Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 1,426

This is the grave of Pierce Manning Butler Young.

Born in Spartanburg, South Carolina in 1836, the pretentiously named Young grew up in the southern slaveholding elite. He had private tutors at the plantation as a child and then went to Georgia Military Institute for high school. Then it was off to West Point in 1857. This was a very typical upbringing for the militaristic southern elite who valued war and violence in their leaders. In 1861, Georgia committed treason in defense of slavery. Young was two months from graduation. He resigned and went to commit treason in defense of slavery too. That wasn’t surprising. After John Brown’s raid in 1859, he publicly stated around West Point that he wanted a gigantic sword to massacre every Yankee he could find. Of course, his best friend at West Point was George Armstrong Custer. Both had one thing in common–they were short-tempered assholes who loved violence and would gladly fight a friend if no enemy could be found.

Unfortunately, Young proved to be a good officer and he rose quickly in the Confederate ranks. He started as a second lieutenant in the 1st Georgia. By July 1861, he was promoted to first lieutenant and on Braxton Bragg’s staff. By November 1861, he was already a lieutenant colonel, commanding cavalry under Wade Hampton in the Army of Northern Virginia. J.E.B. Stuart thought him a brilliant officer and recommended him for another promotion. He was effective at Gettysburg, leading troops in killing Americans trying to keep the nation together. He was wounded, but sadly not killed, at Brandy Station shortly before Gettysburg. He continued to be an active officer through the rest of the war, continuing to rise, partly because of his skill and partly because Stuart was killed (good shot!). By the time the war ended, he was a major general, second in command to Hampton in the fight against Sherman’s armies moving north through the Carolinas. He was wounded four times during the war; alas, none were serious wounds. Lucky bastard.

After the war, Young went back to his plantation. While many of the old planter class were ruined during the war, that was not the case with Young, who maintained a good bit of wealth despite losing his human property. With the U.S. not really committed to Reconstruction, traitors like Young could find their way back into the government pretty easily. He went to Congress in 1868, part of the first congressmen allowed back from that state. Clearly it had learned its lesson…….He would be in Congress until 1875 when the Grangers beat him with a reform candidate. No friend of the working class farmer was the old Confederate elite!

Now, the story about his election to begin with says plenty about where the nation was with Reconstruction. Grant is seen as prosecuting a relatively aggressive Reconstruction and that’s true as far as it goes. But how do we square this with Grant allowing Young back in Congress. And to be clear, Grant gave his personal approval to this appointment. The reason it happened is that Young was friends with George Meade’s son. They were old West Point buddies. Remember that a big part of the problem with the Union effort in the Civil War in the early years is that the leading Union generals were basically southern sympathizers who admired the militaristic culture of the South, didn’t care at all about slavery, and thought Lincoln as great a threat to the nation as Davis. So many of them didn’t really want to prosecute the war effectively. Grant of course was a huge exception to this. But he had his limits too. If George Meade said a guy, a former leading Confederate general who was a pretty unreconstructed elite Democrat, was OK, well then he was OK by Grant! Hell, Meade even leaned on Thaddeus Stevens, over whom he had some influence and the great abolitionist acquiesced. The power of patronage, my friends.

But Young was popular with the national elites as well and he was well taken care of. He was an American delegate to the Paris Exposition in 1878. He also got some important diplomatic posts later in life too. During the two Cleveland administrations, he was mostly abroad. In the first one, he was consul-general in St. Petersburg from 1885-87. Then after the Harrison years, he was named Minister to Guatemala and Honduras in 1893. This was an important period because these were the years when the banana companies such as United Fruit were beginning to control these nations. The U.S. ministers, and it didn’t matter all that much what party they were, played critical roles in basically forcing the Guatemalan and Honduran governments to open up their nations to the fruit companies. At first, it didn’t really take that much convincing since they promised railroads and other infrastructure development and the really bad stuff would come after Young returned to the U.S. Still, undoubtedly, he has a minor role in this history.

Young died in 1896 while in New York City. He was 59 years old.

Pierce Manning Butler Young is buried in Oak Hill Cemetery, Cartersville, Georgia.

If you would like this series to visit other treasonous generals, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. James Longstreet (spit) is in Gainesville, Georgia and Stonewall Jackson, minus the arm, is in Lexington, Virginia. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.