The Seeds of Malice (2)
A long, long time ago.
Forty years ago, born into a destitute family in Tennessee, Nathan Bedford Forrest clawed his way up with ruthless tenacity to grasp the success and wealth he now possessed. There was no field he hadn't touched—slave trading, real estate, plantations—and slavery had become as inseparable from his fortune as gums are from teeth.
To him, slavery was opportunity. Without it, without the ability to work the "niggers" as his property, how could a dirt-poor boy like him have risen to become one of the wealthiest men in the South?
To him, slavery was peace. If he hadn't been able to dominate those slaves, he would have spent his life trembling in fear, worrying about his existence collapsing at any moment, just as it had in his youth.
Therefore, to him, slavery was everything. It was only natural to pour his own wealth into the war for the sake of this noble value.
"From this moment on, we march to save our brothers in Georgia!"
"U-uh, Colonel? But the number of enemy troops in Georgia is..."
"Of course it won't be easy. But we must do it. For the victory of the South! Planters like us are bleeding out at the hands of those inferior niggers!"
He had desperately persuaded the fools who were ignoring the horrific riots in Georgia as if it were none of their business, successfully organizing a relief force.
"The big shots at the top might find a way to survive. But if we lose this war and slavery vanishes, it’s the end for *you*!"
"Why? Wouldn't people like you, Colonel, who have so much to lose, suffer the greater damage?"
"You idiots! We already own vast tracts of land; we can just use this land to work the niggers as tenant farmers! But you? Do you have land? In the old days, if you worked your slaves right, you could turn your life around and join the ranks of the planters. Just like me!"
But now, that ladder of opportunity was about to vanish forever. You think you're safe because you aren't a slave owner? You fools—it’s not just you; your children will be forced to live out their lives as a lower class no different from the blacks.
News that most of those who lost their lives in Georgia were notorious for their brutal abuse of slaves never reached Forrest's ears. After all, Forrest himself was renowned for his own vicious treatment of slaves.
In Forrest's eyes, the fact that the majority of the troops were starving due to severed supply lines was invisible. To acknowledge that fact would be to admit that this war had no conclusion other than defeat.
However, setting aside the character of a man whose life's joy was squeezing the life out of black people, his actual military competence was undeniably brilliant. Despite never receiving a proper education, he had achieved constant victories, and the military leadership held his abilities in extremely high regard.
Thanks to this, he marched into Georgia with confidence. True soldiers who shared his convictions assisted him, and fortunately, public opinion in the capital had shifted back to the necessity of suppressing the Georgia riots at any cost.
However.
Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat!
"Aaaargh!"
"C-Colonel! It’s an ambush! An enemy ambush!"
"Damn it! These filthy niggers are fighting dirty to the very end!"
At first, Forrest had dismissed the black rebel forces. It was only natural; the blacks he had traded, abused, and exploited until now had never dared to offer him any resistance. They were creatures that obeyed when beaten. That was what blacks were, and people like John Brown, who claimed they were equal to whites, were nothing more than raving lunatics.
Perhaps that was why the exceptional ability he had displayed against his fellow white Northerners failed to manifest properly in his first engagement with the blacks. It was due to the fixed idea that one could win against niggers just by clicking 'attack'... no, that winning was a given.
"Damn it! All troops, reorganize! We retreat for now to form a battle line, then resume the advance slowly."
But he was not such a fool as to ignore the bitter lessons learned through his own flesh. Blacks were clearly stupid, but still smarter than monkeys. If well-trained monkeys could perform tricks, it wouldn't be strange for blacks, who were grinding their teeth in vengeance, to employ simple tactics.
Okay, analysis complete. Next time, I’ll crush them with a 'serious punch.'
He believed that if he fought with all his might, he could easily pulverize the rebels.
But.
Rat-tat-tat!
"Aaargh! Coloneeeel!"
"It’s a trap! It’s a trap!"
"What? You mean the front unit was a decoy? They anticipated we would flank them and hid their main force here?"
Something was wrong. He hadn't been careless this time; he had fought properly, so why were their losses so heavy?
"Colonel! They’re retreating!"
"Hurrah! We won!"
Won what? It was obvious they had decided they’d achieved their objective and were retreating without hesitation.
'No... wait. Did I just defend the tactics of niggers and call my own men idiots?'
As the blacks, who should have been easily crushed, clung to their ankles and resisted endlessly, Forrest began to feel a growing sense of foreboding. Having fought on equal footing with the great generals of the North—no, having the track record to prove it—he could not help but be shaken.
Why? How could he not unilaterally trample them? A mere rebel force, mere niggers. Creatures that should have been crushed like ants just by his passing were instead biting at their legs and drawing blood at every opportunity, driving him truly insane.
Of course, in actual combat, their exchange ratio was far better. The unit deployed this time had a thousand men from Tennessee alone, and if you counted the troops from other states, it was over two thousand. No matter how many rioters there were, they were perfectly armed regular troops, so a head-on clash was no contest.
But casualties kept mounting. It was becoming increasingly clear that they couldn't even approach Atlanta because food and supplies were becoming impossible to secure.
"Colonel! The supply unit was attacked! We need to send a relief force immediately...!"
"Colonel Clint of Alabama was shot by a black detachment. He sent word asking if we should retreat..."
"They’re a disaster. Such incompetent fools."
Forrest kicked the wreckage of a burned supply wagon and spat out curses. His anger was not directed at the blacks who dared to resist him. It was directed at the fellow white men who had come with him to reclaim Georgia.
The Tennessee cavalry he commanded won every time they fought after becoming accustomed to the blacks' tactics. But winning was meaningless. When he won in the east, another commander from Alabama was ambushed and shot in the west, forcing a retreat. When he finally secured a railway, some other idiot lost an entire supply unit to an ambush.
"Colonel! They hit and ran again! The bridge to Atlanta has collapsed again!"
"What were the men I sent to guard it doing!"
"Well, they were distracted by black women and children..."
"You moron!"
Forrest grabbed the reporting officer by the collar.
"Distracted on the battlefield? Just go get shot in the head and die!"
As time passed, he gradually realized one horrific fact. The blacks were clearly incompetent, inferior fools compared to him. But some white men were true fools, no better than those blacks. And because such fools held the command baton of the Confederate Army, this war was flowing in such a pathetic manner.
'At this rate... we lose.'
His brain, which was too capable to engage in escapism, finally sensed defeat. And that intuition summoned a fundamental fear leaking from the depths of his soul.
'What are those black bastards thinking right now, looking at those incompetent white bastards?'
If they dared to fall under the 'delusion' that they were no different from white men? If all the blacks in the South, not just Georgia, rose up like that? A horrific hell would inevitably unfold where all the wealth and order he had spent his life building—everything in the South—would collapse.
Furthermore. What if... what if the South lost and slavery disappeared? It was a scenario he didn't even want to imagine, but one he had to.
Would the blacks, having tasted the sweet success of victory, not run wild seeking revenge against the whites who had oppressed them until now?
His ominous premonition became a certainty, turning into genuine fear.
"No. I can never let that happen."
It wasn't simple anger. It was the manifestation of a sense of mission that, for the survival of the Southern whites, those black hordes had to be crushed—down to the very roots.
That night, in the desolate forests of Georgia, at the Confederate camp, Forrest summoned the six comrades he trusted most. Crusaders who had joined the holy war to save Georgia, true soldiers who had crossed the lines of death with him: John Lester, John Kennedy, James Crowe, Frank McCord, Richard Reed, and Calvin Jones. They were enlightened men who agreed with the self-evident truth that there was no future for this country unless the niggers were suppressed.
"You’ve all seen it," Forrest said quietly, poking a branch into the flames. "This war is already lost."
"Colonel! Don't say such things!"
"No. It’s the truth. We are losing right now because of those black monkey hordes. No! We are losing because of our superiors, who are even stupider than those monkeys."
The six officers fell silent. They must have already felt it, too.
"We must... even if the worst-case scenario comes to pass, prepare for the future of the South, the future of our white race."
"That mission! We will join you," John Lester replied solemnly.
"But Colonel. The cause of all this is ultimately the incompetent leaders, Davis and Breckinridge. The leader to guide this noble mission must be someone who possesses both a sense of mission and capability."
Hadn't the sad truth that if the leader is hopeless, no amount of capable staff can save the day, been clearly revealed this time? The six pairs of eyes turned simultaneously toward Forrest.
"The only leader to guide that noble mission is you, Colonel Forrest."
It was a cross he had intended to bear from the start. Forrest nodded slowly.
"I think so, too. But my strength alone is not enough. Beyond the seven of us, we need more capable and like-minded comrades."
Just as a brief silence was about to settle, Frank McCord spoke up cautiously.
"Colonel. What about Colonel James Seuret of Mississippi?"
"Seuret..."
Yes. A man of that caliber certainly had the qualifications. Forrest nodded immediately.
"A good suggestion. He is more than qualified to be in the same boat as us."
Although he was much younger than himself and occasionally did strange things, James Seuret was the only Southern youth Forrest acknowledged as worthy of respect. The bizarre idea of a rehabilitation center, the meticulousness in catching John Brown's lackeys, and the ability to escape the fires of hell with the Governor of Georgia.
"Good. We shall consider him a potential ally. He will surely understand our cause."
Forrest pulled the charred branch from the flames and drew a circle in the dirt floor.
"Considering the aftermath of this war... we need to start everything from scratch."
His voice was quiet, but a chilling madness lurked within. "The first goal is to prevent the rights of those filthy black bastards from expanding."
A world where blacks gained the right to vote? Just thinking about it was horrific. If representatives for the blacks entered Congress, wouldn't they inevitably churn out policies hostile to whites? Such a thing must never happen.
"Next, those Italian, Greek, Irish, and Jewish bastards who are eating away at this country. We will eliminate those non-Anglo-Saxon immigrants as well."
He completed a cross inside the circle on the dirt floor. To normalize the South, a resolve capable of burning everything to the ground was necessary.
On this day, the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, Nathan Bedford Forrest, realized the mission for which God had sent him to this land.