In the wake of America's Civil War, hundreds of thousands of Confederate veterans trudged back to their homes in the South, where the nation whose ideals they had fought for no longer existed. Lingering war wounds, missing limbs, or the horrors of brutal warfare left some unable to care for themselves. Homeless, disabled, and destitute veterans began appearing on the sidewalks of southern cities and towns, unwanted and unsupported by the government.
Driven by compassion for their less fortunate comrades, in 1902 Kentucky's Confederate veterans organized and built the Kentucky Confederate Home, a luxurious refuge that sheltered almost a thousand needful men who had worn the gray decades before. For three decades the Home was a respectable—if not always idyllic—place where invalid, decrepit, and impoverished veterans could spend their last days in comfort and security. Part military encampment and part rest home, the Home became a tourist destination and a living museum where twentieth-century schoolchildren could meet the men who marched at Shiloh or defended Atlanta.
In My Old Confederate Home: A Respectable Place for Civil War Veterans, Rusty Williams frames the lively history of the Kentucky Confederate Home through the stories of those who built, managed, and inhabited it: a daring cavalryman-turned-bank robber, a small-town clergyman whose concern for the veterans cost him his pastorate, a senile ship captain, a wealthy benefactress with a scandalous secret, and more.
Based on the Kentucky Confederate Home's operational documents, contemporary accounts, unpublished letters, family stories, and other valuable resources, My Old Confederate Home reveals an unwritten chapter of Kentucky's Civil War history. Each chapter is peppered with the poignant stories of men who spent their final years as voluntary wards of an institution that required residents to live in a manner which reinforced the mythology of a noble Johnny Reb and a tragic Lost Cause.