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Editor says, what if Nathan Bedford Forrest had been hanged for his war crimes? This would have been a happy ending indeed, and Jackie Rose explains why. Please note that the opinions expressed in this post do not necessarily reflect the views of the author(s). This story was published in the December 2012 edition of Changing the Times Magazine.
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It is 1865, and the Civil War has just ended.
Happy Endings Part 16
Death of a War CriminalThe world is outraged to hear of the atrocities committed by the Confederate general named Nathan Bedford Forrest.
Indeed, some of his own men were so horrified that they revealed how he had ordered them to execute Negro prisoners of war. His attitudes might have been shaped by the fact that he himself had been a slave trader before the war, but of course that was no excuse.
Needless to say, he was tried and hanged as a war criminal. While he had been helping the form the Ku Klux Klan after the Confederate surrender, its sympathizers were now afraid of suffering the same penalty, so the new organization never got started. And thank goodness for that!
Entry posted by
Jackie Rose
© Jackie Rose, 2011-.Story Tags
Permalinks: Post, Day. Browse Thread: Happy Endings Source: Wikipedia Labels: Nathan Bedford Forrest, Civil War, Confederate, Confederacy, America. Editor says, what really happened: Forrest was not even tried for his terrible crime. Instead, he became the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, causing even more hundreds of murders, mostly of innocent Blacks. Efforts are now being made to remove his name from the high school and state park that were named in his honor, but so far they have not succeeded.
~ Someting like the Klan would have come along; its roots were in the pre-CW "patter-rollers" who kept an eye on slave movements, as well as in other pre-CW organizations (the Antirenters in NYS had a lot in common with the Klan, as did pro- and anti-Mormon groups in Missouri and Illinois). Matter of fact, outfits with names like the Pale Faces and Knights of the White Camellia were around as well, operating in much the same way.
~ Well, I found a Web site dedicated to the Knights of the White Camelia of the Ku Klux Klan. That strongly suggests that there is a very strong connection. However, I would urge everyone to avoid going into any site like that to find out more about those people, because if you can find them that way, then they can find you.
~ Some research is best left to others. While we might have had the Klan, or some sort of such thing, we would have been OK without them, too.
~ Forrest was a great general. There were atrocities on both sides.
~ Mark, I am talking about a program of specifically racist atrocities against Black POW's, on Forrest's direct command. One of the worst examples was the massacre that Forrest personally ordered, following the Battle of Fort Pillow. The story survives because of a letter written by Achilles Clark, of the 20th Tennessee Cavalry, to his sister, describing the horrors...and they are horrifying indeed.
~ This could be a big shift of precedence for Reconstruction. Lots of Confederates could be hanged for lots of activities.
~ Jeff, I don't know of another Confederate general who ordered all Black POW's to be killed. I have read that others directed that the Blacks should be returned to slavery, but that still stops short of these racist war crimes. And while it is true that some Northerners called for Robert E. Lee and other Confederate generals to be hanged for treason, in fact as far as I know they were never put on trial for it.
© Today in Alternate History, 2013-. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
