Forrest had success as a businessman, planter and slaveholder. He acquired several cotton plantations in the Delta region of West Tennessee, and became a slave trader at a time when demand for slaves was booming in the Deep South; his slave trading business was based on Adams Street in Memphis. In 1858, Forrest was elected a Memphis city alderman as a and served two consecutive terms. By the time the American Civil War started in 1861, he had become one of the richest men in the South, having amassed a "personal fortune that he claimed was worth $1.5 million".