Confederate History is American History

Many descendants of America’s founding generation supported the Confederacy during the War between the States: 

John Augustine Washington III was the great-grandnephew of George Washington and the last member of the Washington family to own Mount Vernon; he was a Confederate lieutenant colonel and aide-de-camp to Robert E. Lee.

Meriwether Lewis Clark Jr. was the grandson of William Clark, co-captain of the famed Lewis and Clark Expedition; Meriwether was named after his grandfather’s companion from the Expedition and he served as a brigadier general in the Confederate Army. He would later dedicate his life to American horse racing, building Churchill Downs and originating the famed Kentucky Derby.

Robert E. Lee was the son of Henry “Light Horse Harry” Lee III, American patriot, congressman, and governor; he was the commander of the Army of Northern Virginia and later General-in-Chief of the Confederate armies. A top graduate of West Point, Lee served thirty-two years in the United States Army before joining the Confederate Army, and he served with distinction during the Mexican-American War. He served as superintendent of the United States Military Academy between 1852 and 1855, later serving as president of Washington College between 1865 and 1870. Lee turned down many lucrative business ventures after the War between the States, and he gave this reason for accepting the position of president at Washington College: “I have led the young men of the South in battle; I have seen many of them fall under my standard. I shall devote my life now to training young men to do their duty in life.” Washington College was renamed Washington and Lee University after Robert E. Lee’s death in 1870. Confiscated by Union forces during the War between the States, the Lee estate has been home to Arlington National Cemetery since 1864.

Sydney Smith Lee was the third child of Henry Lee III and the older brother of Robert E. Lee; he served as a captain in the Confederate States Navy during the war. Lee served as commandant of the United States Naval Academy (his alma mater) and Philadelphia Navy Yard, resigning the same day that Virginia announced its secession from the Union. Before the war, Lee served alongside his brother, Robert E. Lee, in the Battle of Veracruz. He was later promoted to commander and accompanied Commodore Perry to Japan in 1853, commanding his flagship USS Mississippi. At least five of his sons also served with the Confederate States Army or Navy. After the war, Lee lived out his final years as a farmer, passing away in 1869.

Fitzhugh Lee was the great-grandson of Founding Father George Mason and the son of Sydney Smith Lee (and thus grandson of Henry Lee III); he was a Confederate major general and cavalry commander, and he would later serve as the fortieth governor of Virginia and a United States Army general during the Spanish-American War. His gallantry as a cavalryman against the Comanches in Texas eventually led to his appointment as instructor of cavalry tactics at the United States Military Academy (his alma mater), but he resigned his commission when Virginia announced its secession from the Union.

George Washington Custis Lee was the great-grandson, through adoption, of George Washington via George Washington Parke Custis; he was the eldest son of Robert E. Lee and served as a Confederate major general during the war, primarily as an aide-de-camp to President Jefferson Davis. He would later succeed his father as president of Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia.

Sebastian D'Amblimont Sumter was the grandson of Thomas Sumter, the legendary “Fighting Gamecock” and the last American general of the Revolution to pass away. Sebastian served as a captain in the 1st South Carolina Regiment (Regulars) of the Confederate States Army. A wealthy planter from Stateburg, he managed his family's historic holdings in the High Hills of Santee while supporting the Confederate war effort. In April of 1865, his properties were targeted during Potter's Raid, a Union expedition that devastated parts of central South Carolina, resulting in the plundering of the Sumter family's ancestral estate and the destruction of family historical documents.

Thomas Sumter Brownfield was the great-grandson of General Thomas Sumter who served as a lieutenant in Company I of the 2nd South Carolina Infantry Regiment. An alumnus of The Citadel (Class of 1854), he was commissioned as a Confederate officer and deployed to the front lines in Virginia. On July 1, 1862, he was mortally wounded during the fierce fighting at the Battle of Malvern Hill, and he succumbed to his wounds two days later on July 3, 1862. He is buried alongside his ancestors in the Thomas Sumter Memorial Park.

Robert James Brownfield was the great-grandson of General Thomas Sumter who began his military career alongside his brother by enlisting in Company I of the 2nd South Carolina Infantry Regiment in 1861. He later transferred to the Confederate Signal Corps, where his service records place him in vital communications positions during the Gettysburg campaign. He survived the conflict, returned to civilian life in the Sumter District, and lived until 1913 before being laid to rest near his great-grandfather.

Francis Wilkinson Pickens was the grandson of Andrew Pickens, the celebrated Revolutionary War militia general who fought alongside Thomas Sumter in the South Carolina backcountry. A wealthy planter and former U.S. Congressman who advocated strongly in favor of nullification of federal tariffs, Pickens served as Governor of South Carolina at the opening of the War between the States and authorized the state's role in the bombardment of Fort Sumter in April of 1861. His son-in-law, Matthew Calbraith Butler, later served as a major general in the Confederate cavalry. 

George Wythe Randolph was the grandson of President Thomas Jefferson through his daughter Martha Jefferson Randolph (whose father-in-law, Thomas Mann Randolph, served in the Virginia House of Burgesses, the Revolutionary conventions of 1775 and 1776, both houses of the Virginia state legislature following the American Revolutionary War, and was the cousin of Peyton Randolph, first president of the Continental Congress). George Wythe Randolph served first as a brigadier general in the Confederate Army before being appointed Confederate Secretary of War by President Jefferson Davis in March of 1862. Born at Monticello and named after George Wythe, Jefferson's mentor and fellow signer of the Declaration of Independence, Randolph had previously served as a midshipman in the United States Navy before studying law at the University of Virginia. Following Virginia's secession, he organized the famed Richmond Howitzers, distinguished himself at the Battle of Big Bethel, and later undertook the difficult task of administering the Confederate War Department. Although his tenure as Secretary of War lasted less than a year because of failing health and disagreements with President Davis, he helped reorganize the department during one of the Confederacy's most critical periods before retiring to Europe for medical treatment.

Wade Hampton III was the grandson of Revolutionary War General Wade Hampton, who served with distinction under General Nathanael Greene during the Southern campaigns of the American Revolution; he was also the heir to one of South Carolina’s largest plantation fortunes. Hampton served as a Confederate lieutenant general and was among the most prominent cavalry commanders of the Army of Northern Virginia, commanding Hampton’s Legion early in the war and later leading a cavalry corps under Robert E. Lee. After the war, he served as Governor of South Carolina and represented the state in the United States Senate.

Jefferson Davis, yet another graduate of West Point and a six-year veteran of the United States Army, fought in the Mexican-American War as colonel of a volunteer regiment. His first wife, Sarah Knox Taylor, was the daughter of President Zachary Taylor; Sarah died from malaria three months after the wedding. Davis would go on to serve in the United States Senate and as United States Secretary of War after an appointment by President Franklin Pierce. Davis would resign his office in 1861 when Mississippi announced its secession from the Union. With the help of his second wife, writer Varina, Davis published his extensive book The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government in 1881, a detailed history of the United States and an enumeration of the events and causes that justified the secession of the Southern states. 

Francis Key Howard was the grandson of Francis Scott Key, author of the “Star-Spangled Banner”; Howard was a Maryland journalist whose pro-Southern views and sympathy for the Confederacy led to his imprisonment by Union authorities. In a tragic twist of irony, Howard was confined to Ft. McHenry, the same fort that his grandfather Francis Scott Key had witnessed withstand a British bombardment during the War of 1812, which inspired him to write The Star Spangled Banner. In his 1863 memoir titled Fourteen Months in the American Bastiles, Howard commented on the devastating irony of his imprisonment: “When I looked out in the morning, I could not help being struck by an odd, and not pleasant coincidence. On that day, forty-seven years before, my grand-father, Mr. F. S. Key, then a prisoner on a British ship, had witnessed the bombardment of Fort McHenry. When, on the following morning, the hostile fleet drew off, defeated, he wrote the song so long popular throughout the country, the ‘Star Spangled Banner.’ As I stood upon the very scene of that conflict, I could not but contrast my position with his, forty-seven years before. The flag which he had then so proudly hailed, I saw waving, at the same place, over the victims of as vulgar and brutal a despotism as modern times have witnessed.”

With Howard’s haunting observations still fresh in our minds, it is not surprising that the Confederacy also had the sympathy of two former American presidents, including Franklin Pierce and John Tyler, with the latter serving in the Provisional Confederate Congress and later being elected to the Confederate House of Representatives. 

With this in mind, it is not surprising that John Tyler himself had several sons of his own who served in the Confederacy. John Tyler Jr. was the son of President John Tyler, whose father, John Tyler Sr., served as Governor of Virginia and a member of the Virginia Convention that ratified the United States Constitution. A member of one of Virginia’s oldest political families, Tyler served as Assistant Secretary of War of the Confederate States, helping administer the Confederate War Department during the war. David Gardiner Tyler was another son of President John Tyler who served the Confederacy during the war; he was present for the surrender of Robert E. Lee at Appomattox Courthouse on April 9, 1865, and later served in the Virginia State Senate, as a member of the United States House of Representatives from Virginia's 2nd congressional district, and as a Virginia Circuit Court judge. Another of President John Tyler’s sons, Lyon Gardiner Tyler, was too young for military service during the war, but he was raised in the antebellum and post-secession Virginia traditions and later became an important historian of Virginia, a defender of Confederate heritage and the principle of self-determination, a prominent critic of President Abraham Lincoln, and a prolific writer who emphasized the “vindictive, intemperate” political movements of the Radical Republicans and the Lincoln administration as the source of all the troubles. He served as president of the College of William & Mary between 1888 and 1919, after serving as a member of the Virginia House of Delegates between 1887 and 1889.

The Confederate ties to America’s founding generation are so rich that even the very Constitution of the Confederate States is virtually a mirror image of the United States Constitution, with only minimal adjustments for the purposes of clarifying or restricting the powers and responsibilities of the central government. 

Even more modern American legends, such as George Patton, Dwight Eisenhower, Douglas MacArthur, John J. Pershing, Matthew Ridgway, and Chesty Puller, were raised with admiration for the Confederacy. As President, Dwight Eisenhower hung a photo of Robert E. Lee in the Oval Office; George Patton grew up admiring and learning from Confederate Colonel John Mosby, a cavalry leader who was a close friend of the family; and Douglas MacArthur’s character was deeply shaped by his mother, Mary Pinkney Hardy, a staunch Southern aristocrat whose brothers fought for the Confederacy and who instilled in him a distinct Virginian code of honor. Similarly, John J. Pershing grew up in post-war Missouri studying the unconventional guerrilla tactics of Confederate leaders like Nathan Bedford Forrest, while Matthew Ridgway was raised in a military culture that revered Robert E. Lee as the epitome of character and military leadership. Chesty Puller too was raised in this tradition with a profound admiration for the glory of the Confederacy and men like Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson, one of Puller’s personal idols. The grandson of Major John William Puller (killed in action while serving with the 5th Virginia Cavalry under Jeb Stuart) and descendant of Colonel Lewis Burrell (commander of Virginia militia during the American Revolution), Puller was raised with a distinct sense of duty, service, heritage and patriotism. As Colonel Jon T. Hoffman observed in his 2001 biography Chesty, the general was “raised on the romanticized recollections of Confederate veterans,” helping to shape the man who became history’s most decorated Marine officer, and, as Hoffman put it, “an inveterate storyteller” himself. As Hoffman observed, “Aging Confederate veterans further stoked his interest in martial deeds with accounts of his grandfather’s wartime exploits and their service” in what Chesty himself regarded as “our second War for Independence.” This attitude was even common among frontline troops during World War II, with one combat veteran (during an interview decades after the war) saying as much when reflecting on his fellow Marines who had perished in battle — “the men that you lived with, trained with, you argued with, yes, you even refought the Civil War a lot of times with them.”

All of this is to illustrate the point that Confederate history is American history; it is foundational to the culture and identity of America, and the tales told and history made carry with them the spirit of the Southern Soldier. It is to illustrate the point that, in many respects, the Confederate States of America carried the spirit of America’s forefathers and the original confederation of states born of the Revolution, representing the “more perfect Union” originally sought through the United States Constitution; and that, as Confederate President Jefferson Davis put it in his first inaugural address in Montgomery on February 18, 1861, “The Constitution formed by our fathers is that of these Confederate States, in their exposition of it, and in the judicial construction it has received, we have a light which reveals its true meaning.”