THE CIVIL WAR: THE TRUE STORY BOOK 1

Bust Hell Wide Open

Bust Hell Wide Open

By James Rutledge Roesch on Jul 11, 2017

A review of Bust Hell Wide Open: the Life of Nathan Bedford Forrest by Samuel W. Mitcham, Jr., Regnery History, 2016.

Writing a biography about Nathan Bedford Forrest – a man recognized by no less than General Robert E. Lee and General William T. Sherman as "the most remarkable man produced by the Civil War on either side" – is a daunting task. How does an author do justice to such an imposing historical figure? In Bust Hell Wide Open: The Life of Nathan Bedford Forrest (Regnery History, 2016), author Samuel W. Mitcham, Jr. proves that he is more than up to the challenge. Unlike many biographies, which can get so mired in minutiae that reading them feels like a forced march, Bust Hell Wide Open reads like a rollicking cavalry charge. Perhaps most importantly for a figure as controversial as Forrest, Mitcham massacres the untruths and misperceptions that have haunted him and unjustly darkened his legacy. Mitcham's Bust Hell Wide Open can ride in the company of Forrest classics such as John Allan Wyeth's That Devil Forrest, Andrew Nelson Lytle's Bedford Forrest and his Critter Company, and Robert Selph Henry's First With the Most.

There are many historical figures whose early lives give no indication of future greatness. Who would have thought that the corporate attorney and Illinois politico whose biggest accomplishment was getting trounced by Stephen A. Douglas would become the messianic President who "saved the Union" and "freed the slaves," Abraham Lincoln? Or that the quiet, dignified officer from Virginia who seemed to have reached his peak in the Mexican War would become a military genius who turned the tide of the Civil War and a symbol of pride and hope to Southerners ever since, Robert E. Lee? There was never any doubt that Forrest was destined for greatness, however. Even from his humble roots in the Tennessee and Mississippi backcountry, Mitcham shows how every signature characteristic of the "Wizard of the Saddle" was already there in spades: his chivalry (placing himself between lynch mobs and their victims), his bravery (leaping into fights no matter the odds), his determination (hunting and killing any beast or man which threatened him or his own), and his trickery (bluffing bigger, stronger enemies into backing down). Indeed, at a phrenological lecture, Forrest even had his head measured, and was pronounced "a man who would have been a Caesar, a Hannibal, a Napoleon if he had the opportunity." According to the phrenologist, "If he could not go over the Alps he would go through them."

Mitcham does not sacrifice Forrest to the wrathful volcano god of American history – slavery. Indeed, it is impossible to appreciate Forrest (or anything Confederate, for that matter) if you feel intense shame or sanctimony over slavery. Outside of Muslim fanatics who purge any remnant of their pagan, pre-Islamic past, no other people in the world are as self-hating or self-righteous about their history as Americans. Until the 1960s, when Marxist-Leninists replaced Klassenkampf (class war) with Kulturkampf (culture war) and mass-immigration created a fifth column of Third-Worlders, Americans mourned the Civil War as a national tragedy and honored both sides. Today, however, "equality" has become like the Ring of Power in the hands of our political, intellectual, cultural, and corporate elite – the one ring to rule them all – and thus anyone or anything tainted by slavery must be purged.

Mitcham does not sugarcoat the fact that Forrest was a slave trader and a slave owner. "Forrest's world view was that of a nineteenth-century Southerner...and a man who grew to manhood in the raw, tough, and often violent world of the antebellum American frontier," writes Mitcham. "I hold that we can learn a great deal from the past and from the people who populated it, people like Forrest, even though we might not want them as neighbors." Starting with an inheritance of several slaves from his uncle, Forrest built a large, lucrative slave-trading business. Although slave trading – trafficking in human property – was a fundamentally inhuman business, Forrest was, as Mitcham puts it, "the best of a bad lot." Forrest not only never sold family members off separately, but also went out of his way to reunite families who had been separated. Far from treating his slaves like animals in "pens," Forrest kept them sheltered, fed, clothed, and healthy, and never beat or whipped any of them. Forrest even encouraged his slaves to read (a crime in many States) and allowed them to go into town by themselves and seek out their own masters. Eventually, Forrest transitioned out of the disreputable slave trade and made himself respectable: he acquired several large plantations in Tennessee, Mississippi, and Arkansas (worked by over 200 slaves) and was even elected as a Memphis alderman. Later, when Forrest rode off to war, he took all 43 of his adult male slaves with him, promising to reward loyal service with personal freedom. Forrest ended up freeing them early, however, in case he was killed before the war ended. At least twenty of his former slaves followed him home and worked on his plantations as freedmen. "Those boys stuck with me," recalled Forrest of his black soldiers. "Better Confederates never lived."