Comte de Paris, History of the Civil War in America. Vol. 1.
Henry Coppee , LL.D., Ed.

Differing widely from the other two chiefs, who, when hostilities commenced, gathered the greatest number of partisans around them to begin the war, Forrest impersonated the most brutal passions without compensating by any brilliant quality. This veritable captain of military bandits, like those that were seen in Germany during the Thirty Years war, promised the adventurers whom he enlisted, not toleration, but the example of pillage. The rival of Quantrell, that brigand who boasted during the war that he had never suffered a single human being to live in whole counties of Missouri, he encouraged them to acts of cruelty which far exceeded all the outrages that have been charged against the Indians. We shall find him, therefore, always on the lookout for easy successes, and signalizing himself at last by a sinister exploit —the massacre of the negro garrison of Fort Pillow. He organized the band under his command into a corps of mounted infantry, in which every man was provided with a horse—less for the purpose of fighting than for executing rapid marches, at the end of which the men would dismount, take up their muskets, and carry the enemy's positions, thus suddenly attacked, at the point of the bayonet. He found these tactics the more successful that he was not ashamed—no more than the Indian—to beat a hasty retreat whenever he found his adversary on his guard. His corps increased rapidly by the addition of other partisan bands, whose chiefs had acquired less celebrity than himself. He soon grew tired of being only a guerilla chief like Mosby and Morgan, and persuaded the Confederate government to recognize the importance of his services by bestowing upon his band, composed of two strong divisions of cavalry, the character of regular troops, and upon himself the rank of general. This reorganization and these new titles did not, however, produce any change either in the chief or in the soldiers. The latter continued their career of murder and rapine on a larger scale, and the new general, who was formerly a slave-trader, continued to dishonor the Confederate cause by handling his sword as if, instead of that weapon, he still held in his hand the blood-stained whip of the dealer in human flesh.