MEMPHIS, Tennessee — The Memphis city council has voted in favor of exhuming the bodies of Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest and his wife to remove them from a city park.
They have been buried in a park on Union Avenue for 110 years.
The city also plans to tear down a statue honoring the Confederate general who was involved in organizing the Ku Klux Klan. The bodies of Forrest and his wife would be relocated to a cemetery.
Council chairman Myron Lowery and Mayor A C Wharton have backed both agenda items. The Sons of Confederate Veterans opposes the removals.
According to LocalMemphis, there were rumors that the rush was on to move the statue and graves of Forrest and his wife in order to sell the property to the University of Tennessee.
This battle is far from over. It will require more votes, approval from the Tennessee Historical Commission and will most likely end up in court.
Nathan Bedford Forrest was a lieutenant general in the Confederate Army during the American Civil War. He is remembered as a self-educated, brutal, and innovative cavalry leader during the war and as a leading Southern advocate in the postwar years.
He was a pledged delegate from Tennessee to the New York Democratic national convention of 4 July 1868. He served as the first Grand Wizard (head of movement) of the Ku Klux Klan, but later distanced himself from the organization.
A cavalry and military commander in the war, Forrest is one of the war’s most unusual figures. Although less educated than many of his fellow officers, before the war Forrest had already amassed a fortune as a planter, real estate investor, and slave trader. He was one of the few officers in either army to enlist as a private and be promoted to general officer and division commander during the war.
Although Forrest lacked formal military education, he had a gift for leadership, strategy and tactics. He created and established new doctrines for mobile forces, earning the nickname The Wizard of the Saddle.
