Walter H. Taylor - After The War

After The War

After the war, Taylor resumed the banking business at Norfolk, Virginia, and also worked as an attorney. He held municipal offices and was elected to the Virginia General Assembly, where he served as a State Senator from 1869 until 1873. He was president of the Marine Bank, and served on the Board of Directors of the Norfolk and Western Railway.

On April 30, 1870, General Lee paid his last visit to the Norfolk area, accompanied by his daughter, Agnes Lee. He arrived in Portsmouth via railroad from North Carolina, and was met by Colonel Taylor. His former aide escorted him through the waiting crowds to ride to Norfolk on the Elizabeth River ferry. He died less than five months later.

Taylor devoted a considerable portion of his postwar years to settling controversies related to the Army of Northern Virginia. He was recognized by former generals from both sides of the war as an unofficial court of last resorts in settling disputes about their wartime reputations. Col. Taylor was petitioned by so many of the war's generals for so much information, he decided to write a book to set the record straight. He asked for permission from the U.S. government to view the national archives related to the Army of the Potomac and was the first man ever granted such a privilege. In 1877, he wrote a book, Four Years with General Lee, which was the source for dozens of anecdotes about Lee. This book, heavily documented by the records from the National Archives, read more like a situation report than a novel so it was not widely popular at the time. Many of the former Confederate generals, General James Longstreet in particular, claimed that if Col. Taylor ever wrote another book about the war, they hoped he would tell the "rest of the story." Col. Taylor wrote another book, published in 1906, Robert E. Lee, His Campaign in Virginia, 1861-1865. This book had the same statistical information as his previous work, but it read more like a novel, and was thus an instant best seller.

Late in the 19th century, Taylor was active in the development of the Ocean View area, located along the south shore of the Chesapeake Bay in Norfolk County. The project had been surveyed and laid out before the American Civil War by William Mahone, who also later served under General Lee. Served by a narrow gauge railroad from Norfolk, which operated a steam locomotive named the "Walter H. Taylor", Ocean View blossomed as both a popular resort area and grew to become a streetcar suburb of the City of Norfolk, which annexed the area in 1923.

In April 1907, while Taylor was the attorney for the new Virginian Railway, then under construction, he met the founder, millionaire industrialist Henry Huttleston Rogers and humorist Mark Twain when they arrived in Hampton Roads aboard Rogers' steam yacht Kanawha. They were in Norfolk to attend the opening ceremonies of the Jamestown Exposition held at Sewell's Point. According to published newspaper reports of the day, Twain drove off with Taylor in an "infernal machine," better known in modern times as an automobile.

Walter Herron Taylor died of cancer on March 1, 1916. He is buried in Elmwood Cemetery in Norfolk. Walter H. Taylor Elementary School of the Norfolk City Public Schools is named in his honor.