Roger Atkinson Pryor - Postbellum Activities

Postbellum Activities

In 1865, an impoverished Pryor moved to New York City, invited by friends he had known before the war. He eventually established a law firm with the politician Benjamin F. Butler of Boston. Butler had been a Union general who was widely known and hated in the South. Pryor became active in Democratic politics in New York.

Pryor brought his family from Virginia to New York in 1868, and they settled in Brooklyn Heights. They struggled with poverty for years but gradually began to get re-established.

Pryor learned to operate in New York Democratic Party politics, where he was prominent among influential southerners who became known as "Confederate carpetbaggers." Eventually he gave speeches saying that he was glad that the nation had reunited and that the South had lost. Pryor was elected as a delegate to the Democratic National Convention in 1876, a year before the federal government pulled its last military forces out of the South and ended Reconstruction.

Chosen by the Democratic Party for the important Decoration Day address in 1877, after the national compromise that resulted in the federal government pulling its troops out of the South, Pryor vilified Reconstruction and promoted the Lost Cause. He referred to all the soldiers as noble victims of politicians, although he had been one who gave fiery speeches in favor of secession and war. Historian David W. Blight has written that Pryor was one of a number of influential politicians who shaped the story of the war as excluding the issue of slavery; in the following years, the increasing reconciliation between the North and South was based on excluding freedmen and the issues of race.

In 1890, Pryor was appointed as judge of the New York Court of Common Pleas, where he served until 1894. He was next appointed as justice of the New York Supreme Court, serving from 1894 to 1899, when he retired.

In December 1890, Pryor joined the New York chapter of the new heritage/lineage organization, Sons of the American Revolution (SAR), for male descendants of participants in the war. When admitted, he and his documented ancestors were all entered under his membership number of 4043. Annoyed at being excluded from the men's club, Sara Agnes Rice Pryor and other women founded chapters of the Daughters of the American Revolution, setting up their own lineage society to recognize women's contributions and organize for historic preservation and education.

In retirement, Pryor was appointed on April 10, 1912 as official referee by the appellate division of the State Supreme Court. He served until his death seven years later in New York City. He was buried in Princeton Cemetery, in Princeton, New Jersey., where his wife and their sons Theodorick and William had already been buried.