Elms and Magnolias: The 19th Century Continued

Yale & the Confederacy
The Civil War & its Aftermath
The Southern Club at Yale

Yale & the Confederacy

Selected cartes de visite of Confederate leaders from Yale's Civil War Collection. Pictured are: President Jefferson Davis, General Robert E. Lee, General "Stonewall" Jackson, General P.G.T. Beauregard, General James Longstreet (nephew of Augustus B. Longstreet), and J.E.B. Stuart.

Judah P. Benjamin (1811-1884) b. in St. Thomas, British West Indies, Class of 1828

Benjamin was the highest ranking Yale graduate in the Confederate Government. Because of his exceptional skills as a lawyer, Jefferson Davis appointed Benjamin as Attorney General, and later Secretary of War. After the war he fled to London and distinguished himself as a lawyer through his litigation and his classic book, Treatise on the law of Sale of Personal Property (1868). He is pictured here on the Confederate two-dollar note.

Judah P. Benjamin to Brigadier General John B. Floyd, November 15, 1861
Benjamin notifies Floyd of the force that has been appropriated by Jefferson Davis for the Confederate campaign to secure Kentucky. Benjamin realized the crucial nature of a border state such as Kentucky, and tells Floyd that the battle to obtain it will not be easy.

Burton N. Harrison (1838-1904)
b. In New Orleans, Louisiana, Class of 1859, Secretary of Jefferson Davis

After graduating from Yale, Harrison accepted a teaching position at the University of Mississippi. Upon the outbreak of the war he became Secretary to Confederate President Davis. After the Civil War, he moved to New York City where he practiced law.

Richard Taylor, b. In New Orleans, Louisiana, Class of 1845
Taylor was the son-in-law of Jefferson Davis, and the son of President Zachary Taylor, whose daughter was married to
Jefferson Davis. Taylor served in the Confederate Army while being a member of the Confederacy's First Family as well.

Issac Monroe St. John (1827-1880)
b. in Augusta, Georgia, Class of 1845

Before the outbreak of the Civil War, St. John was a civil engineer connected with the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, the Blue Ridge, the Louisville, Cincinnati, and Lexington, and the Chesapeake and Ohio. Entering as a private in South Carolina at the outbreak of the war, St. John quickly moved up the ranks, and by the war's end had become Commissary General of the Confederacy. After the war he returned to the railroads as a civil engineer. His involvement with the railroads and the Civil War place him in the center of the two giant forces that ushered modernization into the American South.

One of St. John's numerous commissions by the Confederate States of America.

The Civil War & its Aftermath

Yale Casualties of the Civil War
Of the 865 men at Yale in the years, 1861-65, 240 fought in the war. 199 were Union, and the remaining 41 were Confederate. Of men from all classes, 836 were Union soldiers and 80 members of the Confederate ranks. Of the 166 alumni killed in the war, 55 were Confederate. Of the 55 Confederates, 48 were from Yale College, and 7 were from the Law School. None of the Confederates killed were from the Sheffield Scientific School or Divinity School. The casualty rate of the two groups of soldiers is quite diverse. Thirteen percent of Union soldiers died, while sixty-nine percent, over five times as many, Confederates were killed.

Courtesy of Sterling Emeritus Professor Howard Lamar

The Southern Club at Yale

Southern Club
The Southern Club at Yale began around 1895. As described in this February 26, 1898 Atlanta Journal article, there were chapters at other Ivy League universities which met together annually. The 1898 meeting was held at Harvard. Also pictured are the Yale Southern Club's logos from 1895 and 1905. The 1895 logo, on the left, is a collage of stereotypes including a Sambo figure chasing a chicken, "moonshine" bottles, pistols, and the face of a Southern Belle. The 1905 logo below shows two Southern students atop an enormous watermelon with the motto "Let Us Rest" printed above their heads.

Narrative Overview
The Eighteenth Century
The Nineteenth Century
The Twentieth Century

Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library
P.O. Box 208240, New Haven, CT 06520-8240
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