Devil's Dream - Madison Smartt Bell [156]
Summer: Mariam Beck Forrest dies of blood poisoning, having stepped on a rusty nail.
August: Senter is elected to a full term as Tennessee governor, defeating his Radical opponent by a considerable margin.
Ten days after Senter’s election, Forrest is rumored to have ordered the KKK to disband permanently, destroying all its records and costumery, during a routine Klan meeting in Nashville.
Fall: Forrest explores partnership with a group of Northern businessmen with the idea of building new railroad lines to carry Alabama coal to Memphis.
1870
March 25: Forrest tells a reporter that he has raised $2 million for a railroad line to connect Selma through Columbus to Memphis, which he expects to be running by January 1, 1871.
December 2: The Memphis Avalanche reports that numerous well-known Confederate leaders, including Forrest and others of rumored connection to the Klan, are now supporting the right of Southern blacks to vote.
By the end of this year, the last states of the former Confederacy (Virginia, Mississippi, Texas and Georgia) have been readmitted to the Union. The Reconstruction Ku Klux Klan appears to go out of existence.
1871
March 25: A special referendum votes additional funding for the completion of Forrest’s Alabama to Memphis railroad.
June 27: During lengthy, evasive testimony before a U.S. congressional committee investigating the KKK, Forrest denies any direct knowledge of the Klan whatsoever but also states that he “had it broken up and disbanded,” perhaps soon after the election of DeWitt Senter as governor of Tennessee (an event in which Forrest professes to have no interest).
1872
With the U.S. economy pushed into recession by the Franco-Prussian War, Forrest’s railroad projects are thwarted by difficulties such as the skyrocketing price of iron.
July 11: Forrest approaches the Memphis Chamber of Commerce in an effort to raise more money for the Memphis & Selma railroad.
1873
January: Forrest visits Detroit, seeking new partners for his railroad ventures.
July: A county court inspection committee finds serious discrepancies in the accounting of the Memphis & Selma railroad company.
Toward the end of the year, Forrest writes to Sherman volunteering his services for a war that appeared to be impending between the United States and Spanish Cuba. Sherman forwards the letter to the War Department with a note describing Forrest as “one of the most extraordinary men developed by our civil war,” who “would fight against our national enemies as vehemently as he fought against us.”
1874
February 20: Forrest publishes, in the Memphis Appeal, an account of the Memphis & Selma company’s successes and difficulties.
March 29: Forrest resigns as president of the Memphis & Selma company. With the failure of this enterprise, the Forrest household (then including son Willie’s wife and infant daughter) is obliged to leave its rented home. Forrest and his wife move to a dogtrot log cabin on President’s Island, four miles downstream from the Memphis waterfront, where Forrest has leased 1,300 acres and arranged to cultivate them with convict labor.
August 28: Responding to a lynching episode in Trenton, Tennessee, Forrest declares in a public meeting in Memphis that if he had “proper authority he would capture and exterminate the white marauders who disgrace their race by this cowardly murder of negroes.”
1875
July 5: At a barbecue hosted by the Shelby County black community in the interest of racial reconciliation, Forrest accepts a bouquet of flowers and makes a speech, saying in part, “I came here to the jeers of some white people, who think that I am doing wrong. … I came to meet you as friends, and welcome you to the white people. I want you to come nearer to us. When I can serve you, I will do so. We have but one flag, one country; let us stand together.”
Summer: Forrest becomes a practicing Christian, something he had promised to do once the war had