Florida school board votes to remove name of Confederate general

[kwassa]

43. What good? I see only bad.

and you accept Forrest, uncritically, at his word.


to quote your source, which you didn't apparently read all the way to the end:

The severest of the criticism of Forrest — subjects studiously avoided by today's neo-Confederate activists — centers on three indisputable facts:

Forrest was a Memphis slave trader who acquired fabulous wealth before the war;
He commanded the troops who carried out an 1864 massacre of mostly black prisoners; and
He led violent resistance to Reconstruction as the first grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.

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Forrest despised blacks who fought for the Union, and was accused by one Union general of personally shooting a captured free mulatto who was a servant of a Federal officer. A Confederate cavalryman once recounted how Forrest "cussed [him] out" for failing to execute a captured black Union soldier.

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Although he repeatedly denied membership — even lying to Congress — Forrest in fact led the Klan through one of its most violent and successful periods, when robed terrorists succeeded in rolling back Reconstruction. He even told one newspaper reporter that while he was no member, he "intend[ed]" to kill radical Republicans. He added that he could raise 40,000 men in four days.

Forrest sympathizers have long claimed that he disbanded the Klan when it became violent. In fact, it had been extremely violent for years under Forrest, and was only disbanded when its work was essentially done — blacks and Republicans had been terrified into not voting — and when it came under intense criticism.