Last of the Blue and Gray: Old Men, Stolen Glory, and the Mystery That Outlived the Civil War by Richard A. Serrano (review)

Everyone loves a mystery, and here is an important one: Who was the last living Civil War veteran? Most Americans would be surprised to know that a handful of Civil War veterans lived to see the atomic age and almost made it to the war’s centennial. Los Angeles Times reporter Richard Serrano’s Last of the Blue and Gray assesses the candidates for this accolade; most seem to have been former Confederate soldiers. Serrano examines the statements made by a number of elderly men who claimed to have served in gray, including the purported last surviving veteran, Walter Williams, who said he served with John Bell Hood’s famed Texas brigade. All of these men were celebrities; among the more colorful were “Uncle Bill” Lundy and “General” William Bush. While most of the veterans he examined were former Confederate soldiers, Serrano also chronicles the story of the last surviving Union veteran—Albert Woolson of Minnesota.

While southern veterans appear more colorful, they also appear more fraudulent. Serrano identifies a number of reasons some of these men lied about their service, including financial need. During the 1930s, the pensions provided by southern states for veterans prompted some men to claim that they had served in the Confederate army. Although the pension payments were small, the Depression may have made the men desperate enough to lie. Ironically, many of these veterans were initially rejected by state pension officials because they could not document their service; only repeated applications and the intervention of politicians allowed them to receive payments. As time passed, pension payments increased. Eventually, the federal government allowed these men to receive federal pensions and medical care at veterans hospitals. Because these men had told the same stories over and over again, Serrano believes that some of them convinced themselves that they had served in the army. While it would be unfair to divulge all of his findings, Serrano argues that by the end of his study he identifies the old men who stole others’ glory.

Serrano has produced a well-written and well-researched study that may solve one mystery; however, he also identifies a whole other set of mysteries. Why were these men so important? Why did Americans of both sections seem desperate to embrace the last surviving Civil War veterans, particularly the last surviving Confederates? When the last purported Confederate soldier died, President Eisenhower ordered U.S. flags around the nation flown at half-mast to honor his service (as someone who has studied Union veterans, I can say that if they had not already died, this national honor for a former rebel would have killed them). Serrano’s most interesting finding makes this treatment even more puzzling; questions about the validity of some of these veterans’ claims did not stop Americans from honoring them. While this interest seems to have been a national phenomenon, southerners felt even more strongly about the last Confederate veterans than northerners felt about Union veterans. The last of the Gray were celebrities; southerners celebrated their birthdays and mourned them on the anniversary of their deaths, eager to honor a Confederate veteran, even a phony one.

While this work has value, its usefulness to an academic historian may be limited because the author does not relate his findings to any previous study examining Civil War veterans, Civil War memory, or the United States at the Civil War centennial. When Serrano places his study in a larger context, he does so in a footnote on a phenomenon called “stolen valor”—the many documented instances in which individuals lied about their military service. Despite his lack of interest in larger historical issues, the story Serrano chronicles would be of tremendous interest to scholars examining the memory and legacy of the Civil War. Southerners’ almost desperate embrace of anyone who might...