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Lid, Can and Libel: A Tree Falls in Nathan Bedford’s Forrest and the Mississippi Department of Motor Vehicles Gets an Earful


Lid, Can and Libel: A Tree Falls in Nathan Bedford’s Forrest and the Mississippi Department of Motor Vehicles Gets an Earful

“Forrest is the very devil… There never will be peace until Forrest
is dead.”
William Tecumseh Sherman

The State of Mississippi has some majestic two-lane pavement, smooth
as a mint julep and as quiet, lazy and curvy as a well-fed cottonmouth
digesting a fat ol’ field mouse.

Before they were paved, and during the years when these great United
States split like an apple, some of those same roads carried both
Union and Rebel troops to battle in the American Civil War. Now, if a
historical society calling itself “Sons of the Confederate Generals”
has their way—and if Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour says bupkis
about it—motorists in the Magnolia State will cruise and peruse these
lonesome roads with license plates that sport the likeness of Civil
War General Nathan Bedford Forrest.

Not long ago I read an account—possibly apocryphal—about Third Reich
Field Marshall Erwin Rommel taking a road trip to the sites of some of
Forrest’s triumphs. His motive? Rommel was ramping up for tank fights
and he needed a battle plan. Forrest, who was always undermanned and under-supplied in comparison to his deep-pocketed Federal adversaries, employed a radical, gonzo approach. His battle cries were “get there firstest with the mostest,” and “hit ‘em on the end,” taking the bulk of his modest forces and striking at his foes most vulnerable section. Rommel felt this method would suit his approach, also.

A few years ago, I researched this connection between these two
military strategists, using this collision of consciousness as the
basis for a historical novel about both men.

My research and my travels led me a place called Brice’s Cross Roads,
a rather forgotten and neglected Civil War battle site, just west of
Tupelo, Mississippi. I stumbled upon one, sole figure there. Our
chance meeting went like this (as recalled in the book, The Devil’s
Own Day
):

“As I entered the gates near the graveyard for the confederate dead, I
encountered some mid-40s, mustachioed Civil War zealot in a Hawaiian
shirt, khaki shorts and leather sandals. My presence startled him, but
he briskly recovered from the shock of happening upon somebody on a
forgotten battlefield to a bug-eyed look that misspoke of a mutual
understanding, thinking he had encountered at this, arguably the most
esoteric and ignored theater of war in North America, a fellow
traveler, another damaged expert on all matters military—a connoisseur
of the conquest, an authority on annihilation and an enthusiast of
eradication… and a friend of Forrest… Which wasn’t me, but I am
not sure I would have corrected him had he inquired to that effect.

In his zeal to share, he proffered a beefy paw pinching a roll of 35mm
negatives between a saline-swollen forefinger and thrombotic thumb,
and for the benefit of my analysis, he said: ‘I have the micro-film
for Rommel.’ His pronouncement provoked a loud silence. I was stunned. He took my muted response for awestruck appreciation of what he was saying.

“‘Everybody knows Erwin Rommel came here in the 1930s to study the lay of the land at this, the site of the greatest American Civil War dark
horse victories,’ the Hawaiian shirt explained. “As the Teutonic Tropical Texan put his ‘micro-film’ in the pocket of his garish garment, he concluded, ‘This time the Germans are going to get it right.’

“Then he drove off towards Tupelo.”

So: If this guy had his druthers, he would have driven a car a state
license plate that carried the image of his hero, Nathan Bedford
Forrest. And he may have his chance…

And this is America and why the fuck not, right? A license plate is
way to express one’s admiration for a military hero, right? What’s the
big whoop, you do-gooder peace wienies?

W-e-l-l, besides asking the Government to support what most folks
consider to be somewhat untenable, the other problem is that the more
one digs, the more that Forrest’s story gets a little stickier and a
little ickier. Yes, he was a military genius whose tactics inspired
Rommel’s notorious Panzer fights. Unfortunately, there is a gratuitous
trail of blood in Forrest’s wake that subverts and undermines the
time-honored Rules of Engagement.

Under Forrest, “free men” or slaves who escaped and then served under
Union forces, were shot on sight—one unarmed Negro was shot point
blank by Forrest himself.

He was also in command at a battle at Fort Pillow, Tennessee,
whereupon both black and white Union troops were murdered as they
tried to surrender.

Forrest paid for his own command out of pocket, but after making his
millions as a rather ruthless and tortuous slave trader. After the
war, he was appointed as the Inaugural Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux
Klan. In later years, he apparently has a crisis of conscience and
renounced racism, before dying penniless.

In 2007, while traveling in Mississippi and researching my book on
Rommel and Forrest, I saw something on the road that gave me pause: A
white kid cruising in a pick-up truck with a rebel flag decal pasted
in the rear window. As an occasional resident of the Deep South since
the mid-70s, I had seen variations of that stereotypical tableau for
decades.

But this was different. It wasn’t a Ford F-150, but a Toyota Tundra
truck. And the white kid wasn’t cranking Lynyrd Skynyrd, he was
blasting hip hop. The South really is changing, I thought. And for the
better. Without getting into the vagaries of free trade vis-à-vis Jap
trucks and if hip-hop is even music, the culture seemed less
segregated. (And if I ever hear “Free Bird” again, it will be too
soon.)

Now the Sons of Confederate Generals want the state to churn out
license plates celebrating a genocidal maniac. Which is far more tone
deaf than whatever rap music boomed out of that white kid’s Toyota.

(Cole Coonce is the author of The Devil’s Own Day)

 

The Devil's Own Day


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