Deepthought South Hate Crime 2

The South & Hate Crimes, Updated & Revised:

Deep Thought has updated his famous piece on the South and hate crimes, in the wake of last week's uproar involving Fort Pillow. He's a little angry about the rhetoric that was reflexively directed at Southerners just because some Congressman decided to quote a Civil War general, on the subject of military tactics.

I think the people who reacted so badly about the reference to Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest probably only know two things about him: that he was commanding at Ft. Pillow, and that he founded the KKK. They probably don't know that there are conflicting historical claims about what happened at Ft. Pillow, and they certainly don't know that Forrest ordered the KKK to disband when it stopped being about resisting Northern domination, and became about punishing blacks. He also was the first white man to address the Pole Bearers association, an early civil rights group, during which address he made a point of endorsing black civil rights, including voting rights.

In any event, he was a natural cavalryman -- and it's hard not to have some respect for a man who had more than thirty horses shot out from under him and kept riding into battle all the same. If you are talking about warfighting, as the Congressman was on this occasion, it's proper to cite him. The man knew something about it.