Devil's Dream - Madison Smartt Bell [145]
1845
March 10: Forrest’s Uncle Jonathan is attacked and killed on the street in Hernando by members of the Matlock family. Defending his uncle, Bedford Forrest dispatches two or more Matlocks, using a knife tossed to him by a bystander after his own pistol is emptied. Subsequent to this affair, Forrest is appointed constable in Hernando.
September 25: Forrest marries Mary Ann Montgomery, whom he has met about a month before, thanks to having assisted her and her mother when their carriage was stuck in a ford.
1846
William Forrest is born to Bedford and Mary Ann Forrest.
1847
Frances A. Forrest is born to Bedford and Mary Ann Forrest.
1848
John Forrest, next in age after Bedford, returns as a cripple from the Mexican War.
1852
Bedford and Mary Ann Forrest move to Memphis, Tennessee, where Forrest expands his business as a slave-trader.
1853
From Hill & Forrest, a firm in which he is a partner, Forrest purchases “a Negro woman named Catharine aged seventeen and her Child named Thomas aged four months.”
Forrest buys adjacent lots on Adams Street in Memphis: 85 Adams for his personal residence and 87 Adams for his slave pen.
1854
June 26: Forrest’s daughter, Frances, dies of dysentery.
1856
Forrest buys some 700 acres in Shelby County.
1857
James McMillan is shot in a dispute with another slave-trader, Isaac Bolton, and dies of his wounds in Forrest’s home.
June 26: In the wake of a gambling-related murder, Forrest is elected to a vigilance committee to run gamblers out of Memphis (despite a serious gambling habit of his own).
1858
Forrest is elected alderman in Memphis. He buys 1,900 acres of cotton land in Coahoma County, Mississippi, and 1,346 acres across the river in Phillips County, Arkansas. He adds eighty-five feet of frontage to his Adams Street property between 2nd and 3rd Streets and moves from 85 Adams to another house on the south side of Adams between 3rd and 4th Streets.
1861
January 14: South Carolina, Florida, Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi vote to secede from the United States, followed by Texas and Louisiana.
April 3: Confederates win victory over Union forces at Manassas, Virginia, in the first battle of Bull Run.
May: Forrest buys a forty-two-acre farm seven miles north of Memphis for his mother and stepfather, James H. Luxton.
June 8: Tennessee secedes from the United States.
June 14: Forrest, his youngest brother, Jeffrey, and his son, William, enlist as privates in the Confederate Army at Randolph, Tennessee.
At some point during these early days of the war, Forrest offers freedom at the war’s end to those of his slaves who are willing to serve as teamsters in his command. Forty-five men accept this offer.
July 23: Swiftly promoted to lieutenant colonel, Forrest runs a newspaper ad for “Mounted Rangers.” He travels to Kentucky to recruit and buy arms for his company.
October: Forrest and his Rangers are ordered to Fort Donelson, in Tennessee.
December 28: In his first Civil War engagement, at Sacramento, Kentucky, Forrest kills two men with a saber.
1862
February 13: Union commander Ulysses S. Grant attacks Fort Donelson. Bedford Forrest fights a five-hour engagement with Union troops on the Fort Henry road.
February 14: As fighting continues around Fort Donelson, the Confederates finally drive the Union troops from the field. Forrest gets fifteen bullet holes in his coat and has two horses shot from under him—one with seven bullet wounds and the second blown up by an artillery shell.
February 15: Refusing to surrender with the other Confederate commanders, Forrest evacuates the men of his command in the direction of Nashville, Tennessee.
February 23: Having broken up mobs of looters with a fire hose and provisioned his men from Nashville stores, Forrest leaves Nashville for Murfreesboro, just in advance of the surrender of Nashville to the oncoming Union Army commanded by General Don Carlos Buell.
March 10: Reinforced