Forrest's jail

"[10] In spring 1864, after the massacre at Fort Pillow, an article about Forrest's slave-trading business appeared in many Northern papers.

[8] The article, said to be written by a "Knoxville correspondent" of the New York Tribune, described whippings at the jail conducted by Bedford and his brother John, the use of an additional form of torture called salting, and the secret burial of an enslaved man who had been whipped to death with a "trace chain doubled for the purpose of punishment.

According to the Tennessee Baptist newspaper of Nashville, it "gave way and fell to the ground killing two negroes and injuring four others.

"[11] The New York Times reported that the Forrest, Jones & Co. negro mart building in Memphis had both collapsed and then caught fire; two people died.

[12] After the building catastrophe Forrest sold his interest in the slave-trade business and invested the profit in cotton plantations.

He described Forrest's slave jail at that time:[15] On Adams Street, near Main, there is a square, old-fashioned, four-story building, with a brick piazza of four arches, painted yellow.

It is said that Forrest was kind to his negroes, that he never separated members of a family, and that he always told his slaves to go out in the city and choose their own masters.

[15]Historian Frederic Bancroft reported in Slave-Trading in the Old South that an ex-Confederate resident of Memphis had written him that "until about Jan. 1921, 'the houses 87 and 89 Adams street, formerly used by N. B. Forrest and his brothers Jesse A.