Smith
immediately came back toward Memphis with his army, which was what
Forrest desired him to do. The Confederates then retired from the
immediate vicinity of the city.
Judge Young, in his history, reports that when General Hurlbut heard of
the raid he exclaimed, "There it goes again! They superseded me with
Washburn because I could not keep Forrest out of West Tennessee, and
Washburn cannot keep him out of his own bedroom!"
* * * * *
After the War there was corruption and carpet-bag rule in Memphis, and
Forrest was again to the fore, becoming "Grand Wizard" of the famous Ku
Klux Klan, the mysterious secret organization designed to intimidate
Scalawags, Carpet-baggers and negroes, whose arrogance had become
intolerable. General George W. Gordon prepared the oath and ritual for
the Klan, which was founded in the town of Pulaski, Giles County,
Tennessee. General Forrest took the oath in 1866, in Room 10 of the old
Maxwell House, at Nashville.
It is my belief that the Ku Klux Klan has been a good deal maligned.
Many of its members were men of high type. I have been told, for
instance, that one southern gentleman who has since been in the cabinet
of a President of the United States, was active in the Ku Klux. I
withhold his name because the purposes of the Ku Klux Klan, and the
urgent need which called it into being, are not yet fully understood in
the North, and for the further reason that depredations committed by
other bodies were frequently charged to the Ku Klux, giving it a bad
name.
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