CIVIL WAR PERSONALITIES
President Lincoln had four brothers-in-law who served in the Confederate Army.
At Lynchburg, Virginia, in June 1864, there were present on the field of battle ex-Vice President of the United States Gen. John C. Breckinridge, C. S. A., and future Presidents Maj. William McKinley and Gen. Rutherford B. Hayes, U. S. A. Other Union Generals who later became President were U. S. Grant, Chester A. Arthur, James A. Garfield and Benjamin Harrison.
General George Custer was the last man in his class at West Point, but he later outranked the other 33 when he was promoted to Major General of Volunteers in 1865. Only one classmate, Adelbert Ames, received an equivalent rank, and he was the last surviving member who died in Ormond, Fla., in 1933—57 years after Custer’s death at Little Big Horn.
Jefferson Davis graduated 23rd in his class at West Point. He served in the House of Representatives and the United States Senate, was a Colonel in the Mexican War, and served as Secretary of War in President Pierce’s Cabinet from 1853–1857.
Of the original 26 members of the Confederate Senate, 14 were former United States Congressmen.
Robert E. Lee and P. G. T. Beauregard had both served as Superintendent of the United States Military Academy. William Tecumseh Sherman was Superintendent of the Louisiana Seminary of Learning and Military Academy (now known as Louisiana State University) on the eve of the Civil War.
Confederate Generals Joseph E. Johnston and Samuel Cooper held high positions in the United States Army in 1861. Johnston was the Quartermaster General and Cooper the Adjutant General. Johnston in later years was a pallbearer at the funerals of General U. S. Grant, Admiral David D. Porter and William T. Sherman. He had faced all three in battle, and his death is said to have been brought on by pneumonia contracted at General Sherman’s funeral.
10
