Former Confederate soldiers after the Civil War

With the Left’s current effort to rid America of all its associations with the Confederacy and the removal of memorial monuments and statues, it is important to remember how indebted we are to those former Confederate soldiers, sailors and officials who served the people of the United States honorably following the War.

FROM: SAM HOOD
Date: Oct. 14, 2017
This is a partial list of positions held by former Confederates after the Civil War.

A Confederate veteran, Lt. Edward Douglass White of the 9th Louisiana Cavalry, became Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court after the Civil War.  

Two United States Supreme Court associate justices were former Confederate soldiers; Col. Lucius Q. C. Lamar of the 19th Mississippi Infantry, and Sergeant Major Horace H. Lurton of the 3rd Kentucky Cavalry. Another associate justice, Howell E. Jackson, was a former Confederate government official.

Two former Confederates, Maj. Amos T. Akerman and Confederate Senator from Arkansas Augustus H. Garland, served as United States Attorneys General.

Former Confederate officer Col. James D. Porter was appointed United States Assistant Secretary of State in 1885.

A United States Solicitor General was Confederate cavalryman John Goode of Virginia.

Prior to becoming a Supreme Court justice, Lucius Q.C. Lamar served as United States Secretary of the Interior.

Former Confederate Col. David M. Key served as United States Postmaster General.

President Theodore Roosevelt appointed former Confederate Joseph Clay Stiles Blackburn as Governor of the Panama Canal Zone.

A former Confederate soldier, Benjamin Morgan Harrod, was the United States Representative on the Panama Canal Commission.

A former Confederate, Col. Hilary A. Herbert of the 8th Alabama Infantry, became United States Secretary of the Navy.

A Confederate veteran named Patrick Henry Morgan was appointed as a district Superintendent of the United States Coast Guard.

Confederate veterans served as United States Ambassadors, Envoys, Consuls, and Ministers to Turkey (Ottoman Empire:) Brazil; Russia; Sweden-Norway; Uruguay; Costa Rica; Guatemala; Mexico; Honduras; Havana, Cuba; Bolivia; Hong Kong; Jerusalem; France; Peru; Dominican Republic; Bermuda; Japan; China; Tampico, Mexico; Ecuador; Chile, Austria-Hungary; Naples, Italy; Panama; Martinique; Venezuela; Vancouver, Canada; Colombia; Greece; Romania; Serbia, and Spain. A former Confederate, Lt. Col. Paul Francis de Gournay, was a citizen of France and became a French Consul to the United States after the Civil War, and another Confederate, Jose Agustin Quintero of Louisiana, became Consul for Belgium and Costa Rica in New Orleans.

Numerous United States Senators and members of the United States House of Representatives were Confederate veterans, including one Senate Majority Leader, Thomas Staples Martin, who co-drafted the United States Declaration of War against Germany in 1917. A former Confederate, William A. Harris, was elected United States Senator and to the U.S. House of Representatives from the strongly pro-Union state of Kansas.

Four Confederate generals served as generals in the United States Army and served in the Spanish-American War; Thomas Rosser, Matthew Butler, Joseph Wheeler, and Fitzhugh Lee. Other former Confederates were appointed Generals of Volunteers during the Spanish-American War but their units were not deployed.

Numerous former Confederates fought for the United States Army and Navy, and at least one former Confederate soldier who volunteered, Lt. Col. William Crawford Smith of Tennessee, died in combat during the Philippine Insurrection.

Dozens of Confederates served as governors of the eleven seceded Southern states after the war, but also governed the non-Confederate states/territories of Kentucky, Missouri, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, and Alaska.   

Confederate veterans were elected mayors of numerous cities and towns, including the Northern cities of Los Angeles CA, Ogden UT, and Minneapolis MN.

Former Confederate Brigadier General John Stuart Williams was co-founder of the City of Naples, Florida.

An Adjutant General of Montana was former Confederate soldier, Charles William Turner.

Former Confederate Samuel Davis Shannon served as Secretary of State of Utah.

Native-American Confederate Col. Jackson F. McCurtain became Chief of the Choctaw Nation after the war.

Former Confederates became presidents of the American Bar Association, American Medical Association, American Chemical Society, American Society of Chemical Engineers, American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Psychiatric Association, and the American Philological Association (dedicated to the study of classical literature, linguistics, history, philosophy, and cultural studies.)

Former Confederate soldiers founded or co-founded approximately 20 colleges, universities, and post-graduate schools, including Mississippi State University, Texas Christian University, Southwestern University (Texas,) Coker College (South Carolina,) North Carolina State University, Millsaps College (Mississippi,) Averett College (Virginia,) East Carolina University, Blue Mountain College (Mississippi,) Clemson University, Agnes Scott Women’s College (Georgia,) the historically  black colleges, University of Arkansas-Pine Bluff, Prairie View A&M University, Alcorn State University,  and predominately black Meharry Medical School in Nashville. Former Confederates founded several postgraduate schools including the Tulane University Medical School, the University of Arkansas Medical School, and the University of California Hastings School of Law, 
Confederate veterans were presidents of numerous universities, including the University of California-Berkeley, Tulane University, Louisiana State University, the University of Florida, North Carolina State University, the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, the University of Alabama, the University of Mississippi,  Mississippi State University, the University of Virginia, Virginia Tech, Virginia Military Institute, Bethel College (Clarksville, Tennessee,) the Citadel, the University of Maryland, Blue Mountain College (Mississippi,) Western Kentucky University, Shepherd College (West Virginia), Allegheny College (Pennsylvania,) the College of William and Mary, Washington and Lee University, Lander College (South Carolina,) Texas A&M University, the University of Arkansas, William Jewell College (Liberty, Missouri,) Jacksonville State University (Alabama,) Davidson College, and Randolph-Macon University. Former Confederates served on the governing boards of numerous colleges and universities, including the United States Military Academy (West Point,) and the United States Naval Academy.

A former Confederate Army surgeon in Gen. Benjamin F. Cheatham’s Corps, Dr. Augustus Breysacher, delivered baby Douglas McArthur on Jan. 26, 1880. MacArthur’s father was a Union Army colonel, severely wounded by Cheatham’s Corps at the Battle of Franklin, Tennessee on Nov. 30, 1864.

A former Confederate civilian surgeon in the 15th Alabama Infantry, Dr. Albert F. A. King, contracted to serve as a Union Army surgeon late in the war and treated Abraham Lincoln after he was mortally wounded by John Wilks Booth on April 14, 1865.

Over 100 former Confederate soldiers died in the line of duty while serving as law enforcement officers after the war.

Former Confederate Joseph LeConte was a co-founder of The Sierra Club.

A former Confederate engineer, Col. Samuel Lockett, designed the base of the Statue of Liberty in New York City, and another Confederate engineer, Sergeant Major Amory Coffin, designed the structural features of some of the late 19th and early 20th Century's most famous buildings, including Madison Square Garden, New York City; the Crocker Building, San Francisco; the Provident Life and Trust Company building, Philadelphia; the Prudential Life Insurance Building, New York City; City College of New York; the Wisconsin State Capital; and the steel superstructure of the New York Stock Exchange building.

Two Confederate veterans, Col. Ambrosio Jose Gonzales, and Maj. James Lide Coker were inducted into the South Carolina Business Hall of Fame in 1986. In the year 2000 ex-Confederate senator from Florida, David Levy Yulee, was named that year’s “Great Floridian” by the Florida Department of State. Another Confederate Floridian, Col. Francis Littlebury Dancy, was a postwar agronomist and named to the Florida Citrus Hall of Fame in 2013.

Former Confederates were major postwar philanthropists. Prominent among them was former Texas cavalryman George Washington Littlefield, who funded many facilities and programs at the University of Texas-Austin, and New York City native, Maj. Lewis Ginter, who founded the Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden in Richmond, Virginia, containing a Conservatory, Rose Garden, Children's Garden, Sunken Garden, Asian Garden, Victorian Garden, and Healing Garden. Ginter also donated the land for the campus of the Union Theological Seminary. Col. John Peter Smith of Ft. Worth, Texas donated land for parks, cemeteries, and hospitals, one of which still bears his name—John Peter Smith Hospital.

The most prominent of all Confederate philanthropists was Dr. Simon Baruch, a Jewish-Confederate surgeon from Charleston, South Carolina who served in the 13th Mississippi Infantry and 3rd South Carolina Infantry. After the Confederate retreat from Gettysburg, Baruch remained to treat wounded soldiers, after which he was imprisoned and exchanged. He returned to the 13th Mississippi and served for the remainder of the war. After the war Baruch practiced medicine in South Carolina, and volunteered his services for one year in the slums of New York City. Returning to South Carolina, he practiced medicine for 16 years, and in 1881 moved to New York City where he practiced medicine and became an outspoken proponent of public health and hygiene. Simon Baruch is the namesake of civil monuments, educational entities, and academic departments in New York City and throughout the country, many of which were established by his son Bernard M. Baruch, including several Simon Baruch Houses, a public housing complex in New York City, as well as buildings, halls, and academic chairs at Columbia University, Clemson University, the New York University College of Medicine, and the Medical College of Virginia/Virginia Commonwealth University. New York City Department of Education’s Middle School 104 is named Simon Baruch Middle School, along with an adjacent Simon Baruch Playground and Garden, under the auspices of the New York City Department of Parks. In 1940, the younger Baruch endowed in honor of his father, the Simon Baruch Auditorium building on the campus of the Medical University of South Carolina, and the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at Virginia Commonwealth University.

And let’s not forget  if not for Rome, GA native John Pemberton, a Lt Col in the Confederate Army,  yankees would not be enjoying their favorite beverage on a hot day.

The good Colonel invented what is still the top selling soft drink in the world.....COCA COLA!