[The following is in relation to the pre-Civil War business venture of a young Nathan Bedford Forrest, who would become famous during the war as possibly the most talented and successful cavalry commander of the entire war, in which he fought for the Confederates.]
Drawing on the testimony of escaped slaves, a wartime correspondent for the New York Tribune would paint a gruesome picture of Forrest’s yard [where he bought and auctioned slaves in Memphis, Tennessee]:
The slave pen of old Bedford Forrest, on Adams street, was a perfect horror to all negroes far and near. His mode of punishing refractory slaves was to compel four of his fellow slaves to stand and hold the victim stretched out in the air, and then Bedford and his brother John would stand, one on each side, with long, heavy bull whips, and cut up their victims until the blood trickled to the ground. Women were often stripped naked, and with a bucket of salt water standing by, in which to dip the instrument of torture, a heavy leather thong, their backs were cut up until the blisters covered the whole surface.
Source:
Ward, Andrew. “Bedford.” River Run Red: The Fort Pillow Massacre in the American Civil War. Viking, 2005. 20. Print.
Original Source(s) Listed:
Eden, “Memoir.”
Hurst, Nathan Bedford Forrest, p. 179.
Further Reading:
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