Not all returning Confederate veterans had the same experiences or attitudes after the Civil War.
Albert Parsons is one of the best known radicals of the 19th Century. His execution following the Haymarket Riot in Chicago along with three other anarchists led to the annual commemoration of May Day worldwide. Albert was married to Lucy Parsons, now a feminist and African American icon.
What you may not know is that Parsons was a Confederate in his youth and that he served under his Confederate brother. I want to post a little about the life of Albert Parsons after he returned from the war. You can access his memoir here.
Lucy Parsons was believed to have been of mixed African, Native American, and Mexican ancestry. Albert’s marriage to her is usually credited with his decision to leave Texas. Although Albert presented her as Mexican and Indian, her African features were readily identified and he was accused of miscegenation.
In his memoirs, Albert Parsons describes his experiences after the Civil War, which included accepting the end of slavery, supporting the Reconstruction amendments, and opposing the Ku Klux Klan. While only a minority of former Confederates took this path, Parsons mentions Robert E. Lee’s subordinate General James Longstreet as the most prominent of the Reconstructed Confederates.
Here is the relevent section of the Parsons memoir:
The deeper I delve into the sources, the more the popular tropes about the War and postwar era are shown to be false. Men like Parsons belie the stereotypes, and while there were plenty of racists in the Reconstruction South, so too were they numerous in the North. The fact that Parsons not only supported racial harmony but toiled for worker’s rights demonstrates how forward thinking he truly was. Thank you for illuminating this chapter of postwar America for me.