Evander M. Law - Postbellum Life

Postbellum Life

After the war, Law administered the extensive agricultural holdings and railroad interests in his father-in-law's estate; he had married Jane Elizabeth Latta on March 9, 1863. He returned to Tuskegee in the late 1860s and organized the Alabama Grange in 1872. Law moved to Florida in 1881, planning to found a military academy that would be modeled after The Citadel. He opened the Southern Florida Military Institute at Bartow, Florida, in 1881 and administered it until 1903. There, and as a trustee of the Summerlin Institute from 1905 to 1912, and as a member of the Polk County Board of Education from 1912 until his death, he played a key role in the foundation of public education in Florida. He was the editor of the Bartow Courier Informant newspaper until 1915. He died in Bartow as the longest surviving Confederate major general, and is buried there in Oak Hill Cemetery.