Quote#Freedom
When I entered the army I took forty-seven negroes into the army with…
Quote byNathan Bedford Forrest · 1821–1877
Commonly attributed — not confirmed in an authoritative edition. Cited on Wikiquote to: Remark to some of his slaves at the start of the war (c. June 1861), recalled in an interview in Memphis, TN (Aug. 26, 1868), correspondence of the Cincinnati Commercial, reported in The New York Times (Sep. 3, 1868) p. 3, col. 4.
English (original)
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."
— Nathan Bedford Forrest
More from Nathan Bedford Forrest
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 …
Every moment lost is worth the life of a thousand men.
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.
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?
If you surrender, you shall be treated as prisoners of war, but if I have to storm your works, you may expect no quarter.