In this age when Confederate statues are torn down and the memory of the Confederate soldiers is undergoing a systematic attempt at erasure, I wonder about all those Confederates, famous and obscure, who, after the war, became prominent commanders in the United States Army in the Spanish-American War, or became high-ranking officials in the United States government or in such national organizations as the American Medical Association and the American Bar Association. Some served as teachers at such universities as Yale and Harvard; others became members of the boards of visitors of the U. S. Military Academy and the U. S. Naval Academy. Sadly, the City of Louisville removed the statue of one of those men.

To tell the members of the Kentucky Civil War Round Table of three hundred of those remarkable men will be Stephen M. Hood, author of a wonderful new book, Patriots Twice: Former Confederates and the building of America after the Civil War. “Sam” Hood, as he is known, is a graduate of the Kentucky Military Institute and Marshall University. He is a veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps. A collateral descendant of Confederate General John Bell Hood, Sam is the retired owner of an industrial construction company. He lives in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina with his wife of 44 years, and is the father of two sons, Derek Hood, of Winchester, Kentucky, and Taylor Hood of Huntington, West Virginia. This is Sam’s second appearance at the Kentucky Civil War Round Table.