April 12, 2026 - The Political Cesspool - James Edwards
54:46
Radio Show Hour 3 – 2026/04/11
James Edwards and Gene Andrews defend Nathan Bedford Forrest as a military genius who could have won the Civil War through guerrilla tactics. They recount his 2020-2021 reburial after grave desecration and aggressively refute the Fort Pillow massacre narrative, claiming it was Union propaganda designed to justify continuing the war. Edwards argues that Confederate surrender demands were met, 206 prisoners were taken, and wounded soldiers were left behind rather than buried alive. Ultimately, the hosts assert the massacre story is a lie used to tarnish Forrest's legacy since the Confederacy could not defeat him on the battlefield. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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A Tremendous Moment in History00:13:01
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.
Fifteen 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 Forrest must be hunted down and killed if it costs 10,000 lives and bankrupts the federal treasury.
Well, Gene Andrews is the caretaker of the Nathan Bedford Forrest Boyhood Home in Chapel Hill, Tennessee.
And we had an opportunity, Gene, there together a few years ago, not long ago, to be there for the reburial of General Forrest and Mrs. Forrest after the city of Memphis had desecrated his grave and forced him to be exhumed.
And reburied.
Gene, you were a pallbearer.
You carried the casket that held Forrest's remains, and I was there.
It was a very intimate ceremony, it was not a lot of people.
I was there with my wife and children.
I'll never forget the day that I stood as far away as I am now from Keith Alexander, from the casket that held Nathan Bedford Forrest in the boyhood home that you are the caretaker of.
That was just a few years ago.
That was a very emotional day for me.
The two hearse that came up here from Memphis stopped out on the road, and we had cavalry reenactors lead the procession up the driveway.
It's five tenths of a mile from the road up to the forest home.
But we had 26 dressed in the gray uniforms, mounted on horseback, of course.
Cavalry reenactors led the procession up.
They stopped, they would unload the caskets.
And then six of the reenactors would get to carry them about 10 yards and set them on one of those portable gurneys.
And then another six would carry them another 10 yards or so.
And then I was very fortunate to be one of the pallbearers that carried the casket from out in front of the home through the rock wall in front of the house and up the sidewalk and up onto the porch.
And it was very emotional to be holding onto that casket.
And only about eight or ten inches away from me was Bedford Forest.
And of course, we carried his wife's casket as well.
To think about all the times I'd been out there at the home and been stung by wasps and sunburned and fell off the roof and been burned at the burn pile, burning up all these limbs from storms and things.
But then it was all worth it to be that close to one of my all time heroes ever since I was a young boy and heard about Forrest.
That was something else.
I can't even imagine to be a pallbearer for the most recent funeral of Nathan, but Forrest, and I don't say that in jest, I say that in disgust.
Because what he had at Forest Park in Memphis with that world class equestrian monument that we have had ceremonies at for TPC conferences here in town.
But it was just remarkable.
But Memphis isn't the same city as it was when he was buried there the first time for obvious reasons.
But I can tell you this, Gene I can't tell you we're not number one in the nation in murders back then.
In the days that Forrest's statue was erected.
Well, that's right.
And by the way, I mean, this whole thing, I mean, you can still go to the Pink Palace Natural History Museum here in Memphis, and there's bills of sale that DeForest had signed, and all of that.
But his slaves loved him.
There's also this history of one of Forrest's slaves participating in his original burial, and he had a chicken in one hand and a skillet in the other.
And he was very elderly by that time.
And everybody, all of the white Memphians, cheered just to see.
You know, this man that had served Forrest.
And then when he became too weak to carry on, they put him in Forrest's carriage in a position of honor.
That is true history.
But this thing with being his pallbearer at his funeral, Gene, I could never relate to.
But I can tell you this I was standing two feet from the casket as he lay in state, and people were traveling through the boyhood home to see him.
And I grabbed my son was on one hand, and my daughter was on the other.
And I grabbed their arms and I said, never forget this moment.
Never forget that you were here.
For a southerner and someone that's proud of our history like you are, that was just a tremendous moment, a highlight in your life that could probably never be repeated again for any other kind of an occasion like that.
Well, it should have been as big as the Hunley, because I was there for the burial of the Hunley crew in Charleston in the early 2000s, and there were 10,000 people there.
And as historic as that burial was, because it was the first submarine to ever sink an enemy vessel in the history of naval warfare, None of them were as celebrated as Forrest.
Forrest should have had 100,000 people there, but because of the climate they were in now, only 20 years later, it's totally different.
It was hush hush, invitation only.
Well, you know, even in my childhood, they did not make as big a deal of General Forrest as they should have.
It was just, you know, he was like, oh, he's some small person in Western Tennessee campaigns and whatnot.
And that's not, you know, the truth.
I'm so glad you're getting the truth out there.
He was a true military genius, and I think one of the very few true military geniuses created by the war.
And apparently he has cast a very long shadow.
They still study his tactics today in military colleges, I understand.
That's exactly right.
They just don't say who it is, but they do study those tactics and what he, the innovation that he brought to it.
And the thing I always try to bring out I have a program that I give on forest strategy.
If they'd only listen to it, He saw the concept of how the South should fight the war.
We could never win a war of attrition.
We didn't have the numbers to do that.
And yes, we won some big battles, but we took about a third of the losses the Union Army would take, but we couldn't replace them.
And they could replace their losses and increase the size of their army.
So we could win battles, and Lee did in Virginia, but Farce saw that it wasn't going to last.
It was just an impossible situation.
So that's why.
He never fought Sherman and Grant and Rosecrans and Buell head to head.
He just swung around behind them and cut their supply lines, and they had to fall back and retreat back to Memphis or retreat back to Nashville or wherever.
And that was what he understood of the strategy and the type of warfare that we needed to fight to get these large armies out of the South.
Just cut them off and let them starve to death.
Well, you know, there's more to it than that, though, too.
You know, for example, if they'd followed his advice, At Fort Donelson, then they would never have had to surrender.
They would have defeated the Yankees.
Likewise, if they had followed his advice and captured Pittsburgh Landing so that Don Carlos could get out of the way.
If Nathan Bedford Forrest had been in charge of the Confederate Army in the Western Theater, we could compare him to Lee, and it would be a pretty equal comparison.
Lee was a wonderful commander.
Everybody makes mistakes.
He was a guy that played by the book, and Forrest was just a fighter, and he understood fighting.
And with no military training, and he was basically illiterate.
I mean, he didn't go, he had no formal education, no military training, didn't even have to serve in the war, but still enlisted as a soldier of the lowest rank, private, rose from private to lieutenant general.
His maneuvers are still studied today.
The thing is, he was a fighter.
I mean, there was nobody in the history of war like Forrest.
He understood fighting.
And he's a guy you want on your side if you're in the Battle of Gettysburg or in a barroom brawl.
I'll tell you this, Gene.
Hey, Gene, if Forrest had been in control of the Confederate forces, would we have won the war?
Absolutely.
Because he understood the type of warfare that the South needed to fight.
And the Richmond government couldn't see that.
And they had a lot of faith in Robert E. Lee, as they should have.
And they kept thinking that eventually Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia.
Are going to crush the Army of the Potomac, the main Federal Army coming out of Washington.
And once they did, they can march on Washington, get their artillery up there on Arlington Heights, where the Lee home is now, and lob shells across the river and into the state capitol and the White House, I mean, the national capitol, the White House, the Navy Yard, and bring the Lincoln government to their knees and give us our independence.
And what they didn't figure on, Gene, was having boatloads of Irishmen and other immigrants coming in to replenish their ranks.
Whenever they had the ball.
They couldn't totally destroy the Army of the Potomac and put that pressure on Washington.
Where Forrest didn't care about whether he wiped out the Union Army here in Tennessee and then marched on Chicago or Detroit or Cleveland.
He just wanted to make it so costly for them every time they set foot across the Ohio River that eventually they would say, We can't afford to keep sending men down there and losing them.
The game's not worth the candle.
It's turning against us.
It's kind of like the Vietnam War.
It won battles, but, you know, it just drug on and on and on.
America doesn't defeat a guerrilla warfighting.
It's like fourth-generation warfare, as William Lind, who's been on our show before, calls it.
We'll be right back.
Gene Andrews, the caretaker of the Nathan Bedford Forest Boyhood Home.
You can't talk about Forest and not talk about Fort Pillow.
We're going to talk about Fort Pillow next.
Stay tuned.
Hey friends, it's James.
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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.
The Battle of Shiloh Trip00:11:49
On the day after the Battle of Shiloh, Rebels were falling back real slow.
And old William D'Conto Sherman 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.
One Nathan Benton Frost, 300 by his side.
He said, boys, it's time to ride.
Come ride.
As Sherman called him, that devil for us, that song, Ride with the Devil, by Rick Revel.
Rick Revel has actually been a guest on previous Confederate History Month series here on TPC going back many years ago.
That song, though, documents the Battle of Shiloh, particularly the retreat, the Confederate retreat from Shiloh and fallen timbers, which took place this week, so many years ago.
But it was that first week in April that the Battle of Shiloh was fought.
And again, when you're talking about Nathan Bedford Forrest, Gene Andrews, you're talking about a man who could, with two or three hundred men, stymie armies.
Exactly.
Yeah.
And he did then, too.
And he almost eliminated William de Tort Sherman.
It was Sherman's regiment that was following the Confederates as they retreated from Pittsburgh Landing back down to Corinth, Mississippi.
And they got too close to the trail end of the Confederate column, and Forrest Cavalry charged them.
And they drove through the pickets out in front and the skirmishers and came over a ridge.
And there was Sherman's whole regiment drawn up in line of battle.
And most of the men that were following Forrest reined in their horses.
They said, No, we can't do anything here.
Forrest never let up.
He rode right through them and right behind their lines.
And now he was turning around and they were trying to shoot him and knock him off his horse and everything they could do.
And one of the Yankee soldiers he drew down on with his revolver was William Sherman.
And the pistol just misfired.
And Sherman said, had that pistol, a forest, gone off, I wouldn't be here today to tell the story.
So that's how close it came to eliminating one of the top generals in the Union Army in the West.
Wouldn't it have been something?
You mentioned Corinth.
One of my Confederate ancestors, Levi Smith, was from Corinth and fought at Shiloh.
You know, as you said, as I've heard you say before, everybody who was on the field with Forrest rode with Forrest, but not quite.
I mean, he had his own detachment.
That's not exactly, you know, putting down people that always come out to the Forrest Home.
They pull out of a picture of an old man with white hair and a white beard, like I've never seen something like that before.
And they always had somebody that rode with Forrest.
And you think, good night, if everybody that came here had somebody that rode with Forrest, he would have had about six million men.
And burn Chicago on Monday and Detroit on Tuesday and Cleveland on Wednesday, and the war would have been over.
Hey, hey, hey, hey.
I only wish, my friend, that Forrest had 6,000 men, because if he had that many, this would be an entirely different world.
But I will tell you this.
Yeah, go ahead.
And to be honest, he did.
There's a book, Bust Hell Wide Open, by Dr. Samuel Mitchum.
And in that first chapter, he's talking about during the course of the war, Forrest commanded over 60,000 men, not at one time.
But you know, he had three of his commands that he raised, equipped, and trained taken away from him and given to someone else, and he had to start from scratch all over again.
And then during the retreat after Nashville, not only did he have his cavalry covering the retreat, but he also had Edward Walthall's infantry division.
So he did, during the course of the war, command about 60,000 men.
Unfortunately, it wasn't all at one time.
If it were, it would have been a different outcome, and like you said, we would have had our own country.
Well, I got to say.
Nonsense from California and New York and all over.
As I like to joke this time of year, I descended, you know, everybody descended from a Confederate general or at the very least, you know, a high ranking Confederate.
I descended from the only private in the Confederate Army.
And his name was.
There weren't any privates in the Confederate Army.
They were always Captain so and so or Colonel so and so.
I descended from the only private in the Confederate Army.
His name was Levi Smith from Corinth, Mississippi.
And he fought at the Battle of Shiloh.
And then he lived, he survived.
And he had a daughter named Ruby Smith, who became Ruby Austin when she married my great grandfather.
And they had a daughter named Billy Sue Austin, who married my grandfather, James Edwards.
I'm named after her.
All right.
And that is a direct line of descent, as straight as I can draw it, to that war.
And he was on the field with Forrest at Shiloh.
From Corinth to Shiloh was a very short march, as far as it goes.
And they were there and they fought.
And we lost the Battle of Shiloh.
And it was a very winnable battle.
The South never smiled after Shiloh, as they say.
But nevertheless, we were there, Gene.
And Michael Hill's ancestor was there.
And through time and space, we found each other here now in the current time.
Let me just say this about.
Well, all of that.
I mean, we're talking about Forrest.
We're talking about the battles he fought.
We're talking about all of these things.
Fort Pillow is the thing that I think is most closely associated with Nathan Bedford Forrest.
I think it was the progenitor of wartime propaganda as we know it today.
And before we get to all of that, I just want to say that a few years ago, we had the opportunity.
If you're a donor to this radio program, you get invited to special events.
That not everybody who is listening to the show tonight is invited to.
So we invite you to become a donor and a part of our family in that way.
But back in, I believe it was 2020, it was not that long ago, 2021, maybe.
I mean, you know, time blurs now.
I mean, it really does blur.
But it was just a few years ago.
And we had this event at the height of COVID, and you couldn't get any hotel to service you.
And we actually had this event booked at a hotel in Memphis.
And the Shelby County government said, no, you know, it's COVID.
You know, we got to shut you down.
If it's more than, you know, five people 20 feet apart, you know, we can't do it.
But so we went down to Mississippi, where they were a little bit more lax.
Very fine hotel, very fine meeting of our donors and our friends and supporters.
And one of the things was a.
Chaperoned luxury bus, charter bus field trip to Fort Pillow, guided by none other than Gene Andrews.
Now, Gene, you'll recall that we, you and I, and my wife, who was pregnant with our third child at that time, very pregnant, we did a scouting trip to Fort Pillow.
Oh, my gosh.
It was a time.
Do you remember that?
Lord have mercy.
That was hot and humid, and she was going up and down those hills and those ravines.
Like a marathon runner, and you and I were huffing and puffing along in the background, just sweating buckets of perspiration.
Oh, gosh.
I don't see how she could do that.
I remember going to Fort Pillow as a teenager.
I went with my friends because it was cool.
Forrest was our hero, as he is yours.
And we went there as teenagers.
I remember driving my pickup truck, and we went there, and I remember the fort being a short walk across the bridge from the museum.
But it was not that way.
It was not that way in reality.
Out of service, you had to hike around off down through the woods.
And you talk about the Batan death march.
We were reenacting that right there for sure.
I'm glad we did that scouting trip because when we finally took the group, we knew where the bus needed to drop them off.
But I will tell you this before we get into the history of the Battle of Fort Pillow, an uninterrupted 30 minute stretch with Gene coming up to close the show tonight.
Gene, been in this business for a long time.
And one memory I'll always hold dear is that you and I and Sam Dixon and Michael Hill and David Duke and so many supporters of this program were able to go to Fort Pillow that day and go into that museum and watch that video and have you, you, my friend, not a National Park Service representative, but you, the caretaker of the Nathan Bedford Forest Home, give the guided walking tour.
Of that battle.
I'll never forget it as long as I live.
Well, thank you.
The highlight of that was you know, we had gone there earlier and we'd gone in the Vister Center and saw their video presentation.
And they had some clown come on there at the end and said Fort Pillow was what caused the Nazi death camps in Europe during World War II.
And we're going, are you kidding me?
What kind of.
So before we went to the Vister Center and saw that, we had that picnic lunch and you asked me to give some information on Fort Pillow, which we did.
And then I told him, this is going to come up in this video in there.
And sure enough, that thing came up on the screen.
Everybody booed and hissed and hollered and called, come on, get real.
Our crew really didn't have a very good review of their video on the Battle of Fort Pillow that was put on there at the state park.
So I thought that was pretty funny that as soon as that guy said that, everybody knew it was coming.
They're going, oh, get out of here.
Come on.
What in the world is that all about?
So that was a funny part of the trip right there.
We were primed for that one.
Yeah, well, you know, Gene, our friend Rich Hamblin texting right now.
I was there right after pacemaker surgery.
That was just, you know, of course, a few years ago.
But, yeah, I mean, you know, we were there.
I have pictures of it.
You're standing at one point.
You're saying, this is what happened at this point in the battle at this hour that day.
And then we went all the way to the fort, and David Duke was doing push-ups.
And, I mean, it was just, I mean, there was a lot going on that day.
But it's a day I'll never forget.
A day I'll never forget.
And we were there with the caretaker of the Forest Home.
We were there at one of our Confederate.
Victories will be right back.
Taking Our Own Side Now00:05:01
Informing citizens, pursuing liberty.
You're listening to Liberty News Radio.
News this hour from Town Hall.
I'm Mary Rose.
Three way talks with the U.S. and Iran are underway in Pakistan.
Negotiations began between the United States and Iran on Saturday, days after a fragile ceasefire halted fighting and brought both parties to the table in Pakistan.
A U.S. delegation led by Vice President JD Vance and an Iranian delegation.
Led by Parliament Speaker Mohamed Bajir Kalabov, each met with Prime Minister Shabazz Sharif earlier Saturday.
Meanwhile, Israel struck more targets in Lebanon with at least three people killed Saturday morning, the conflict causing thousands of deaths and disrupting the global economy, particularly through the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, where oil tankers are stuck.
I'm Julie Walker.
Ukraine is accusing Russia of failing to abide by a proposed holiday ceasefire.
Firefighters in Sumi, Ukraine carry an injured person out of an apartment building.
Ahead of a proposed ceasefire with Russia for the Orthodox Easter weekend.
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday declared a 32 hour ceasefire until the end of Sunday.
And Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky promised Saturday to abide by the break in attacks.
But a Ukrainian military officer says the ceasefire is not being observed by the Russian side.
And in Odessa, at least two people were killed.
I'm Donna Warder.
President Trump is angry with NATO allies over the Iran war.
The president's uneasy relationship with NATO.
Took a turn for the worse during the conflict with Iran when allies refused to assist in the U.S. and Israeli led war.
On Wednesday, Donald Trump met privately with NATO's Secretary General in the Oval Office.
No media coverage of the White House visit was allowed, unlike previous visits.
Afterwards, the president was still fuming, writing on social media that NATO wasn't there when we needed them and they won't be there when we need them again.
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It is common for politicians, major media outlets, and nonprofits to hype white on black murders aggressively.
Or even claim that blacks are living in fear of white people.
Lens for simply being black.
Hard to believe, but that's what was done.
And some people still want to do that.
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Why It Wasn't a Civil War00:15:11
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He's coming after me, you should stand your ground.
But fear took control, and them Yankees did look.
The devil's work on this day is done.
Yeah, come right in, ride with the devil, for that's in Yankee's opinion.
Well, I'll never forget this.
This was being at Fort Pillow with Gene Andrews and so many friends and family members of the program, our regular guests.
I mean, you can't even call them guests when you're talking about the people we're talking about, but we were all there together.
We walked to this museum, and the ranger met us, and Gene was looking at a portrait of Forrest on the wall, and he said, That's my hero.
And I remember having an exchange, Gene, with the ranger at the gift shop.
And we were asking him, you know, what sells more, the Union stuff, the American stuff, or the Confederate stuff?
He said, well, the Confederate stuff always sold so much more, but we can't sell it anymore because, you know, they stopped us from doing that.
And I thought that was very telling.
But, uh, While some of the stuff that had been reinterpreted in the museum part of the tour, Gene's put truth in accord with the facts, as our friends at the Barnes Review do.
And we had that tour, and it was a day I'll never forget.
So, Gene, the first time I met you was at a Council of Conservative Citizens meeting.
I don't even remember what year, but you gave a presentation on the Battle of Fort Pillow that should have been on C SPAN or the History Channel.
And it was so good.
And we've had you deliver that message on this program before.
If people.
Google you or go to thepoliticalcesspool.org and search you in the broadcast archives.
They'll find it.
But we can do it again right now, so we should.
You've got 23 minutes to the break.
Give us the Battle of Fort Pillow, start to finish.
No propaganda, just the facts.
What happened?
All right, sir.
Well, the winners write the history book, so they get to put whatever kind of spin on it.
They don't even call it the correct term.
They call it a civil war, and it wasn't a civil war.
We weren't trying to take over the government of the United States.
We were just trying to leave.
So, they're always going to put some kind of spin on it to paint the losing side as villains and horrible people, and everything they did was terrible.
And this is one of the worst things they've done.
They hang this so called massacre at Fort Pillow on Forrest.
They couldn't defeat him on the battlefield, so they try to drag his name through the mud 100 years later.
And they're real brave about that because most of the, well, most, all of the Confederate soldiers that fought during that war have since passed away.
So, they wouldn't go to one of these veterans and say it to their face, but they're real brave about it now.
So, anyway, here's what happened Forrest was a Calvary Corps commander in the Confederate Army of Tennessee, the Western Army that fought from the Appalachian Mountains all the way to the Mississippi River, from up in Kentucky down to Mississippi, Alabama, and into Georgia.
So, he had several falling outs with Braxton Bragg, who was the Army commander, and Forrest just couldn't stand Bragg for the way he wasted lives and threw away chances to win battles.
Bragg could plan and fight the first day of a battle very well, but then when his plans fell apart or something happened on the battlefield, he couldn't adjust to it.
Where Forrest was there on the field right in the thick of it, and if something happened, he made an instant decision that turned the course of the battle, and Bragg couldn't do that.
So Bragg got tired of Forrest's criticism after the battle at Chickamauga, a huge Confederate victory, that Bragg didn't follow up and come up over Missionary Ridge and finish off the Federal Army that was demoralized and disorganized in Chattanooga.
Forrest was furious.
The Confederates had lost 18,000 casualties in that battle, and those were lives they couldn't replace.
And Forrest was critical of Bragg.
So, Blyde called him into his office or his tent and told him he was going to give his command, Forrest's command, that he had raised and he had trained and he had equipped, because the Confederate government couldn't afford to do that.
He was going to give his command to someone else.
And Forrest then was transferred west to the Department of Mississippi, Alabama, and eastern Louisiana, and he had to start over again.
This was the third command he had to raise during the war.
And he was given the cavalry divisions of James Chalmers and Abraham Buford.
And the only problem with Buford's cavalry division is they were dismounted.
In the Confederate Army, you had to furnish your own horse.
So if your horse got killed or went lame or whatever, you were basically an infantry soldier.
You claimed you were cavalry, but you were walking.
And so Buford's cavalry division was dismounted.
So Forrest decided that there were plenty of Yankees in West Tennessee and Western Kentucky, and they had horses.
So he was planning a raid to go into West Tennessee and Western Kentucky for horses for Buford's cavalry division.
And they left Columbus, Mississippi, where they were during the winter of 1863.
In the spring of 1864, on March the 1st, they headed north into Tennessee.
And at that time, there was nothing, and I mean nothing, none of their operational orders even mentioned Fort Pillow.
That was not the objective.
The objective was to go get horses.
By March the 20th, Forrest and his cavalry were up at Jackson.
They were waiting for Buford to catch up with them since they were walking.
He split up his command, sent them to different points in West Tennessee to threaten Memphis, to threaten Columbus, Kentucky, and to keep the federal soldiers in that part of the state pinned down.
He was, like I said, this is an example of how Forrest thought things out.
He'd already sent his scouts into West Tennessee.
They knew where the Federals were, where the strong points were, where the resupply points were, where the horses were.
He knew exactly, before he left Columbus, exactly where he was going.
This is not just Some haphazard jaunt out through the countryside.
He got into Tennessee and he sent Colonel Cruz's battalion to Memphis to quote attack Memphis and keep the Federals pinned up there.
And he didn't pick them just at random.
They were from the Memphis area in Shelby County.
So they knew the roads, they knew the friendly civilians, the escape routes, the creeks, the fords across the river, and everything.
Forrest set up a recruiting station up at Trenton.
He picked up deserters from the Confederate Army and they wanted to serve with Forrest because he wins.
And the Confederate government wanted these infantry deserters turned back into the army to the infantry.
And Forrest said, no, they'll only desert again, at least in the cavalry.
We're getting some service out of them.
So, March 23rd, he sends Colonel Duckworth and Colonel Faulkner to capture Union City, the federal garrison there.
And Colonel Faulkner had a rather famous grandson by the name of William that I understand was a pretty good writer.
They captured Union City on March 24th, and Colonel Duckworth signed a Surrender demand as Forrest, and he bluffed Union City into surrendering.
Reinforcements from Columbus, Kentucky, were only six miles away when they got the surrender.
March 26, Forrest and the main column attacked Paducah, Kentucky.
They drove the Federals back into a fort under the cover of a gunboat, but they did pick up supplies, horses, and round up prisoners and burned cotton on the docks.
The cotton was raised by Southerners, but Yankees came south and they'd steal the cotton as contraband of war.
In other words, it was legal for them to steal it.
Sell it in the north for huge profits, and a lot of the fortunes made by northern businessmen were made by stolen southern property cotton, jewelry, home furnishings, and land.
Now, part of Buford's command was sent to Bayfield to arrest and recruit, and they were told to come back on a specific date.
Every single one of them came back with extras because by 1864, everybody wanted to ride with Forrest.
By April the 4th, they're back in Trenton, Tennessee, and he sent a detailed report to his commanding officer in Mississippi, who was Stephen D. Lee.
They've gone from March 1st to April 4th, and Fort Pillow has never been mentioned.
On April the 6th, he sent a supplementary order to Stephen D. Lee and said, We will attend to Fort Pillow.
Now the raid is five weeks old.
This is the first time Fort Pillow was mentioned.
Why?
It's because civilians in West Tennessee asked for us to do something about the U.S. troops, both black and white, that were coming out of Fort Pillow to attack, rob, rape, and murder civilians and Confederate soldiers in West Tennessee.
Two examples.
Colonel James Brownlow, who was a son of that Parson Brownlow that was a, uh, Reconstruction governor of Tennessee after the war said he'd give no quarter to any Confederate soldier caught in West Tennessee.
They'd be shot on sight.
Forget about taking prisoners.
And that's what they accused Forrest of at Fort Pillow.
He didn't take out prisoners.
And the Yankees were the ones who were doing that.
The worst one, though, was Colonel Fielding Hearst.
He murdered soldiers, Confederate soldiers, all over West Tennessee.
And just to give you an example of how bad he was, he captured seven Confederate soldiers.
Six of them were enlisted men, and they were executed.
They were shot dead right on the site.
They were the lucky ones.
The 7th was an officer, Lieutenant Dobbs, who was tortured to death.
His face was beaten in, his nose cut off, and his mouth was slit from ear to ear and left to bleed out in a field.
And this is why Forrest went after Fort Pillott.
So he had Buford demonstrate against Columbus, Kentucky, and Paducah to hold the Federals there, and then he went after Fort Pillott.
On April the 10th, he sent General Chalmers' division ahead to attend to Fort Pillott.
On the 11th, McCullough and Bell's brigades from Chalmers Division move out of Brownsville, Tennessee, and travel through the Hatchie River bottoms, headed west to Fort Pillow.
That night, luckily, in the Hatchie River bottoms, they got a guide.
There was a civilian held prisoner at Fort Pillow who escaped.
He was running east and he ran into forest men who were headed west.
It was a Mr. W.J. Shaw, and he gave the troop strength at Fort Pillow, the disposition, the layout of the fort, names of the officers, and guided the Confederates to the To the site of Fort Pillow on the Mississippi River.
Now, topography is important, and it certainly is in this battle.
Fort Pillow was actually built by the Confederates early in the war as part of the defenses along the Mississippi River up above Memphis, north of Memphis on the Mississippi River, Fort Randolph, Fort Pillow, and there were one or two others.
But it never had enough heavy guns to really stop the Federal Navy coming down the river towards Memphis, and it was abandoned by the Confederates and taken over by the Yankees.
And just used as not really a fort.
The Confederates had never attacked it during the war, but just sort of as an outpost for their operations of robbing the civilians and making life miserable for the civilians and very unsafe for the civilians in West Tennessee.
And Sherman said it should have been abandoned.
It had no business of even being there, it was isolated by itself.
So the fort was laid out on a bluff over the Mississippi River, but there was a ridge that ran in a semicircle up above the fort and about 600 yards around it.
The fort itself was about 120 yards in a semicircle, anchored on the river, and about 70 yards across, but this ridge was actually higher than the fort, which is a very important topographical feature.
The inner works were protected by an earthen wall, which is about six feet high with a firing bench and six feet across.
And this had six cannons there at the fort.
And forts during this type of war were made usually of earth, not like the wooden forts that we think of in Fort Apache and all the Western movies.
The U.S. Army strength at the fort was 557.
They had 295 whites, and many of them were Tennessee Unionists or Tennessee Tories, as Farris called them, and they had 262 blacks there and approximately 25 civilian sutlers and several professional women that were taking care of the troops.
On daylight of April the 12th, coming up tomorrow, the Missouri cavalry under Colonel McCulloch surprise and drive in the pickets.
The Confederate attack is so swift and unexpected that they're unable to man the intermediate works out on the ridge and they have to fall back to the main works in the fort.
Now the Confederates have that ridge high up above the fort, and this is a very important factor in the battle.
8 a.m., heavy sniper fire from behind stumps and logs that were cut down to clear the field of fire but never removed pins down the defenders.
Major Booth was the federal commander, the only one there that had any battle experience.
He's killed by one of the first shots, and then the command goes to an incompetent Major Bradford who took command, and even the federal other officers said Bradford was absolutely worthless.
About 11 a.m., Forrest finally gets there.
He changes some layout of where the Confederate soldiers are, getting closer to the cabins that are right outside the fort, to have sharpshooters silence the cannons on the south side of the fort, and uses the cabins and ravine for shelter.
And the U.S. Commander Bradford ordered the cabins burned nearest the fort to deny the Confederates cover.
Here's line number one claim that Forrest burned U.S. wounded alive.
Well, if they were burned alive, they were burned by the U.S. soldiers that set fire to the cabins, not the Confederates.
Because they were using these cabins for cover.
Around noon, Forrest increases the snipers.
He does a personal reconnaissance along this ridge and has two horses hit.
His staff officers advise him to dismount.
He'd be less of a target.
He told them, Well, I could get killed on foot just as easily, and I can see a lot better when I'm mounted on horseback.
Yes, sir, it's your call, whatever you want to do.
And then by 1 p.m., Forrest ordered Bell and Bartow to move along Cold Creek on the north side of the fort and, like McCullough on the south, silence the guns on the north side of the fort.
Snipers and Burning Cabins00:09:41
They can't depress the barrel of these artillery pieces enough to fire down into that ravine.
But the Confederates with the snipers, anytime they tried to roll a cannon forward and fire it out of the fort, the gunners were picked off by the Confederate snipers.
By 3 p.m., the fort is completely surrounded.
They're supposed to have a gunboat, New Era, that was going to protect the fort if it fell.
But Confederate snipers along the riverbank had driven the New Era away, and so the fort was left pretty much to their own.
The defenders were pinned down.
They can't raise their head up over the earth wall to replace it.
Turn fire, there will be shot, there's no gunboat.
And so Forrest sent in his third surrender demand of the day.
They left that out at the Vister Center there.
They never said anything about Forrest, gave him a chance to surrender before the attack on the fort.
They kind of conveniently skipped over that part.
Well, while this third truce was going on, the white officers in the Union Army didn't think the blacks would fight, and they'd given them whiskey.
And the Confederates, once they got inside the fort, they found kegs of whiskey all along the wall and gourds for dipping.
The blacks stood on the parapet of the wall during the truce and shouted insults and gave obscene gestures to the Confederates.
Not a good idea.
This was in the days before the NFL and the NBA, so trash talk did not go over real well back then.
And none of the U.S. troops had any combat experience.
They were real tough whipping up on civilians, but they'd never fought a real military unit before.
And they didn't understand their situation.
The only experienced officer, Major Booth, had been killed by some of the first shots.
And Major Bradford asked for an hour to discuss with his officers, and Forrest said, You've got 20 minutes.
And the Confederates already had in the ravines before the flag of truce, they were ready to finish off the fort.
In 3 30, they gave the reply, We will not surrender.
The federal cannons were loaded with double canister.
All the weapons were loaded, extra rifles put along the wall, and they had the emergency plan.
If they had to fall back, they were going to drop down below the bluff, and the gunboat would blast the Confederates off the top of the bluff with canister.
The civilians were given weapons.
Here's another lie said that Forrest shot poor, unarmed civilians.
Well, the fort's civilians were armed, and they were shooting at Confederates.
And I guarantee you, if somebody were shooting at me, I don't care if they were wearing a uniform or whatever, I was going to return fire.
Forest assault orders.
Men were carrying rifles or shotguns and had four pistols loaded, but no shots were to be fired by the assault troops until they were inside the fort.
Now, when they came down off this ridge, the sharpshooters were firing over their heads at anybody that raised up over the fort to try to shoot at them.
Four o'clock, the bugle sounded charge, and 1,200 Confederates raced downhill, jumped into this moat around the fort.
Snipers kept up a constant fire into the fort.
In the second bugle blast, the Confederates came over the wall.
And the first thing the Federals saw when the Confederates came over the wall, they just flopped down.
The Confederates flopped down on the earth and wall.
They saw the barrels of rifles and shotguns right in their face, got a volley from those.
The Confederates dropped the long rifles, whipped out the pistols, and started blasting away with both hands with pistols.
Federals broke and ran across the parade ground and through these rows of tents, which channeled them into a mass formation.
And most of the 200 soldiers that were killed were killed, packed up, stacked up two or three deep.
In rows between these tents.
Then they went over the bluff down toward the river.
A lot of them panicked, especially the blacks.
They jumped into the river and tried to get away, swim, or whatever, and they were either drowned or shot in the river.
And the Confederates now were coming down from the north on the river road, north to south, and coming up the river road from south to north.
And the Confederates that had come over the wall now were up on top of this bluff, firing right down on top of them.
So the Yankees were caught not just in a crossfire, but a Pretty much a triple fire.
About 4 o'clock, Forrest gets into the fort, orders the flag cut down, which meant that the fort had surrendered, and most of the firing stopped.
And one of the things that most historians agree up to that point, but then after that is where all the controversy comes from.
This was just total bedlam down on that river road, and a lot of the prisoners that were taken were thrown out of the way.
They'd pick up rifles and start shooting the Confederates in the back.
They would turn around and shoot the people that had surrendered earlier, but now they were using their weapons to fire at them.
That night, well, late that afternoon, Forrest ordered McCullough to round up prisoners, gather up the wounded, and McCullough said, I ordered the survivors to bury their dead and gather up their wounded.
Here's another lie Forrest buried wounded U.S. soldiers alive.
Well, if U.S. soldiers, wounded soldiers, were buried alive, they were buried by their own people because that's what they would do.
Prisoners would have to bury their own dead so they couldn't be accused of burying the enemy alive.
By 5 p.m., Forrest and most of the troops had ridden off.
McCullough with the prisoners, Bell with the wounded.
Prisoners that could be moved.
And after dark, Chalmers and the rest of them left about 130 wounded U.S. soldiers there that were too severely wounded to be moved.
They were left overnight with the U.S. medical staff.
There were no Confederates in the fort after dark.
And then the other lie that they tell is that the Confederates robbed the wounded and dead that night.
Well, no Confederates were in the fort that night.
And on April the 13th at daylight, Forrest sent Captain Anderson with some of Chalmers' men back to help load the U.S. wounded on a steamboat.
The silver cloud to take them to the hospitals in Memphis.
So, where did this Fort Pillow massacre nonsense come from?
It was pure, pure propaganda.
In the spring of 1864, they didn't know how the war was going to turn out, and they needed to whip up anti South sentiment in the war and continue the war on.
And they needed something to do that.
They couldn't defeat Forrest on the battlefield, so they drug his reputation through the mud.
So here's the final casualty report from Captain Ferguson of the United States Navy.
The U.S. Army at Fort Pillow had 221 of its soldiers taken out as prisoners, or killed, 221.
There were 206 prisoners.
And the wounded left behind were 130.
So if Forrest ordered a massacre of the troops at Fort Pillar, he didn't do a very good job because they took out 206 prisoners and left another 130 behind.
So they had to come up with some kind of propaganda just like World War I, World War II, Gulf of Tonkin, Serbia, weapons of mass destruction, all that sort of nonsense.
And they used Fort Pillar as an excuse.
They had a congressional investigation.
And as Congress usually does, they came up with nothing but lies and misinformation.
The eyewitness account.
Of Fort Pillow was written by a newspaper reporter in Knoxville, Tennessee.
Now, Knoxville is in East Tennessee.
Fort Pillow is on the Mississippi River in West Tennessee.
It's a mere 395 miles from Knoxville to Fort Pillow.
So, if this guy was an eyewitness accountant, he had a pretty darn good set of eyes.
They printed up 40,000 copies of this congressional report and gave it to all the newspapers in the North.
And, of course, the South wasn't going to have their version printed in any newspapers in the North.
So, that was what went out.
So, it was basically a big lie.
From start to finish on the massacre at Fort Pillow.
And people believe it today.
That's all they ever hear because they hear nothing but lies and propaganda.
They don't study factual history.
And so they think they get their history from CNN and The View, and they think they're great historians or something, when actually they really just make total fools out of themselves once they're presented with historical fact.
So I hope that will give our listeners a little information that they can defend our Confederate history and especially one of our greatest officers in the Confederate Army, Nathan Bedford Forrest.
And see what a bunch of lies, propaganda, and misinformation have been used to tarnish his name and reputation down through the years.
So, thank you very much for the opportunity to present that.
Really appreciate the time.
Thank you, Gene.
Thank you.
Thank you for being with us that day and for leading that tour, for being on the bus.
You gave a presentation on the bus while we were traveling there, for all the appearances you've made on the show over all these years, for everything you do every week.
On Blood River Radio.
I hear the music playing.
Folks, go to thepoliticalcesspool.org, go to our broadcast archives, type in the name Gene Andrews.
We have done this presentation on Fort Pillow for a full hour and still left things on the table.
He truncated it tonight to just 30 minutes because we're talking about so many other things.
But check it all out.
But for all the people who are tuning in for the first time recently, since the last time perhaps Gene has presented his evidence on Fort Pillow, we present this to you tonight.
For everyone else who's heard it before, You can't help but enjoy hearing it again.
I know I do.
And I'm so glad that there is new growth, new development, new building happening there at the Nathan Bedford Forest Boyhood Home in Chapel Little, Tennessee.
You can be there too.
We'll talk to you next week as Confederate History Month continues.