He led a Confederate cavalry unit composed of volunteers from the Yazoo River region of Mississippi during the American Civil War.

Nathan Bedford Forrest's five younger brothers were "ideal junior partners" who contributed to a "building a formidable slave-trading operation.

"[1] Aaron Forrest was described in a highly critical anti-Forrest article of 1864 as "general agent and soul driver" for the business.

[6] In Slave-Trading in the Old South (1931), historian Frederic Bancroft described the city of New Orleans, Louisiana, located at the mouth of the Mississippi River, as "mistress of the trade" and "the trader's paradise."

"[10] In autumn 1859, perhaps to avoid taxes on "transient venders" such as he paid in 1857, Aaron Forrest began advertising that he had a slave depot in a fixed location in Mississippi, namely a site on Mulberry Street, Vicksburg, a block or two inland from the Yazoo River.

"[12] In addition to advertising in Vicksburg, Aaron Forrest placed ads for this slave depot in newspapers in the Mississippi state capital, Jackson, announcing newly trafficked stock "consisting of field hands, mechanics, nurses, washers and ironers, and cooks, which I will sell at rates which cannot fail to please the purchaser.

[15][16] The official U.S. government investigator wrote James Buchanan: "At Vicksburg I learned from good authority that 30 of the Wanderer's cargo had been brought to that place last Spring and Sold by Forest & Co., Slave-dealers...At Memphis, I was informed at the negro depot of Byrd Hill that 7 Africans had been sold there last Spring by one Forest, (Hill's predecessor).

[21] During the American Civil War, Aaron Forrest led an independent company of volunteers known as the Sunflower Rangers,[22] which was reportedly organized August 1862.

They were fighting for their own homes and their carbines brought down many of McClernand's men off their boats and their bullets, entering through portholes of the gunboats, slew some of their gunners.

[25] During an encounter with the 5th Illinois Cavalry during the same expedition, the Sunflower Rangers were apparently startled to discover that Yankees would set foot in their swamp; a skirmish resulted in six Confederate deaths, three injuries, 15 taken prisoner, and some number of captured horses.

[31] Sources generally agree that Aaron Forrest died in April 1864, but conflict on specific location and cause of death.