Editing Nathan Bedford Forrest (section)

===Business ventures===
[[File:Memphis and vicinity LOC 2006636341.jpg|thumb|"Memphis and vicinity" mapped during the American Civil War, including [[President's Island]] where Forrest's post-war farm was worked by [[convict labor]] ]]
As a former slave owner and slave trader, Forrest experienced the [[Abolition of slavery in the USA#The end of slavery|abolition of slavery]] at the war's end as a major financial setback. During the war, he became interested in the area around [[Crowley's Ridge]] and took up civilian life in 1865 in Memphis, Tennessee. In 1866, Forrest and C.C. McCreanor contracted to finish the [[Memphis & Little Rock Railroad]], including a [[Right of way (rail)|right-of-way]] that passed over the ridge.{{sfn|Mitcham|2016|p=193}} The ridgetop [[Commissary (store)|commissary]] he built as a provisioning store for the 1,000 Irish laborers hired to lay the rails became the nucleus of a town, which most residents called "Forrest's Town" and which was incorporated as [[Forrest City, Arkansas]] in 1870.<ref name="EOA2017">{{cite web|author1=Mike Polston |title=Forrest City (St. Francis County)|publisher=The Central Arkansas Library System |url=http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/entry-detail.aspx?entryID=996 |website=Encyclopedia of Arkansas www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171105132923/http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/entry-detail.aspx?entryID=996|archive-date=November 5, 2017|date=2018}}</ref>

The historian Court Carney writes that Forrest was not universally popular in the white Memphis community: he alienated many of the city's business people in his commercial dealings and was criticized for questionable business practices that caused him to default on debts.<ref name="Carney2001">{{cite journal|author1=Carney, Court|title=The Contested Image of Nathan Bedford Forrest|jstor=3070019|journal=The Journal of Southern History|date=August 2001|volume=67|issue=3|pages=601–630|doi=10.2307/3070019}}</ref>

He later found employment at the [[Selma, Alabama|Selma]]-based Marion & Memphis Railroad and eventually became the company president. He was not as successful in railroad promotion as in war, and, under his direction, the company went [[bankrupt]]. Nearly ruined as the result of this failure, Forrest spent his final days running an eight-hundred-acre farm on land he leased on [[President's Island]] in the Mississippi River, where he and his wife lived in a [[log cabin]]. There, with the labor of over a hundred prison convicts, he grew corn, potatoes, vegetables, and cotton profitably, but his health steadily declined.{{sfn|Ashdown|Caudill|2006|p=163}}{{sfn|Hurst|2011|p=374}} In May 1877, Forrest's use of convict labor was described as indistinguishable from slavery, in its use of bloodhounds, shotgun-wielding guards, and corporal punishment.<ref name=":1">{{Cite news |date=May 16, 1877 |title=Convict Labor in Georgia and Tennessee |pages=2 |work=The Daily Memphis Avalanche |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-daily-memphis-avalanche-convict-labo/130036626/ |access-date=August 15, 2023 |via=Newspapers.com |archive-date=August 15, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230815032101/https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-daily-memphis-avalanche-convict-labo/130036626/ |url-status=live }}</ref> Critics also argued it was unjust and exploitative: "The convict farmer has a financial interest in the conviction of as many persons as he may need...and the obsequious and corrupt myrmidons and magistrates of the law can readily supply the demand at a short notice in a country where the unprotected negro is left to steal or starve."<ref name=":1" />
[[File:P15138coll6 2626 full - State of Alabama, Selma, Marion, Memphis Railroad Company bonds. Issued September 1, 1869.jpg|left|thumb|[[Selma, Marion & Memphis Railroad]] bonds, issued 1869 by the state of Alabama, signed by N. B. Forrest]]