April 10, 2021 - The Political Cesspool - James Edwards
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You're listening to the Liberty News Radio Network, and this is the Political Cesspool.
The Political Cesspool, known 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 Cesspool is your host, James Edwards.
We are a band of brothers, a native to the soil, fighting for our liberty with treasure, blood, and toil.
And when our rights were threatened, the cry rose near and far.
Hurrah for the bonny blue flag that bears a single star.
Hurrah, hurrah, for southern answer.
Hurrah for the bonny blue flag.
there's a single star as long as the union was faithful to her trust like friends and like brethren and just But now when northern treachery attempts our rights tomorrow we'll hoist on high the bonny blue flag that bears a single star.
Hurrah, hurrah, for southern answer.
Hurrah for the bonny blue flag.
It bears a single star.
Well, that, of course, is the unofficial anthem, the anthem before the anthem, Bonnie Blue Flag.
And Mr. Producer, for some reason, Keith is calling me on my cell phone, which would lead me to believe that he is not, in fact, with us.
So I don't know why he keeps having so much trouble tonight.
But we will have Keith back in the studio next week.
So we will navigate around these technical issues.
But hey, anyway, while we're waiting on Keith to come back, that gives me a perfect segue as we ratchet up Confederate History Month this evening to two hours of content.
And you'll be hearing from Gene Andrews and Dr. Michael Hill, two of our very favorites, who always appear on this series and throughout the year as well before the night is over.
But give me a quick opportunity to read this.
Dear TPC, don't know if this will reach you by the deadline of March 31st.
This listener was talking about our first quarter fundraising drive.
Could you please send the issue of TOQ along with the book, The Crucible, anyway, and the Dixie Republic offer?
Well, that comes from Terry in California.
And yes, indeed, Terry, even if it was late, we would always honor that.
We're not sticklers about the deadline so much.
You have to have a start and a stop point, of course.
But anyway, we will obviously send that to you, Terry, out in California.
Got a great letter from Gerald up in Pennsylvania.
And Gerald was telling me about a recent doctor's visit and some of the health issues that he's having.
And that's something, Keith, that is so special to me about this audience is that you do have that familial bond.
And people will tell us about the marriages, deaths, births, health issues, getting a new job.
I mean, we hear about these things because we have invested in our family and they return that investment with us.
And we are all here pulling together.
And certainly, I just read those two letters specifically from California and from Pennsylvania.
It is a brotherhood and a fellowship that we have here that certainly goes beyond the borders of old Dixie.
And I would certainly rather work with Terry in California or Gerald in Pennsylvania than some scallywag like Russell Moore, who was born in Mississippi, but he ain't a southerner, that's for sure.
And that should go without saying, and our European brethren as well.
But obviously, we have a special kinship with Southerners, and that is why we take the time to feature this series every year.
We always circle April on our calendars.
It is Confederate History Month.
So, Keith, I gave you an assignment.
An article was sent to me by a listener, Jefferson Davis, in his own words.
And this sort of dovetails in a little bit to a presentation you give at the Sons of Confederate Veterans camps from time to time.
Break down the article, if you don't mind.
Well, it's basically comparing and contrasting Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln, and Jefferson Davis.
And it concludes that Abraham Lincoln was much more effective as a wartime leader than Jefferson Davis was.
But that's because Lincoln understood the modern concept that perception is the ultimate reality.
It's not what is really happening.
It's what people think is happening.
Is it what motivates people, what keeps them loyal, and the way to, if you win the war of public opinion, you will win the other war, the war of bullets and bombs and bayonets, if you are well supplied enough, which definitely the North was.
I thought it was a very interesting article.
It's the type of thing that we have talked about here many times about Lincoln was a lawyer.
Jefferson Davis was primarily a soldier.
He'd gone to West Point.
The author of this particular article points out some of Jefferson Davis's faux pas of mistakes in the war.
And I have also talked about that at length in my presentations before Sons of Confederate Veterans meetings.
For example, he kept Raxton Bragg in charge of the forces in the Western theater of the Civil War for the Confederacy much too long.
And he was a horrible general.
But, and so was PGT Beauregard, who basically had two opportunities to win the Civil War for the South and fumbled them both.
And both of these men had their positions because they were supported by Jefferson Davis.
And the question is, why did Jefferson Davis support these people?
That's the $64,000 question.
What are your thoughts on that, Jane?
Well, I mean, obviously, the South had some opportunities to win.
It was, look, Jefferson Davis was an honorable man and a great man and a hero of ours.
Did he make some mistakes?
I mean, God knows, don't we all?
Mistakes are certainly more pronounced because of the importance of the situation that he was dealing with in the future of the country and our people on this continent as we know it.
But what I liked a lot about this particular article was it didn't just compare and contrast the styles of Davis and Lincoln, but it cuts straight to the point about public opinion being paramount.
And that was something that the Union was able to do because our people were so honorable and they wanted to fight a gentleman's war and they wanted to do these things as gentlemen.
And it's hard to do that against a very treacherous and slippery and frankly, in many ways, evil enemy.
But with regard to the issue of slavery, it goes into that in this article.
And this article, by the way, is posted at thepolitical cesspool.org.
We posted it on Thursday.
It's a read, and we try to complement our on-air content here with some articles that can give you some additional resources at the website each week.
But it talks about, of course, the Emancipation Proclamation and how that played into the public opinion and why it was needed in 1863 and why it wasn't done before.
Also, and Sam Dixon will talk about this, how Davis and we have worked with the Jefferson Davis estate in Mississippi, and a lot of our listeners have pieces of the original roof that covered Davis' head during the post-war years.
And so we certainly, certainly revere President Davis, but the foolish move of taking Lincoln's bait and making things immensely easier for the Union with regards to the vital public relations sphere by opening fire on Fort Sumter.
And I think there's little doubt that the article reads, had the Fort Sumter bombardment not occurred, Lincoln would have come up with his own version of the Gulf of Tonkin attack or something like that to get the war started.
But it did help them with regards to the psychological warfare that was going on.
And we will continue to talk about that when we return.
My brother and two other boys were the ones that got in the Kyle Arthur.
And she was drunk.
The road that goes to her house is like really windy.
And she was taking that road at 80 to 100 miles per hour.
And hit into the road area.
Her door flung open.
She ran out across the street to get away from it.
And the other three boys were trapped in it.
And the car exploded.
And then when my mom found out about it, she called me at work.
I don't care what you have to do.
Just get up here to the hospital.
I parked my car and I went inside.
They took us back to this little room.
My mom told me that Jake had been killed.
I erased it.
The other people clearly like, well, you can drink, but just be careful when you drink, you know?
So I don't want anything to do with it because it took my brother a paid for me.
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Then came Alabama and took her by the hand.
Next week be Mississippi, Georgia, Florida.
Well, raised on high the bunny blue flag that bears a single star.
Hurrah, hurrah, for southern Eitserah.
The right.
Texas and for Louisiana, join us in the fight.
Davis, our loved president, and Stephen statesmen are rally behind the bunny blue flag that bears a single star.
Hurrah, hurrah, for southern English-rah!
Hurrah for the bunny blue flag that bears a single star.
Very easy it is, of course, for us to look back now over 150 years later and say, man, we should have done this or he should have known better than that.
A lot different, I'm sure, when you're in the throes of it all and it's unfolding in real time.
But I think it's important that we look back and we be very honest.
And in being honest, we can come to these conclusions that the South was right.
It's been proven more and more right each passing year and that these were heroes and these were the best men among us, perhaps the greatest Americans who ever lived.
And I would include, obviously, Davis, Lee, all the people we feature.
I mean, you start naming them.
You'll have to name them all, even the unknown Confederate soldier.
So many of those are buried, by the way, at Jefferson Davis's property in Piloxy, Mississippi.
But yes, we can make mention of the fact that these men were not perfect and that there were some things that we should take a look at while still certainly maintaining our reverence.
And I don't know if there's anybody out there today that would say that we will only work with Southerners.
I don't know of anybody like that.
Obviously, the war was a long, long time ago, and I have a greater affinity, as I just mentioned, for people outside of the South and indeed the United States than I do for people who were just merely born in the South or who may have Confederate veterans who have completely discarded their patrimony like a Russell Moore.
But how about this one of the Southern Baptist Convention?
How about this one, Keith, that came in this email?
Dear James and Keith, Confederate History Month always invokes a great passion in me as an Englishman.
I was born in the port town of Birkenhead in the north of England.
And I'm proud to say that the CSS Alabama was commissioned in my hometown.
The Alabama was the most successful raider of the war and destroyed or captured 65 merchant ships.
Many of the crew were English volunteers from my hometown led by a Confederate officer.
In my hometown in England, we are all proud of our small contribution to the Confederacy.
Time has shown that the South was right and hopefully can rise again.
That is why we do Confederate History Month, Keith.
It is not just us as Southerners who value and need at least one media outlet in the world to spend a little bit of time each year remembering the gallant sacrifices of men who are better and braver and more honorable than us.
But yes, as us, I'd be lying to you if I said I didn't have a particular affinity for people like Gene Andrews and Michael Hill who have a common story all the way back to the very geographical location that we call home.
And so yes, those interviews are extra special to me, but it is a pan-European thing.
And people from outside of the South can maintain the same appreciation for the sacrifice and the bravery and all of that that we do.
But anyway, Keith, back to you on this, Jefferson Davis, Abraham Lincoln, wherever you want to go with it.
Okay, let's just talk about Jefferson Davis, okay?
He made some decisions that, like you said, with 2020 hindsight, we can criticize.
Why did he make these?
What characteristics of his personality were at play that caused him, for example, to stick with Beauregard and Braxton Bragg as generals when they had proven themselves not to be effective generals in battle.
Where Lincoln, whatever else you can say about him, he would say, hierarchy be damned, I'm going to put the most effective soldier in charge of the Army.
That's what U.S. Grant was.
Why did Jefferson Davis not do that?
Was he a snob or was he simply a West Point man?
I think that probably the answer to that is that he was a West Point man.
Like other people that went to West Point and other professional soldiers, he thought that those West Point guys were the best soldiers.
He's like the general in Dr. Strangelove who talks to his West Point ring and tries to channel the spirit of West Point into all of his decision-making.
Well, Jefferson Davis was a very intelligent man also.
And thank goodness he wrote his own history of the Civil War some years after the Civil War, which shows just how sharp intellectually he was.
And what he points out is that the war, excuse me, go ahead.
No, no, no, I was just going to say, I was just going to say that they have some excerpts from Jefferson Davis' writing in this article that we are referencing right now.
And again, you've got to check it out, folks.
It's something we haven't run before, and it gives you some great context to the discussion.
Well, it is a great exposition, and it shows you that the Civil War at the time that it started was not about slavery.
In fact, Lincoln particularly declaimed that he was fighting to free the slaves.
He was fighting to preserve the Union.
And the Union, it's quite obvious from the founding documents of the United States of America that you have a right of secession.
If you didn't have a right of secession, then our secession from the British Empire was invalid.
You couldn't really take that position.
But he did try to provoke the South into firing on the North to justify his invasion of the South, and he got the hot-headed South Carolinians to do that for him at Fort Sumter.
But, you know, like you said, the South is fought a gentleman's war.
The Civil War is a lesson in the truth of Leo DeRocher's famous comment, the Jewish Major League Baseball manager who said, nice guys finish last.
The South only burned down one northern city in the entire war, and that was Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, to protest Sherman's march to the sea.
And Keith, they bought the part of their operation.
They were into total war.
They killed livestock, burned crops, and burned down towns whenever possible in the South.
Which, you know, wasn't necessarily invented by the United States.
I mean, you go back, I was reading again.
I love to read history.
I was reading about the Battle of Galgamela last night, Alexander.
I mean, you go back with wars of antiquity, and it was always a scorched earth type thing, but that wasn't the way things had been on this continent until the North resurrected that.
And then, you know, they kept a lot of their treachery and just continued to do it moving forward.
I mean, obviously, the firebombing of Dresden, where you just completely burn out a defenseless population that wasn't of military importance, the women and children.
I mean, that harkens back to the evil of Sherman and Lincoln, frankly.
And then, of course, even in this article, by the way, they draw parallels between the so-called insurrection on January 6th and how that sort of has some parallels with Fort Sumter, especially with the way the United States would go on to use that and the United States media would use that.
And he draws some parallels between the Capitol situation on January 6th and Fort Sumter.
Well, the South was fighting a defensive war.
They didn't have a grudge against the Northern people, except for the abolitionists, who were a very small percentage of the people in the North.
We were like Greta Garbo.
We just wanted to be left alone.
And we fought the war on that principle.
And we were principled.
Our leaders were principled.
They did not visit the horrors of warfare on the civilian population of their adversaries any more than absolutely necessary.
And you see again that nice guys finished last.
What happened, though?
Why did the war become a war about slavery and the abolition of slavery?
Well, that started on January the 1st, 1863 with the Emancipation Proclamation.
Why was that done?
You can't reinvent two years later why a war was started.
You have to look at what was happening when the actual war was actually started.
And that's why we have series like this.
And that's why we have an article like the one we posted.
Keith, I can't wait to have you back next week.
We'll be at full strength and we won't have to navigate around phone difficulties.
But thank you so much for your contributions tonight.
And I will see you next week, Brother.
I'll give you a call when we get clear this evening and we'll plan it out.
We'll be right back with Gene Andrews, everybody.
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And here's to brave Virginia, the old Dominion state, with the young Confederacy at length has linked her fate.
Impelled by her example, now other states prepare to hoist on high the bunny blue flag that bears a single star.
Hurrah, hurrah, for southern rights, hurrah.
The body, blue flag, a bingo star.
Then cheer, boys, cheer.
Raise a joyous shout.
For Arkansas and North Carolina now have both gone out.
And let another rousing cheer for Tennessee be given.
The single star of the bunny blue flag has grown to be a limit.
Hurrah, hurrah, for southern rights, hurrah.
Hurrah for the bunny blue flag.
It bears a single star.
You know, that is a great song.
It goes without saying, but it also is a little mini history of the South detailing the order in which the states came to form the Confederacy.
And of course, back then, perhaps even now, I mean, certainly now for me, I have a much greater fondness for my home state of Tennessee or the state of Mississippi where my grandparents were born than I do some corporate leviathan entity like the United States.
Back then, of course, you were going to be loyal to your state.
And now, too, I know for so many of us, we still are.
And that's what you did.
And we talked about that with Robert E. Lee about Robert E. Lee last week.
Joining us now, a man who, the only man, I might add, who has spoken at every single conference the political CESPOL has put on.
And he's always with us for Confederate History Month, as well as other appearances throughout the year.
He is the one and only Gene Andrews, the former commander of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, Tennessee Division, the caretaker of the Nathan Bedford Forest Boyhood Home.
A great friend of ours here on this program.
Gene, how are you?
James doing great.
Sure is good to talk to you, and thank you for playing Harry McCarthy's Bonnie Blue Flag.
That's a great song.
And you know, at one time it was even more popular than Dixie in the South.
That's exactly right.
Yeah, and he wrote it in, so they say, in Jackson, Mississippi.
He was down there when Mississippi seceded and they took down the imperial flag of the Yankee Empire.
And states didn't have state flags back then, like we do today.
So they ran up a blue flag with a single white star on it over the Capitol in Jackson.
And he was so inspired by that, so the story goes, that he went back to his hotel room that night and wrote several of the verses of the song, the Bonnie Blue Flag.
Well, that's why we have Confederate History Month.
That's some history even I didn't know.
I knew, of course, it was the official, unofficial rather, anthem of the Confederacy.
And then, of course, it was the flag that predated even the first national.
I knew that, but I didn't know the story behind it.
And so the more you know with Jane Andrews.
Well, Jane Andrews.
He was from Ireland.
There is something that we always make a point to do here, and that is honor Nathan Bedford Forrest during Confederate History Month.
I mean, what do we know about Forrest, folks?
Let's just do a quick recap.
Became a self-made millionaire despite being born into poverty and having no formal education.
He invested a great deal of his personal fortune, the vast majority of it, to aid the Confederate cause.
Despite being one of the wealthiest men in the South, he enlisted as a soldier of the lowest rank in order to further serve his country.
As a major planter, he was exempted from having to serve in the war, but he chose to serve anyway.
And he didn't get some cushioned job in an office.
He had no formal military training, but enlisted as a private, a soldier of the lowest rank, and then from there rose to be the greatest tactician in the history of mobile warfare, retired as a lieutenant general.
His maneuvers are still studied today.
In combat, he personally killed over 30 enemy combatants.
That's Nathan Bedford Forrest.
That is the kind of history that you would read from, attributed to a mythological god, but he really existed.
He was the most capable.
He was the most genius.
And it is because of that that he is so attacked today, perhaps the most attacked of all the Confederate heroes.
Gene, you talk about Nathan Bedford Forrest.
We've had you on to talk extensively about Fort Pillow.
Give us the real history on that.
An hour-long bio of Forrest.
You've given us those.
We don't have that much time tonight, but we wanted to work in Forrest.
Why do we respect and admire him so?
Because of what he did.
I think, is my humble opinion as a sort of an amateur military historian, he did more with less than any officer in American military history.
He had three commands that were taken away from him and given to someone else.
He had to start from scratch three times over, recruit troops that were deserters behind Union lines or partisans of young boys that never heard a shot fired in anger, arm them, mount them, and then turn them into the greatest fighting force that this country has ever seen.
With your permission, could we go through, and April is Confederate History Month, could we go through the four years of April and just tell our audience what Forrest did during April of those four years of the war?
Gene, that is a fantastic idea.
That's something I don't think we have done quite that way before.
So we've got about five minutes left this segment.
Then we got one more segment.
1862, Shiloh, April 6th and 7th.
Forrest was on the right flank of the Confederate Army's attack on the morning of April 6th.
He captured artillery and prisoners.
That night he worked his way along the riverbank and warned the Confederate generals that reinforcements were coming across.
They ignored him.
On April the 7th, the outnumbered Confederates were pushed from the field.
The next day, April the 8th, at Fallen Timbers, he turned on the pursuing army, the reinforced brigade under Sherman, routed them, drove them back, and ran headlong right through their lines and got trapped behind enemy lines, had to cut his way out, but was shot in the back and severely wounded, and he overcame that.
Now we go to 1863, the First Battle of Franklin, April 10th.
They had word that the Federals were evacuating Franklin.
Earl Van Doren was the commander of the cavalry at that time.
He was coming up the Columbia Pike.
He sent Forrest over to the east to come up the Lewisburg Pike, and they were hit by a column of Federal cavalry coming over from Murfisborough right in the middle of their column and hit their artillery.
The artillery was trying to unlimber the guns and wheel them around, and his chief of artillery, Captain Samuel Freeman, had a gun roll over his foot and broke his foot.
He was captured, and when Forrest returned to drive the Federals away from his artillery and save his artillery, they ordered the prisoners to run.
Captain Freeman couldn't run and they put a pistol in his face and shot him right through the face and killed him.
Also in April, Colonel Abel D. Straight tried a raid across northern Alabama to get into Georgia and cut the Western and Atlantic Railroad between Chattanooga and Atlanta.
Started on April the 1st, April the 30th.
Forrest went after Straight and in a constant run in battle, finally rode him down and captured his command on May the 4th short of the Georgia state line.
That was 1863.
1864, actually this operation started on March the 1st, but went through April.
Forrest came out of Columbus, Mississippi, heading into West Tennessee and western Kentucky to get horses for Abraham Buford's dismounted cavalry division.
And he was through with the raid.
They'd remounted Buford's men.
They'd gone all the way up to Paducah, Kentucky.
They were coming back in Trenton, Tennessee.
And the civilians in West Tennessee asked him to do something about Fort Pilla.
The war criminals that were coming out of there, robbing, murdering, raping, looting the homes in West Tennessee.
Forrest always took up for the civilians and especially the women.
He sent General Chalmers over on April the 12th at dawn.
They drove in the pickets.
They took the high ground around Fort Pilla.
The only federal officer that had any experience was shot by a Confederate sniper, one of the first shots that was fired.
And the battle was basically over by 10 o'clock by the time Forrest got there.
But he continued placing his troops, sent in an order for surrender at 3 o'clock.
It was refused.
And they came over the wall and captured Fort Pilla.
Now, the war propaganda says that it was a massacre, but that's a lie.
It was war propaganda by the lying U.S. government.
They always lie in every war.
They took out 200 prisoners of war, and 130 were too severely wounded to be moved and were left behind.
But they say that he ordered the massacre of the black troops, and we hear that every year over and over and again, where you refute it, and these low IQ people coming back keep coming back with it.
Well, there was a high death rate among the blacks because they had no combat experience.
And the Confederates found when they got over the wall, there were barrels of whiskey along the side of the wall.
White officers had given the blacks whiskey to boost up their courage and made very poor decisions.
They tried to escape and jump down that bluff down to the Mississippi River.
And you've been there.
You've seen that bluff.
And if you're not careful, you'll break your leg, your neck, or your back going down that bluff and that cliff down to the river.
And a lot of blacks did.
They died from the fall, not just being shot by Confederates.
So made some bad experiences with alcohol.
And to paraphrase Dean Wormer in Animal House, black, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son.
That was 64.
65.
April 2nd, he went against James Wilson's federal cavalry of over 5,000.
By this time, Forrest was down to just a little over 2,000 men.
They were defending Selma, Alabama, the foundries and the ammunition plants and the ironworks there at Selma.
A courier got captured with Forrest's orders, so Wilson now knew that Forrest's command was split.
And Wilson, unlike George McClellan when he got Lee's lost order, Wilson went after part of the Confederate cavalry force that was separated, defeated them, and actually came in behind Forrest and his command at Selma.
The home guard broke and ran, and Forrest had to literally fight his way out there out of there to keep from being trapped.
So there's April and Forrest.
My goodness.
And let me, Gene, I'm blown away.
I mean, we have done 16 years of these Confederate History Month series, and what an invincible way to present a snapshot of Forrest just in four different months of the war in April of 62, 63, 65, 465.
Here on the Liberty News, we'll come back.
We'll talk more about it if you be sure.
tuned.
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A miracle is needed if the United States is to survive.
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I'm Scott Bradley.
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Vigorous application of these principles will invigorate and restore the nation, and we may become again the freest, most prosperous, most respected, and happiest nation on earth.
Visit topreservethenation.com to begin that restoration.
Okay, girls, about finished with your lesson on money.
Daddy, what is a buy-sell spread for gold coins?
Well, when you sell a gold coin to a coin shop that's worth, say, $1,200, you don't actually get $1,200.
But don't worry, we're members of UPMA now, so we don't have to worry about that.
Daddy, why does somebody seal that gold?
We don't have any gold at the house.
It's stored safely in the UPMA vault, securely and insured.
But the SP 500 outperformed gold.
Daddy, gold is a bad investment.
Some people do think of it that way, but actually, gold is money.
And as members of the United Precious Metals Association, we can use our gold at any store, just like a credit card.
Or I can ask them to drop it right into Mommy and Daddy's bank account because we're a UPMA member family.
Find out more at upma.org.
That's upma.org.
Why don't we say to the government writ large that they have to spend a little bit less?
Anyone ever had less money this year than you had last?
Anyone 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.
15 years after the Mexican War, many of those 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 forest must be hunted down and killed if it costs 10 000 lives and bankrupts the federal treasury the battle of shiloh rebels were falling back real slow
And old William the Constantine with three brigades 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 that stood in Sherman's way.
He said, Yankee, this just ain't your day.
Old Nathan Bedford Forrest, 300 by his side, said, boys, it's time to ride.
Come line, ride with the devil, for your baby.
Come live, ride with the devil.
The devil is landing your way.
Always great to have Gene Andrews on to talk about our mutual hero and fellow Tennessean, Nathan Bedford Forrest.
And Gene, there was so much you mentioned in that last segment that I'd love to go back and touch on.
You mentioned, of course, Shiloh.
Well, Shiloh was 159 years ago this week.
This is April 8th.
And so that just happened.
I know my great-grandfather was there.
Well, great times, you know, three, but he fought.
And, man, it's hard not to get chills thinking about the kind of man and the kind of valor and the kind of character and heroism that they body, that General Forrest embodied.
And the tomb, the inscription on Forrest's tomb really says it all.
Those hoofbeats die not upon fame's crimson sod, but will ring through her song and her story.
He fought like a titan and struck like a god, and his dust is our ashes of glory.
That is exactly true.
We talked about Fort Pillow.
Gene, I've had the honor of touring Fort Pillow with you, and somebody's got to get the truth out there because it's still being used.
The lies that they tell are still being used as a bludgeon against us.
But with regard to Forrest, what you did in that last segment, Gene, was pretty incredible.
That's just a snapshot.
Remember, Nathan Bedford Forrest didn't only fight in the month of April.
He was there from the beginning to the end of it all.
And just what he accomplished during the month of April throughout the war would be enough to fill books and make him an all-time hero.
And that is just a representative sampling of what you would have gotten out of Forrest during the war years.
It was hard to believe he was human.
These are not exaggerated exploits.
If anything, they have been suppressed and they have been watered down.
The man he was, I don't know if there's ever been another American like him.
Absolutely not.
I think Nathan Bedford Forrest and Geronimo were the two greatest natural warriors in North America.
There's nobody that's come close to them.
Neither one of them had any military training, but they continually befuddled the U.S. government and the U.S. military until finally they just had to throw up their hands and said, you know, we can't do anything about it.
They had to defeat Forrest's entire department.
He never surrendered.
His department was surrendered.
And Geronimo, they tricked him to coming in and sent him off down to Florida to die down there and got him out of the Arizona territory.
So, you know, that's the way the United States treats people that stand up to the Imperial government.
They just try to destroy them.
And they try to do it today.
Forrest was a man's man and a super military hero and a superhero to the South.
And so the South has to be destroyed.
And our heroes have to be destroyed.
And our monuments torn down and replaced.
And we have a society of this cancel culture or wokeism or whatever you want to call it propagated and run and dictated by a bunch of losers, just absolute losers.
And these people can't do anything, so they have to tear down the heroes that actually did something.
We had an expression in the Marine Corps: if you can't hack it, get a racket.
And obviously, these people can't hack it, so this is their racket to tear our history down.
Well, I'm glad you have it.
Gene, I'm glad you, well, everything you said I agree with.
That's not a new occurrence.
But I'm glad you made mention of your service.
And that is, I mean, we introduced you as, of course, a former commander of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, caretaker of the Nathan Bedford Forest Boyhood home here in Tennessee.
But you're much more than that.
You are a former Marine, a former Marine, and even an inviteed to the Cincinnati Bengals football camp.
So he even made it all the way up to the pros, ladies and gentlemen.
That was a short-lived experience.
That I know.
The Bengals have had some rough seasons, but they were never that desperate for me.
But I tell you what, it was a great experience.
Well, hey, I don't know, Gene.
You're still, hey, I saw you huffing at Fort Pillow in 115-degree weather with all the humidity that comes with it.
So I don't know.
I'd take you.
No, I'd dress.
No, no, no.
The person that was on a forced march at Fort Pillow is your wife.
She marched us into the grounds.
I was amazed at the pace she set down.
About seven months pregnant when we went.
Oh, my gosh.
Yeah, wow.
And she did it.
I don't know how we got off in the woods at Fort Pillow, but we got off the trail.
We were trying to find it, and we got there eventually.
That's a whole other story.
Hey, listen, you know, an hour is never enough with Gene Andrews, much less 30 minutes.
And we could spend a whole hour just telling the story of Fort Pillow, our time there, much less the actual battle.
Everything is.
That's what they used to say.
Hey, James, that's what they used to say.
The most dangerous thing in Vietnam was a second lieutenant with a map sheet.
And that's what we were.
We were totally lost.
Well, we took a field trip of supporters there.
We chartered some buses, ladies and gentlemen.
I mean, for those of you who were there, you'll certainly remember it.
And for those of you who weren't, I can just let you know that Gene Andrews and I made the greatest decision, one of the greatest decisions of my life, one of them.
And that was to do a scouting mission.
That was to do a reconnaissance mission because we went up there to get the if you go to Fort Pillow, I don't know if you know this, but it's not right there at the Interpretive Center.
You got to walk to get there.
And it is at a state park, but you've got to walk to get there.
And we thought that there was a direct trail.
And if we had taken the people on what we thought was a direct trail, if we hadn't learned from trial and error, we would have lost some people.
We would have had a body count.
Some of those people would have tied up.
I probably would have.
Yeah.
And could have been us if we had to do it again.
But anyway, we found a shorter route to the battlefield and to the fort.
And it was still not exactly without some footsteps.
But anyway, we all made it.
We had a great time.
And anyway, whether I'm with Gene in person at a conference, on a battlefield, or on the radio, we have a great time with Gene.
He's a dear brother and a dear friend.
And Gene, we only have two or three minutes from that enough time for you to give us a very quick update.
I hope we've wetted the people's appetite just in the small amount of time available tonight on who Forrest was and why we revere him so.
But is there enough time in two minutes for you to tell us what's going on with his reinterment?
I mean, folks, you will have a chance to go to the burial of Nathan Bedford Forrest, unfortunately.
But we're going to try to do that the right way because we've been presented with an unfortunate set of circumstances by the city of Memphis.
What do you know, Jean?
Yeah.
Well, not that much.
We finally got the judge to sign the order to have the grave open, and they had a 30-day waiting period, and that took place back in February into March.
And now, my understanding is they're still haggling with this phony tax-exempt organization, Green Space, Green Feet, Green, I don't know, Green Slime, whatever they call themselves, about actually opening the graves and getting the bodies of General Forrest and his wife, who are both buried there at Forrest Park, exhumed and brought back to the Confederate headquarters, sons of Confederate veterans headquarters at Elm Springs in Columbia, Tennessee.
Now, we've already gotten the statue removed, and it's in safekeeping.
Now, the next part of this is to get the two bodies out of there and brought back.
And I don't understand why they're dragging their feet on it.
They didn't want Forrest there.
They didn't want the statue there.
And we've done what they wanted.
We got the statue and took it out of there.
And now we need to get the bodies and get them out of there.
So I think it's one of those things that, you know, it's just a chance to poke a stick in our eye and insult us again.
And unfortunately, these people have an innate ability of going out of their way to make people hate them.
It has nothing to do with the color of the skin or the race.
It's just what they do.
And, you know, they get a chance to put us in a bind in an awkward situation and drag something out.
They're going to do it.
And that's what they're doing.
So we're hanging in there.
All right.
So we remember that, of course, this isn't anything that the friends of Forrest wanted to do.
But because the city of Memphis was hell-bent on desecrating his grave, the bodies are going to be exhumed with the approval of the family, of Forrest's literal family, his descendants.
Yes.
And the bodies are going to be moved to a place where they can rest in peace, which is not downtown Memphis for anyone living or dead now.
No.
But we don't know when that's going to happen.
We do not have a date.
We do not have a date.
All right, so that's the main thing I needed to know.
There was a date scheduled for last year because of COVID and because, well, the reasons you just mentioned, it had to be postponed.
And so we're still waiting for a definite date where you will be able to attend the burial of Nathan Bedford Forrest and his wife in Columbia, Tennessee.
And we're waiting for a time when his body can be returned and reunited with the most beautiful and impressive equestrian monument that has ever been together.
And we don't know the date yet, but when we do get it, we'll have Gene Andrews back.
Gene, thanks for appearing with us again tonight.
Can't wait for the next time already.
And thank you for honoring our hero and giving us a little more information about him.