Civil War Service
At the beginning of the Civil War, Cooper's loyalties were with the South. His wife's family was from Virginia, and he had a close friendship with Jefferson Davis, who had also been U.S. Secretary of War. One of his last official acts as Adjutant General of the U.S. Army was to sign an order dismissing Brig. Gen. David E. Twiggs from the army. Twiggs had surrendered his command and supplies in Texas to the Confederacy (and was shortly thereafter made a Confederate major general.) This order was dated March 1, 1861, and Cooper resigned six days later. He traveled to Montgomery, Alabama, at the time the Confederacy's capital, to join the Confederate States Army.
On reaching Montgomery, Cooper was immediately given a commission as a brigadier general on March 16, 1861. He served as both Adjutant General and Inspector General of the Confederate Army, a post he held until the end of the war. Cooper provided much needed organization and knowledge to the fledgling Confederate War Department, drawing on his years performing such duties as Adjutant General of the U.S. Army.
On May 16, 1861, Cooper was promoted to full general in the Confederate Army. He was one of five men promoted to the grade at that time, and one of only seven during the war, but with the earliest date of rank. Thus, despite his relative obscurity today, he outranked such luminaries as Albert Sidney Johnston, Robert E. Lee, Joseph E. Johnston, and P.G.T. Beauregard. Cooper reported directly to Confederate President Jefferson Davis." At the war's end in 1865, Cooper surrendered and was paroled on May 3 at Charlotte, North Carolina.
Read more about this topic: Samuel Cooper (general)
Famous quotes containing the words civil war, civil, war and/or service:
“We have heard all of our lives how, after the Civil War was over, the South went back to straighten itself out and make a living again. It was for many years a voiceless part of the government. The balance of power moved away from it—to the north and the east. The problems of the north and the east became the big problem of the country and nobody paid much attention to the economic unbalance the South had left as its only choice.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
“This declared indifference, but as I must think, covert real zeal for the spread of slavery, I can not but hate. I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself. I hate it because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world ... and especially because it forces so many really good men amongst ourselves into an open war with the very fundamental principles of civil liberty.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“The funny part of it all is that relatively few people seem to go crazy, relatively few even a little crazy or even a little weird, relatively few, and those few because they have nothing to do that is to say they have nothing to do or they do not do anything that has anything to do with the war only with food and cold and little things like that.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“A man’s real faith is never contained in his creed, nor is his creed an article of his faith. The last is never adopted. This it is that permits him to smile ever, and to live even as bravely as he does. And yet he clings anxiously to his creed, as to a straw, thinking that that does him good service because his sheet anchor does not drag.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)