to the editor:
I have been following with interest events in Pittsboro regarding the town’s Confederate monument, and the recently erected Confederate Battle Flag on private property. I have written a book on former Confederates after the war and identified hundreds of veterans who attained prominence in national governance and society. The title is Patriots Twice: Former Confederates and the Building of America after the Civil War.
Ten post-Civil War American presidents appointed former Confederates to serve the reunited nation as Supreme Court justices, secretaries of the U.S. Navy, attorneys general, secretary of the interior, and dozens were named U.S. ambassadors and consuls. Eight ex-Confederate officers were appointed generals in command of U.S. Army troops during the Spanish-American War.
Former Confederates were elected mayors of such unlikely cities as Los Angeles CA, Minneapolis MN, Ogden UT, and Santa Fe NM, and served as governors of the non-Confederate states and territories of Colorado, West Virginia, Missouri, Utah, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Alaska and the Panama Canal Zone.
Former Confederates became presidents of national professional societies including the American Bar Association, the American Medical Association, the American Gynecological and Obstetrical Society, the American Neurological Association, the American Surgical Association, and the American Public Health Association. In science and engineering, former Confederates led the American Society of Civil Engineers, the American Chemical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Geological Society of America. A former Confederate co-founded the environment and preservation advocacy group the Sierra Club, and another intellectual and scholar was president of the Society for Classical Studies (at the time named the American Philological Association.)
In higher education, former Confederates are considered founders or co-founders of many colleges and universities, some exclusively for women and newly freed African-Americans. Other former rebels were presidents of prominent institutions including the University of California, Berkeley. Former Confederates also taught at universities, not just in the American South, but at Harvard, Yale, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Johns Hopkins, the University of San Francisco, Cal-Berkeley, and Amherst College. Former Confederates also served on the governing boards of the United States Military Academy (West Point) and the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland.
Today’s United States benefited from the post-Civil War reconciliation that accepted the valuable contributions of former Confederates.
It is distressing that the former combatants themselves were more forgiving and embraced reconciliation and mutual respect more than today’s citizenry.
Stephen M. “Sam” Hood
Myrtle Beach, S.C. / Huntington, West Virginia