William Porcher Miles - Post War

Post War

As late as January 1865 Miles offered a resolution in Congress stating, "That we, the representatives of the people of the Confederate States, are firmly determined to continue the struggle in which we are involved until the United States shall acknowledge our independence."

Describing Miles feelings shortly after the war ended and quoting from a September 25, 1865 letter, Walther writes:

And yet even the realities of defeat did not change Miles’ abstract ideas. Watching how other southerners dealt with defeat greatly upset the highly principled Miles. “When we see the most ardent Secessionists and ‘Fire eaters’ now eagerly denying that they ever did more than ‘yield their convictions to the voice of their State,’” and call secession a heresy and slavery a curse, Miles concluded, “it is plain that Politics must be more a trade and less a pursuit for an honourable man than it ever was before.” For any secessionist to return to public office in a reconstructed Union, Miles believed, entailed a forfeiture of self-respect, consistency, and honor. For himself and other secessionists, he said, politics “for a time cannot be a path which any high-toned and sensitive -- not to say honest and conscientious -- can possibly tread.”

Miles had married Bettie Beirne in 1863, the daughter of a wealthy Virginia planter. For a few years after the war he worked for his father-in-law as a factor in New Orleans and in 1867 took over management of Oak Ridge plantation in Nelson County, Virginia. He encountered serious financial problems as a tobacco and wheat farmer, and in 1874 he unsuccessfully applied for the position of president at the new Hopkins University of Baltimore. Miles remained on the farm and helped friends like Beauregard and former fire-eater Robert Rhett gather materials for their own histories of the Confederacy.

In 1880 Miles was appointed president of the newly reopened South Carolina College. After his father-in-law's death in 1882, Miles took over the family business interests and relocated to Houmas House in Ascension Parish, Louisiana where he managed a dozen plantations. In 1892 with his son he formed Miles Planting and Manufacturing Company of Louisiana.

Miles died on May 13, 1899 at age 76 and he was interred at Union Cemetery in Union, Monroe County, West Virginia.