N. B. Forest

Reading great biography of Nathan Bedford Forest.

He is a study in contrasts. He begins his life as a slave trader and ends--at no small cost to himself--as an advocate of a racially inclusive democratic party. First Grand Wizard of the Klu Klux Clan he ends up disbanding it in Tennessee and denouncing its continued operations elsewhere.

He illustraites and challenges a lot of theories. Famous for having 30 horses shot out from under him, he would seem to be the embodiment of the sort of "charge with banners flying" ethos we associate with 19th century military. But, untrained in military theory, he was one of the few civil War era generals that saw the futility of the frontal assault. All of his victories, and they were almost always victories when he was in sole command, were won by doing exactly what theory of the time said you should never do: divide his forces. He rebukes a superior saying, "If I knew as much about West Point tactics as you do I'd get whipped everytime for sure."

An interesting thing about 19th century battles was that because communications were so slow and uncertain on the battle field, most coordination depended crucially on commanders being able to anticipate what their fellow commanders (on the same side) would do in a given situation. This is one of the reasons Forest does not work well in groups where he is not in sole command but is instead the head of only a part of the army. Once the battle begins the other commanders are not able to anticipate what he will do. This causes problems even though his decisions are sometimes, in fact, usually, better than what the other commanders expect him to do. The local efficiency represented by Forest's ability to make full use of local information is to some extent counterbalanced by the loss in coordination with other commanders. Chicamagua is a possible case in point (though there even more traditionally trained commanders would have done what Forest was expecting others to do and it was only the unusual timidity of ?Buford? that lead to a failure to follow up on the initial breakthrough in Federal lines). An army may sometimes be better off with a lot of commanders making bad decisions, but the same bad decisions, than having individual geniuses making better but unpredictable decisions.