When the American Civil War came, John Hubbard joined the Confederate cavalry. Early in the war he made this observation: "...one day I met a soldier speeding a magnificent black horse along a country road as if for exercise, and the pleasure of being astride of so fine an animal. On closer inspection, I saw it was Bedford Forrest, only a private like myself, whom I had known ten years before down in Mississippi. I had occasion afterward to see a good deal of him." Nathan Bedford Forrest, known as "Devil Forrest" and "the Wizard of the Saddle" rose from a private soldier to one of the most important and innovative Confederate generals in the Civil War. Historian Shelby Foote has called Forrest "one of the two true geniuses produced by the Civil War," the other being Abraham Lincoln.