Forrest, Nathan Bedford (1821-1877)

US Confederate military leader and founder of the Ku Klux Klan 1866, a secret and sinister society dedicated to white supremacy.

At the outbreak of the American Civil War 1861, Forrest escaped from Union troops before the fall of Fort Donelson in Tennessee 1862. After the Battle of Shiloh 1862, he was promoted to the rank of brigadier general, and led raids against Union forces throughout the South.

Born in Chapel Hill, Tennessee, Forrest had little formal schooling but accumulated enough wealth through slave dealing to buy land in Mississippi and establish a cotton plantation. He founded the Klan while working as a civilian railroad executive after the end of the Civil War.