occurred by reason of the fact that instead of having passed the night at the old Gayoso Hotel, where he made his headquarters, he happened to be visiting a brother officer, elsewhere.  General Washburn was warned by a courier and made his escape in his nightclothes and bare feet from the residence he occupied as headquarters, running down alleys to the river, and thence along under the bluff to the Union fortifications.  Forrest’s men found the general’s papers, uniform, hat, boots and sword in his bedroom, and also found there Mrs. Washburn.  The only things they failed to find were the general’s nightshirt and the general himself, who was inside it.  General Buckland also avoided capture by the narrowest margin.  The soldiers first went to the wrong house to look for him.  That gave him time to escape.

It is recorded that, later in the day, under a flag of truce, Forrest sent General Washburn his sword and clothing with a humorous message, informing him, at the same time, that he had 600 Federal prisoners without shoes or clothing, and that he would like supplies for them.  The supplies, we are told, were promptly forthcoming.

Forrest waited until he was sure that news of the raid had been telegraphed to General Smith in the field.  Then he cut the wires.  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  They superseded me with Washburn because I could not keep Forrest out of West Tennessee, and Washburn cannot keep him out of his own bedroom!”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.  So far as I can discover the Ku Klux endeavored to avoid violence where it could be avoided.  Its aim seems to have