Forward moved to St. Augustine, where he opened a legal practice and entered politics as a Democrat.

Widowed in 1841, Forward then remarried on June 9, 1842, to Mary Hutchinson, daughter of a New York attorney and granddaughter of a Dartmouth College president.

In 1844, St. Johns County elected him to the Florida Territorial Legislature, and in January 1845 became its Speaker.

[3] He supported secession to the point of nearly volunteering to serve in the Second Florida Infantry as a private.

He became ill in July 1865 and died in Savannah on October 19, on a journey to seek medical treatment.