Nathan Bedford Forrest

A bearded man in a wide-brimmed hat dominates the frame, his hat band marked N.B.F. — Nathan Bedford Forrest, the Confederate cavalry general who had become the Ku Klux Klan's first Grand Wizard. He raises a dagger labeled THE LOST CAUSE while wearing a belt buckle stamped C.S.A. and a badge bearing a skull. Behind him, buildings burn: signs read Colored Orphan Asylum and Southern School. A hanged figure is visible at left. Nast's argument is blunt: the postwar 'Lost Cause' mythology was not romantic nostalgia but organized terror against Black Southerners and Reconstruction institutions. Forrest embodied both — commander at Fort Pillow and architect of organized white-supremacist violence — and Nast named him without ambiguity.