Civil War
Near the outbreak of the Civil War, Bruce sold all of his enterprises in the north and moved to the south. A Confederate sympathizer, Bruce attended a secession convention in Russellville, Kentucky, in November 1861, and was elected to the legislative council of the Commonwealth's Confederate shadow government. When Kentucky was admitted to the Confederacy in December 1861, Bruce was elected to one of the Commonwealth's ten congressional seats.
He personally financed many of the supply needs of Kentucky's Orphan Brigade. His work in negotiating prisoner exchanges for this unit led to his being asked to negotiate such exchanges for the entire Confederate States Army.
Near the end of the war, Bruce and Jefferson Davis fled the Confederate capital at Richmond, Virginia. He was later captured in Georgia, but with the end of the war, he was released and established an office in Augusta, Georgia, with the intent of helping Confederate soldiers return home. On May 10, 1865, he published an open letter offering to pay the educational expenses of any Confederate soldier who had lost an arm or leg in the war. All told, it was estimated that Bruce contributed $400,000 for the relief of Confederate soldiers. He was pardoned of any wrongdoing with regards to his support of the Southern cause by President Andrew Johnson.
Read more about this topic: Eli Metcalfe Bruce
Famous quotes by civil war:
“He was high and mighty. But the kindest creature to his slaves—and the unfortunate results of his bad ways were not sold, had not to jump over ice blocks. They were kept in full view and provided for handsomely in his will. His wife and daughters in the might of their purity and innocence are supposed never to dream of what is as plain before their eyes as the sunlight, and they play their parts of unsuspecting angels to the letter.”
—Anonymous Antebellum Confederate Women. Previously quoted by Mary Boykin Chesnut in Mary Chesnut’s Civil War, edited by C. Vann Woodward (1981)
“To the cry of ‘follow Mormons and prairie dogs and find good land,’ Civil War veterans flocked into Nebraska, joining a vast stampede of unemployed workers, tenant farmers, and European immigrants.”
—For the State of Nebraska, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)