Devil's Dream (48 page)
Authors: Madison Smartt Bell
July: During his visit to the New York convention, Forrest obtains a pardon from President Johnson.
August 11: In an address to a large crowd on the steps of the Brownsville courthouse, Forrest denounces Brownlow as a scalawag and a carpetbagger, urges black men in his audience to “stand by the men who raised you,” and promises, “If they bring this war upon us, there is one thing I will tell you: that I shall not shoot any negroes so long as I can see a white radical to shoot, for it is the radicals who will be to blame for bringing on this war.”
August 28: In a long interview published by the Cincinnati
Appeal
(and later reprinted by the
New York Times)
, Forrest affirms the existence of the Ku Klux Klan, estimating 40,000 members in Tennessee and 500,000 more in the rest of the South. Forrest describes the Klan as “a protective, political, military organization … sworn to recognize the Government of the United States.”
September 6: Following the
New York Times
reprinting of the August
Appeal
interview, Forrest writes a letter retracting many of his August statements about the KKK.
October 28: In a letter published by the
New York Times
, Forrest denounces ex-Union General Judson Kilpatrick as “a blackguard, a liar, a
scoundrel, and poltroon.” Kilpatrick had accused Forrest of atrocities at Fort Pillow. Forrest’s letter amounts to a challenge to a duel, and Forrest’s second proposes it might best be fought “mounted and with sabers,” as both parties were cavalrymen. Kilpatrick does not respond to the challenge.
November 3: Ulysses S. Grant is elected president of the United States.
December: Members of the Southern aristocracy begin to publish statements to the effect that the increasingly violent KKK has outlived its usefulness. At this point Arkansas, Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, Louisiana and Alabama have been readmitted to representation in the U.S. Congress.
February 20: Governor Brownlow declares martial law in nine Klan-ridden Tennessee counties.
February 25: Brownlow resigns as Tennessee governor to take a seat in the U.S. Senate. The Tennessee governorship automatically passes to the Speaker of the State Senate, DeWitt Clinton Senter, who runs for a full term as governor on a platform of universal suffrage, including suffrage for the disenfranchised former Confederates.
Summer: Mariam Beck Forrest dies of blood poisoning, having stepped on a rusty nail.
August: Senter is elected to a full term as Tennessee governor, defeating his Radical opponent by a considerable margin.
Ten days after Senter’s election, Forrest is rumored to have ordered the KKK to disband permanently, destroying all its records and costumery, during a routine Klan meeting in Nashville.
Fall: Forrest explores partnership with a group of Northern businessmen with the idea of building new railroad lines to carry Alabama coal to Memphis.
March 25: Forrest tells a reporter that he has raised $2 million for a railroad line to connect Selma through Columbus to Memphis, which he expects to be running by January 1, 1871.
December 2: The Memphis
Avalanche
reports that numerous well-known Confederate leaders, including Forrest and others of rumored connection to the Klan, are now supporting the right of Southern blacks to vote.
By the end of this year, the last states of the former Confederacy (Virginia, Mississippi, Texas and Georgia) have been readmitted to the Union. The Reconstruction Ku Klux Klan appears to go out of existence.
March 25: A special referendum votes additional funding for the completion of Forrest’s Alabama to Memphis railroad.
June 27: During lengthy, evasive testimony before a U.S. congressional committee investigating the KKK, Forrest denies any direct knowledge of the Klan whatsoever but also states that he “had it broken up and disbanded,” perhaps soon after the election of DeWitt Senter as governor of Tennessee (an event in which Forrest professes to have no interest).
With the U.S. economy pushed into recession by the Franco-Prussian War, Forrest’s railroad projects are thwarted by difficulties such as the skyrocketing price of iron.
July 11: Forrest approaches the Memphis Chamber of Commerce in an effort to raise more money for the Memphis & Selma railroad.
January: Forrest visits Detroit, seeking new partners for his railroad ventures.
July: A county court inspection committee finds serious discrepancies in the accounting of the Memphis & Selma railroad company.
Toward the end of the year, Forrest writes to Sherman volunteering his services for a war that appeared to be impending between the United
States and Spanish Cuba. Sherman forwards the letter to the War Department with a note describing Forrest as “one of the most extraordinary men developed by our civil war,” who “would fight against our national enemies as vehemently as he fought against us.”
February 20: Forrest publishes, in the Memphis
Appeal
, an account of the Memphis & Selma company’s successes and difficulties.
March 29: Forrest resigns as president of the Memphis & Selma company. With the failure of this enterprise, the Forrest household (then including son Willie’s wife and infant daughter) is obliged to leave its rented home. Forrest and his wife move to a dogtrot log cabin on President’s Island, four miles downstream from the Memphis waterfront, where Forrest has leased 1,300 acres and arranged to cultivate them with convict labor.
August 28: Responding to a lynching episode in Trenton, Tennessee, Forrest declares in a public meeting in Memphis that if he had “proper authority he would capture and exterminate the white marauders who disgrace their race by this cowardly murder of negroes.”
July 5: At a barbecue hosted by the Shelby County black community in the interest of racial reconciliation, Forrest accepts a bouquet of flowers and makes a speech, saying in part, “I came here to the jeers of some white people, who think that I am doing wrong. … I came to meet you as friends, and welcome you to the white people. I want you to come nearer to us. When I can serve you, I will do so. We have but one flag, one country; let us stand together.”
Summer: Forrest becomes a practicing Christian, something he had promised to do once the war had ended, but delayed considerably in accomplishing.
October 29: Having uttered his last words, “Call my wife,” Forrest dies in the Memphis home of his brother Jesse.
Madison Smartt Bell is the author of fourteen previous works of fiction, including
All Souls’ Rising
(a National Book Award finalist),
Soldier’s Joy
, and
Anything Goes
. He lives in Baltimore, Maryland.
Copyright © 2009 by Madison Smartt Bell
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Pantheon Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Portions of this book originally appeared in slightly different form in
Blackbird, Boulevard, JMWW
, and
The Texas Review
. A portion also originally appeared in slightly different form in
Gathering: Writers of Williamson County
, edited by Currie Alexander Powers and Kathy Hardy Rhodes
(Sepulpa, OK: CPO Publishing, 2009).
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bell, Madison Smartt.
Devil’s dream / Madison Smartt Bell.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-307-37863-7
1. Southern States—History—Civil War, 1861–1865—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3552.E517D48 2009
813′.54—dc22 2009009534
v3.0