Nathan Bedford Forrest Quotes

There is no doubt we could soon wipe old Sherman off the face of the earth, John, if they'd give me enough men and you enough guns.

Does the damned fool want to be blown up? Well, blow him up then. Give him hell, Captain Morton- as hot as you've got it, too.

If you surrender, you shall be treated as prisoners of war, but if I have to storm your works, you may expect no quarter.

War means fighting, and fighting means killing.

Boys, do you hear that musketry and that artillery? It means that our friends are falling by the hundreds at the hands of the enemy, and here we are guarding a damned creek! Let's go and help them. What do you say?

Every moment lost is worth the life of a thousand men.

Get there first with the most men.

The river was dyed with the blood of the slaughtered for two hundred yards. The approximate loss was upward of five hundred killed, but few of the officers escaping. My loss was about twenty killed. It is hoped that these facts will demonstrate to the Northern people that Negro soldiers cannot cope with Southerners.

I am opposed to it under any and all circumstances, and in our convention urged our party not to commit themselves at all upon the subject.

After all, I think Forrest was the most remarkable man our Civil War produced on either side...He had never read a military book in his life, knew nothing about tactics, could not even drill a company, but had a genius of strategy which was original, and to me incomprehensible.

This fight is against slavery; if we lose it, you will be made free.