Nathan Bedford Forrest

I want to elevate you to take positions in law offices, in stores, on farms, and wherever you are capable of going.

This day is a day that is proud to me, having occupied the position that I did for the past twelve years, and been misunderstood by your race. This is the first opportunity I have had during that time to say that I am your friend. I am …

Ladies and gentlemen, I accept the flowers as a memento of reconciliation between the white and colored races of the southern states. I accept it more particularly as it comes from a colored lady, for if there is any one on God's earth who …

I have never, on the field of battle, sent you where I was unwilling to go myself; nor would I now advise you to a course which I felt myself unwilling to pursue. You have been good soldiers, you can be good citizens. Obey the laws, …

Men, you may all do as you damn please, but I'm a-goin' home.

Preserve untarnished the reputation you have so nobly won.

That we are beaten is a self-evident fact, and any further resistance on our part would be justly regarded as the very height of folly and rashness.

I've got no respect for a young man who won't join the colors.

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.

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 …

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.

When I entered the army I took forty-seven negroes into the army with me, and forty-five of them were surrendered with me. I said to them at the start: "This fight is against slavery; if we lose it, you will be made free."

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.