Gene Andrews and Keith Alexander.
And they're both here on the show tonight.
And that interview has just been published.
It's at my Twitter account.
And I did have it translated into English and transcribed, and it turned out very, very well.
So I thank both Gene and you, Keith, very quickly.
Gene, since they're playing this song about the Battle of Fallen Timbers, in essence, could you favor our audience with a brief synopsis of Forrest and the Battle of Fallen Timbers?
Yes, sir, we can.
What happened was after, well, let me back it up a little bit.
One thing that made Forrest so great, I think, is that he urged his commanding officers to take action that would ensure they were going to win the battle.
He did that at Shiloh.
He reported that troops were coming, being ferried across the river, and the Confederates are going to be outnumbered the next day if they didn't immediately attack Pittsburgh Landing and stop this flow of reinforcements coming across the river.
His warning was ignored.
The Federal Army drove the Confederates off the Constitution.
That was General Beauregard at that point.
Was that outright, the Confederate commander-in-chief?
And the Confederates were driven off the field, were retreating south back down towards Corinth, Mississippi.
And every time the Confederates got into a bad situation, they called on Forrest to bail them out.
So now Forrest was given command of the rear guard.
And just like the song says, Sherman was pressing them rather closely, thinking he was going to just zoom right in there and take out the Confederate retreat and probably capture their wagon train and thousands of prisoners.
He felt the Confederate Army was totally demoralized.
This was going to be an easy victory for him and quite a feather in his cap.
So they got to a point that was called Fallen Timbers where a lot of the wood had been cut for furnaces, for iron furnaces.
And there's a second growth area there, very rough terrain.
And Sherman's men were coming up over a ridge to attack the Confederates, and he threw them into a line, threw out their pickets or skirmish line out in front.
And that's when Forrest turned on them.
So they went after the skirmish line, which was out in front of Sherman was a regimental commander then, was out in front of his regiment.
They drove that skirmish line in, and as the Confederate mounted troops under Forrest came up over this hill, they rode right into the entire regiment.
Now, most of Forrest's men pulled in the rein on their horse and said, whoa, we didn't sign up to get into something like this.
And common sense told them we're going to be outnumbered, and they're pulling back on the reins.
Forrest never let up.
He rode full speed right through the middle of the Federal Regiment there, firing his pistol, slashing with his saber, and now he's behind enemy lines.
And they're trying to shoot him off his horse.
In fact, he did get shot.
One soldier came up to him and put a rifle up to his hip, pulled the trigger, and shot him right into the hip there, a very painful wound.
And he's slashing and cutting, trying to get his way back to the Confederate lines.
And the advantage that he had, all these logs and things that were there, it was hard for them to really get up close to him and get another second fatal shot at him.
And he finally cut his way out, made it back to Confederate lines, but then he was hospitalized and had to ride in a buggy for several weeks there to recover from this wound that he received at Fallen Timbers.
But he came back.
And you know what?
Another thing, I've shared this with you, Gene, as well, and the audience, too, about this.
But after that injury, he recuperated near Nashville.
And he recuperated in a home that would later be bought by one of the Everly brothers.
I don't remember if it was Phil.
It was Phil Everly.
Well, it was Phil Everly.
I didn't remember if it was Phil or blonde-haired.
But Phil Everly said that there was something so beautiful about the fact that Nathan Bedford Forrest had recovered at the home that he now owned.
But he recovered, and then he went on and he fought more, and he fought to the very end.
Oh, yes.
But this is the point we were making about Forrest, that there were so many battles, like at Shiloh, and like at Chickamauga and like at Fort Donaldson, that he gave the commanding officer the information that they needed to win the battle, and then it was just ignored.
You know, he surrendered.
Gene, let me ask you to do this.
Tell him exactly what Forrest did at Chickamauga and how he had that battle won, but for the blockade of Braxton Bragg.
Well, there was a rout.
You know, the Federal Army pulled a division out of line, and it so happened that Longstreet's attack hit right at that gap and broke right through the center of the Federal line.
They veered off left and right.
The Federal Army was routed from the field, and Forrest was in full pursuit.
And he didn't sit back like Bragg did and congratulate himself on winning a great victory, although Bragg was in his tent thinking he'd lost the battle because his plans hadn't been followed.
The Confederates on the field saw this gap in the Federal line, and they just came pouring through there and routed the Federal Army off the field.
And Bragg thought, you know, well, my plans were followed, so we must have lost.
So Forrest stayed in pursuit after the Federal Army went up and over Missionary Ridge.
He got there so fast that he captured a federal signal tower on Missionary Ridge.
And he ordered the Federals up on top of this high tower to get down off of there.
And he climbed up there and used this huge telescope to look down into Chattanooga and saw the disorganization of the U.S. Army in Chattanooga.
And he sended messages back to Bragg to bring the army up, bring the army up, bring the army up.
They're totally disorganized in Chattanooga.
We can go in there and just drive them right into the Tennessee River.
And Bragg made all kinds of excuses that they had such horrific losses and the army was disorganized and they couldn't do this and couldn't do that.
And Forrest was telling him, yes, we've had a rough fight for three days here, but we were the winners.
And it's going to be a lot easier for our disorganized, worn-out army to inflict the final blow on the U.S. Army because they've lost and they are demoralized and they are ready to get out of Chattanooga any way they can or surrender.
And he just recognized that.
It's like a lion or a tiger moving in for the kill.
They can smell that weakness in a weaker animal and they're ready to attack.
And Forrest had that initiative right there.
He was a Celtic warrior chieftain.
Absolutely.
Misplaced in a modern age.
Now, that was General Thomas was a Union general who I think was on this hill there, the rock of Chickamauga.
He saved the Federal Army from total annihilation.
And here, once again, the Confederates were throwing everything they had at that hill to try to attack Thomas when all they had to do was post their artillery around there, pin him down, and bypass that strong point.
Why do you want to attack a strong point and slaughter your men when you can go around it and get behind them and cut off the retreat from Chickamauga up over Missionary Ridge and into Chattanooga?
Forrest understood that.
He didn't have any problem understanding that.
So he was eager.
Well, Gene, let me ask you this.
After this battle and after Braxton Bragg had refused to follow Forrest's sage advice, is this when they had the confrontation that is so famous?
And if so, tell us about that.
Forrest was very critical of Bragg.
And Forrest didn't have it in personally for Bragg, but Forrest was absolutely furious that so many of his men's lives had been wasted and they were laying out there on that battlefield.
And nothing came of it.
And he said, why does he fight battles if he's not going to follow up on it?
And, well, we'll get into that after the break.
Folks, I could go all night long.
I may ask Sam in the break if we can.
Listen, with a guest like Gene Andrews at Confederate History Month, I would never stop unless the commercials made me.
We'll be right back.
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two zero five six seven two two thousand why don't we say to the government writ large that they have to spend a little bit less Anybody ever had less money this year than you had last?
Anybody better have a 1% pay cut?
You deal with it.
That's what government needs, a 1% pay cut.
If you take a 1% pay cut across the board, you have more than enough money to actually pay for the disaster relief.
But nobody's going to do that because they're fiscally irresponsible.
Who are they?
Republicans.
Who are they?
Democrats.
Who are they?
Virtually the whole body is careless and reckless with your money.
So the money will not be offset by cuts anywhere.
The money will be added to the debt, and there will be a day of reckoning.
What's the day of reckoning?
The day of reckoning may well be the collapse of the stock market.
The day of reckoning may be the collapse of the dollar.
When it comes, I can't tell you exactly, but I can tell you it has happened repeatedly in history when countries ruin their currency.
Welcome back.
To get on the show, call us on James' Dime at 1-866-986-6397.
All right, everybody.
Well, welcome back.
And it's Confederate History Month.
And I tell you, on a series like this, there's never enough time for any of our guests.
I could say it for Paul Angel.
I could surely say it for Gene Andrews.
I could go three hours with Gene and still feel as though we left half of it on the table.
But this is how it is at commercial radio.
Gene, I got a letter, a very thick letter from a listener in Arkansas.
We received so much correspondence in the last two weeks in advance of our Confederate History Month series because our listeners anticipate it.
And I'm so thankful they do.
It's something we're known for, and I'm glad to be known for that.
But a listener in Arkansas wrote this, James.
Enclosed is a copy of an article that I ran across about a descendant of Ambrose Burnside of Fredericksburg fame.
The real interest in this article, though, is about Lottie Moon, who fled the altar when asked if she would take Ambrose as her husband.
I'm not a Baptist, but in years past attended Baptist services with friends, and I remember seeing Lottie Moon donation envelopes for missions to China.
I was going to mail you a copy of a recent Barnes Review article on Lottie.
By the way, don't you forget, folks, that Paul Angel, the editor-in-chief of Barnes Review, was our guest in the last hour.
But I think a relative walked off with it.
You see, Lottie was a southern lady when the war broke out, and she spied for the South.
She was apprehended by the Yanks and might have met a tragic fate, but for the fact that Ambrose Burnside was the commanding general of the army that captured her.
Ambrose might have been a Yankee dog otherwise, but he was a gentleman.
He interceded and released Lottie after the unfortunate outcome of the war.
She became a missionary.
Now, Gene, you are a recovering Southern Baptist, and I think everybody listening to the show tonight knows my church's fate for having me as a member of the Southern Baptist Convention.
But one thing I remember growing up every year was the Lottie Moon Missions offering.
Lottie Moon was a Confederate.
Yeah, I mean, don't we all as Southern Baptists?
Lottie Moon was, and it still remains one of the great icons of the Southern Baptists.
Here's the thing.
They always promoted that to donate to the missions.
But they never said the full story.
They never told the full story of Lottie Moon.
The reason she became a missionary and went to China and worked over there, she could not stand living in the South under Reconstruction.
The Reconstruction government was so brutal and so horrible that she gave up her life as a well-educated, well-bred Southern young lady and left and devoted her life to the mission field to get away from Reconstruction government.
She preferred the wet markets of China to Reconstruction South, right?
Yes, yes, absolutely.
But the Southern Baptists, they don't ever bring that up.
You know, they skip over that part of her life like it never happened.
Well, Gene, I appreciate this listener in Arkansas who brings that up.
I remember growing up and in my teenage years, the Lottie Moon Christmas offerings, it was always around Christmas time.
We gave the Lottie Moon offering.
And I knew that Lottie Moon was a Confederate.
I don't know how many other people do, but I certainly knew it.
But, you know, what would our southern forebears think of the churches in the south today?
They would be embarrassed when you had people like Charles Quintard, you had Father Abram Ryan, the chaplains that went on the battlefield and served on the battlefield.
They didn't duck the war.
And so many of these churches today have turned their back on the Confederate.
That's why I don't go to the Baptist church anymore.
When they came out with that tirade against the Confederate flag, and the sick thing about it was what they, whatever their letter was or whatever their proposal or stance on it was, it was word for word from the Southern Pervert Law Center there in Montgomery.
And they just took the garbage that the Southern Poverty Law Center hands out and repeated it.
They didn't even have the intelligence or the courage to write up their own statement.
They had to take it from the Southern Poverty Law Center.
And I thought, this organization is run by a bunch of idiots.
You know, what in the world are they doing?
And you work at your church.
You worked at your church as I did at mine.
And, of course, my entire church was thrown out as a result of me being a member, but you left.
But Keith, very quickly.
Well, my father used to say in the 60s that he didn't leave the Democratic Party.
The Democratic Party left him.
I think that you and James could say you didn't leave the Southern Baptist denomination.
The Southern Baptist denomination left you.
But I'll tell you this, the people who founded the Southern Baptist Convention, they would be proud of us.
Lottie Moon would be proud of us.
And that's all I care about, Gene.
Well, yes.
But that type of person is not around today.
And we don't have the politicians that have the backbone today to stand up to this political correctness.
And political correctness is cultural Marxism.
It's communism.
That's all it is.
And our political leaders, starting with our governor, do not have the backbone to stand up to this.
And that's what's so discouraging about our so-called organizations like the Southern Baptists, like the governor of Tennessee, like colleges and universities, like you just run down the list of everybody that caves into this garbage.
It's just pitiful.
And to bring your faith up, we need to look back at real Southerners, true blue Southerners, or true gray Southerners, I guess you would say, like Nathan Bedford Forrest.
Tonight's show showed you why a lot of people have heard that General Nathan Bedford Forrest was a man of renown, but they didn't know why.
And I think that Gene has told us a lot about that.
Gene, in the closing minutes of this show, anything else you want to tell us about the history of Nathan Bedford Forrest, about General Lee's comments about General Nathan Forrester.
But before you answer, Gene, that's a great question, Keith.
And it ties right into my last comment, and we have about five minutes remaining.
And, Gene, I emailed you twice this week the agenda that we would follow for this hour, and I don't think we've hit it at all.
Which happens sometimes in live radio.
I enjoyed it.
Well, we hope that it's been a great show nonetheless, but it hasn't necessarily followed the idea that I had in mind, but that's live radio, and we are live tonight.
I would ask you this.
That's why Forrest was such a great commander on the field, because they told us in the Marine Corps that your battle plan goes out the window as soon as the first shot's fired.
So you better be ready to adjust on the field under pressure and under fire.
And that's what made Forrest such a great commander.
He had a plan.
This is my last question, and you can go all the way with it because it ties into what you're saying.
How does it happen?
How does it happen that a man who was born into poverty and illiteracy with no formal military training rises to become one of the greatest military tacticians in the history of warfare on par with Caesar and Rommel and Alexander and all the others?
How does that happen?
Go, Gene.
Just common sense.
He had a tough upbringing, had a tough life.
He learned how to live hard, to work hard, to judge of character, of people that he Forrest knew.
This is one of the great things about Forrest, and there were many.
He knew what he didn't know.
And he got people on his staff to take charge of things that he wasn't familiar with.
John Morton and the artillery, Samuel Freeman, the artillery.
The staff members that he had, he had a man from Memphis that ran hotels there.
He had him in charge of his commissary because he knew that if you had X number of people, you needed X amount of food to feed those people over a certain period of time.
So Forrest knew what he didn't know.
And he got people that were experts in these different areas to take the responsibility to take over the areas that he didn't know that much about.
And he learned through the battles that he fought, and his tactics and his strategy got better and better as he rose up through the ranks.
Remember, he started out as a battalion commander, then went to a regimental commander, a brigade commander, to the division commander, and finally a corps commander.
Yeah, but how does a guy that would know a businessman entering into the war as a private?
What essential quality did he have?
How do you, we have seconds remaining, but how do you read topography?
How do you read landscape and figure all this out as he did?
I mean, what a genius.
What a hero.
He was a military genius.
And it didn't come to him until he was put on the battlefield.
And the tough upbringing that he had, the business sense that he had, that allowed him to take a situation, whether it was a business situation or whether it was a military situation, and look at that and analyze it and say, you know, this is what we need to do.
I don't care what the dead gum book says we need to do.
From looking at this, this is what we need to do on the field.
And he was able to react under pressure, whether it was a business situation or whether it was even worse in a military situation.
And you hear that whine of those bullets going past your ear, it really affects how you're going to make decisions, believe me.
I think I have an insight on this too, Gene.
Yes, sir.
He was a fighter.
He had fought fights.
He fought his whole life.
Like in Hernando and stuff like this.
When his uncle was assassinated, basically, by another family, he knew how to fight.
And that essential knowledge about fighting, he carried over into military fighting.
Yes, sir.
He did that.
That's for sure.
And then he got people around him that knew how to support him and carry out his plans.
So thank you very much.
Not nearly enough time with Gene Andrews tonight, but folks, go back to April of 1918, 17, and you can learn more about the Battle of Fort Pillow, what really happened there, the bio of General Forrest, so much more for Gene Andrews.