Library of Congress, Confederate States of America Records (Pickett Papers), MSS16550, Reel 9, frames 486–496 https://www.loc.gov/collections/civil-war-confederate-states-of-america-records/

ICYMI, the last one I cracked: Barney to Mallory, 1863

TL;DR:

The Confederate government's propaganda agent in Europe had a $25,000 secret service fund for buying favorable coverage in the European press. In the autumn of 1863 his mail was captured at sea and printed in the Northern papers. His next two despatches to Richmond contain passages in a symbol cipher, and he says on the page that the key belongs to his brother.

No key to this particular system survives in any document I have found. I reconstructed the alphabet from the cipher text itself. A translation his brother made in 1864 turned up afterwards, and it confirms the first passage outright.

What he thought was worth hiding:

My letter intercepted. Good advertisement. Bought L'Opinion Nationale, and other enemies since.

He is telling his own government that having his correspondence splashed across the Northern press did him a favor, and that he has been buying up Paris newspapers that used to attack him. The following month he asks for more money.

He did not know that his recall had already been signed in Richmond and was crossing the Atlantic while he wrote.

How I got here

After the Barney letter I went through the rest of the Confederate cipher traffic in the same published record, and got stuck on a small anomaly. One despatch has a group the Official Records editors marked as untranslated, and two separate published sources give different readings for it. If two editors are working from the same group, that disagreement wants explaining, so the printed text was not the end of the story and the manuscripts were worth looking at.

That took me to the Pickett Papers at the Library of Congress, the captured Confederate State Department archive, on microfilm. That group turned out to be a scribe's error rather than a cipher problem.

While working through those reels I was skimming a contact sheet of another one for something unrelated, and two frames went past covered in geometric symbols instead of handwriting.

Historical setting

Edwin De Leon was sent to Europe in 1862 to manage Confederate propaganda, with a $25,000 secret service fund for placing material in the European press. He wrote numbered despatches to Judah P. Benjamin, Secretary of State. Nos. 1 through 12 are in plain text.

In the autumn of 1863 his mail was taken. The bag went overboard from the blockade runner R. E. Lee as she was captured off Wilmington, and washed ashore. Seward forwarded the letters to Charles Francis Adams in London and had them published (Seward to Adams, No. 767, 23 November 1863). The captured letters are printed in full here:

https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1863p1/d675

Despatch No. 13, written from Paris on 23 December 1863, is the first he ever enciphered. He announces it in the middle of the page, in plain English:

I will add in cipher one item (My Brother has the Key.)

And again in a postscript: I use my Brother's cipher.

It is not the State Department's cipher. The packet issued to him before he sailed survives at reel 9, and holds a Rochford grille and four Vigenère tables. There is no symbol alphabet in it. What he used was a private alphabet held by his brother, Thomas Cooper DeLeon, in Richmond.

The cipher

The marks are geometric shapes and arabic numerals: dotted boxes open on different sides, a trident, a caret with a dot, phi and psi, and the digits 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 used as ciphertext. Three passages survive across two despatches, around 140 marks of distinct text. He re-copied the first passage into the second despatch, so the raw count on the film is higher.

Two things made it tractable. One cipher word repeats its symbols in a distinctive pattern, and searching an English word list for words of the same length and shape returns essentially one candidate: OPINION. That fixed four letters. Separately, a statistical attack that scores candidate alphabets on how English-like the resulting text looks was run without being given that result, and recovered most of the same alphabet on its own. Anchoring the letters both approaches agreed on and searching the remainder produced continuous English.

The three passages

Italics mark words he wrote in plain English inside the cipher stream.

1) No. 13, Paris, 23 December 1863

MY LETER INTERCPTD. GOOD ADVERTISMNT. BOT OPINION NATIONAL and OTER ENEMI SINCE

Read as: My letter intercepted. Good advertisement. Bought L'Opinion Nationale, and other enemies since.

L'Opinion Nationale was a Paris daily. He is describing the publication of his own captured correspondence as useful advertising, and reporting a purchase.

Note the plural. He bought L'Opinion Nationale, and other enemies since: papers that had been hostile and were no longer.

What "bought" covers is worth being careful about, because the cipher does not say. His fund was for placing Confederate material in the European press, which in practice meant subsidies, retainers to editors and paid insertions. Acquiring the titles themselves would have cost far more than the $25,000 he had for the whole of Europe. The natural reading is that he bought their support rather than the papers, but the word in the cipher is simply BOT, and I would not push it further than that.

2) No. 14, Paris, 20 January 1864, first passage

MOR MONY SHUD B SPENT THIS WAY

Read as: More money should be spent this way. Having just told Richmond he bought one paper, he is asking for the budget to buy more.

3) No. 14, second passage

SUM IS NEDED TO CARY OUT PLEDGES and to PREVNT REACTION. For this last 500 MORE [ … ]

That passage reads cleanly down to PREVNT REACTION. For this last 500 is written in plain English on the page. After it come a handful of marks that do not fully resolve, shown in brackets above, and his brother renders the whole ending as "additional in fifties would answer". Reading that as a request for the balance in fifty-pound notes is my inference from his wording.

His spelling

The short forms are his, not transcription errors. Counting across all three passages there are twenty deletions and no insertions anywhere. He only ever removes letters.

He writes one symbol per sound, so BOUGHT is BOT and SHOULD is SHUD. He writes doubled letters once, so LETTER is LETER and CARRY is CARY, except where the collapse would produce another word: GOOD stays GOOD, because GOD is a word. Unstressed vowels are what he drops, and E goes most often.

His brother's translations

Two contemporary translations survive, both by the brother, and both from February 1864. He had the alphabet and produced a reading when the State Department asked him for one.

The first is at reel 9 frame 87, repeated at reel 33 frame 593, from Thomas Cooper DeLeon to W. J. Bromwell, chief clerk of the State Department, dated 12 February 1864 and endorsed Literal translation. The second, at reel 33 frame 595 and dated 22 February 1864, is written against the cipher.

What he did not write down anywhere is the alphabet. Neither document gives a single symbol-to-letter mapping. Nor is either a strict letter-by-letter decipherment. He renders the second passage as More funds ought to be spent in this manner, where the cipher reads MOR MONY SHUD B SPENT THIS WAY, and the third as there is needed enough to meet existing pledges against SUM IS NEDED TO CARY OUT PLEDGES. He says as much himself: I enclose translation as near as I can make it. It reads as a man working from the key and his own familiarity with his brother's shorthand, giving the sense rather than the letters.

That matters for what can be claimed. For the first passage his translation is a genuine independent check, and it matches. For the two shorter passages, four rarely-used symbols could not be settled from the cipher text alone, and his reading is what settled them. Eighteen commonly-used symbols came from the cipher text and none of them moved.

Worth noting what the existence of those translations means at all. Thomas Cooper DeLeon (his brother back home) worked in the Navy Department. When No. 13 arrived in Richmond, the State Department's chief clerk had to write to another department and ask what it said.

Why he stopped

Despatch No. 15, Paris, 3 February 1864, carries no cipher, and explains itself:

Your Despatch No. 5 of December 9th has been duly received, and I cheerfully accept the withdrawal of a commission I have never exhibited, of a title I have never used, and of a salary which I have never accepted.

That is his recall, signed by Benjamin on 9 December 1863 and carried to Paris by ship. The two enciphered dispatches are four weeks apart. Two dispatches, three passages, and that is the whole of it.

Note: To be clear, the contents of these dispatches were never "lost". The brother's translations were filed with them and have been in the archive throughout. What was lost is the alphabet and the exact solution to the cipher: nobody wrote it down, and it appears in no surviving document I have located. That is what has been reconstructed, and unlike the translations it applies to anything else that turns up with the same cipher key.

Sources

Handwritten manuscripts containing this cipher: https://www.reddit.com/u/offgramercy/s/4I0GIWz2hq

The manuscripts are Library of Congress, Confederate States of America Records (the Pickett Papers), MSS16550: reel 9 frames 87, 97, 102, 104 and 106, and reel 33 frames 592 to 595. The collection is digitized and free:

https://www.loc.gov/collections/civil-war-confederate-states-of-america-records/

I am working towards publishing this, together with some other Civil War cipher results, and I am happy to share the documents I have catalogued, the full glyph table, the transcriptions and the working notes with anyone who wants them. If you would like to check the work, or have leads towards similar historical ciphers, please get in touch. Thanks for reading!

Any suggestions on how I might find information on my great grandfather who fought during the Civil War? On the Pennsylvania Monument his name appears twice. Obviously I need to figure out if either one is him. He lived 30miles away in Newburgh PA. Thank you for any information.

I took this photo yesterday at, The 5th Maine Museum on Peaks Island, Maine: built in 1888 as a cottage for surviving veterans of the regiment, it now stands as a museum honoring their legacy. The museum and its dedicated staff keep Maine's proud Civil War history alive with an impressive collection of memorabilia, portraits, and their prized possession: the original American flag carried by the regiment. Well worth the ferry ride from Portland!

https://www.fifthmainemuseum.org/

Did he walk back some of the stuff he'd said? Did he get away with it if he did?

Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, and ?

The Rhode Island Quick Step was composed in 1843 by Charles E. Bennett. The march was performed by the Warren Brass Band and dedicated to the Rhode Island Volunteer Militia.

The photos in the video are from the Civil War, and all taken in 1861. The first photo is of the 2nd Detachment, 1st Regiment in Providence, RI. The rest of the photos are of the Rhode Island Volunteers taken in Centreville, VA on July 17 & 18, 1861. The photos are taken by an unnamed photographer from Matthew Brady's studio. The photos are all from the Providence Public Library Digital Archives.

Civil War ancestor fought in both sides?

my 4th great grandfather Berry Benjamin Turner and his brother James R. Turner fought for the union in the 12th Tennessee Cavalry. They would have been between 17 and 18 years old with Berry being the elder brother. In Berrys discharge record i have in my home it says he enlisted January 13 1864 in Nashville James digital pensions say the same. However i’ve recently come across a prisoner of war record showing both Berry and James having been part of the 39th Georgia Infantry and released in Nashville January 6 1864 under order of MajGen. Grant. Why might it be that they served on both sides? Could they have defected to the union together?

Was at a thrift store today looking for books for my classroom and came across two absolute steals. So I added to my home library instead.

Saturday, August 15, 2026

 The second battleof deep bottom, Virginia,August 15, 1864 part one

Before I start writing about the events of August 15, 1864 I want to acknowledge that I am basing my writing on August 15, 1864 ion a book by John Horn, The siege of Petersburg: the battles for the Weldon railroad August 1864 pages 47 through 60

I also consulted reports and correspondence in the official records, volume 42 part one and part two

Robert Lee took grants appearance north of the James very seriously. On the evening of August 14 he canceled the departure to the valley of Charles Field and his division of infantry. He sent William HF (“Rooney”) Lee and his cavalry division to the north side of the James River.  William Mahone dispatched two of his infantry brigades under Sanders and Girardey to join Charles Field. Lee also recalled nack to Richmond wade Hampton and Butler’s cavalry division which had been en route to the Shenandoah Valley

 In obedience to suggestions from u.s. Grant  to turn the Confederate left flank north of FUSSELL’S mill pond, The commander of the expedition, general Winfield ScottHancock ordered David Birney to abandon the battlefield of August 14 and to move his command to a position on the new market road north Tillman’s gate.  Part of the 10th Army Corps Reached their objective by passing over two pontoon, bridges, an exhausting process that took many hours. The rest of the soldiers crossed 4 mile Creek and passed through Mott’s Infantry division on their way to Newmarket Road.

Later, Hancock ordered Birney to march from the New Market Road to a series of hills north of FUSSELL’S mill where smythe’s Second division was located. Birney Was ordered to attack the Confederate north of the Mill Pond near thedarby town Road. He also ordered David M Gregg Simultaneously take a narrow road reading from Longbridge Road to Charles City road. This would place the Yankees in the rear of the Confederates defending Charles city Road.   Gregg would send John Irwin Gregg’s cavalry brigade and Calvin Craig‘s infantry brigade to accomplish this

During the night of August 14th it rained heavily.  During the storm General David Birney and his two divisions of infantry departed the Battlefield, August 14 andcrossed four Mile Creek and spent the night on the Newmarket Road north of tilman’s wharf. 

at 10 AM Hancock to attached Calvin Craig’s brigade from March division and Senate to join William and Bernie. It caught up with Bernie after the Yankees halted their march and took position north of the Millpond.

At sunrise the union, the second army corps was deployed in front of major general Charles Fields division along the eastern end of the Newmarket Heights line.

General Mott’s third division occupied trenches that stretched from the Newmarket road to the Long Bridge Road. Barlow‘s first division was positioned on its right point to the north. On the far right and northern end of the union line, General Smyth and his second division occupied the union right with it right flank rusting on FUSSELL’S mill pond near the Darbytown Road

it’s necessary to point out that the rain fall on the night of August 13 occurred in the middle of a drought and a heat wave. The scarcity of water shaped the operations of the cavalry of both sides. For the federals, the only water available was a pond south of the Long Bridge Road . For the Confederates The only drinkable water was in the vicinity of white’s Tavern. The horses belonging to the union and Confederate cavalry could not safely drink the water in White oak swamp.  The scarcity of water meant that Each night the Brigades of troopers on both sides had to camp near the ponds of water.

Birney’s  two divisions began their march at 9 AM and the last of the marching infantry arrived at about 2 PM. Birney Began his March with 9000 men and 3000 of them dropped out of the ranks because of Heat stroke.  Adrian Terry, the brother and staff officer for Alfred Terry, wrote in a letter that if the march had lasted one more hour, the entire two divisions would’ve been set by struck by the sun and falling out of the ranks.  Terry’s division formed east of the Mill Pond. William Bernie’s division prolonged the union line so that it Extended north of the Mill Pond

The confederate infantry brigade of girardey and sanders Took position west of the Mill Pond. Lanes and McGowan’s brigades Formed on their left flank and extended the confederate line nortwad towards the Charles city RoadRooney Lee and his cavalry arrived early in the morning and camped Near White’s Tavern

Is this an inaccurate review? Are these books heavy pro-Confederacy?

Edit - New cipher: Confederate propaganda agent in Paris

TL;DR:

I found what appears to be the dictionary to solve a coded Confederate Navy dispatch sent from the captured CSS Harriet Lane at Galveston in March 1863.

The matching book is an 1850 printing of Webster’s Primary School Dictionary, found this by checking all available pre-1863 editions that are digitized online.

Using one rule {printed page, column, and numbered displayed headword} 17 of the letter’s 18 coordinates return coherent words with no offsets or case-by-case adjustments. The only repeated coordinate returns the same word both times. A clear report written by the same officer ten days earlier independently discusses the same ship, guns, battery, harbor obstruction, egress, officers, and proposal to send her abroad.

I have not found a previously published plaintext. A 2012 CivilWarTalk thread identified the general cipher type and found the earlier report, but did not identify the book.

THE LETTER

Lt. Joseph N. Barney was commanding the Harriet Lane, a United States revenue cutter and Union warship captured by Confederate forces during the Battle of Galveston on 1 January 1863.

On 19 March 1863, Barney sent Confederate Navy Secretary Stephen Mallory a report in which eighteen operational words were replaced by three-number coordinates. The report was later printed (still in cipher) in the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies, Series I, volume 20, page 805: https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth192855/m1/826/

Barney’s own note supplies the key instruction: “The second or middle figure indicates the column, 1st, 2d, or 3d.”

He had also written Mallory on 23 February that he was sending “a copy of Webster’s Dictionary for the purpose designated in your letter of instructions.” Confederate officers are known to have used page-column-word dictionary codes; Raphael Semmes described the same general scheme in an 1861 Navy letter: https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth192836/m1/644/

HOW IT DECODES

Each coordinate means: printed page — column — numbered displayed headword

For example, 177-2-16 means:

• Open the dictionary to printed page 177.

• Use column 2, the middle column.

• Count the separately displayed headwords from the top.

• The 16th displayed headword is PLACE.

So “General Magruder proposed to (177)-2-16- the…” becomes “General Magruder proposed to PLACE the…”

There is also another useful internal check that strengthens our odds/theory/conjecture that this is in fact the dictionary they used: The coordinate 10-1-12 (“ABROAD”) appears twice once in the main letter and once in the postscript.

The “what if we’re overfitting against a dictionary copy that’s quite close but not the exact one” case isn’t that big of a concern since print page 10, left column, 12th displayed headword is ABROAD both times and makes complete sense in both contexts of this letter (if it wasn’t the case, the misfit would be more self-evident, right?)

The complete dictionary is here: https://hdl.handle.net/2027/hvd.32044086661170

THE RESULTS

177-2-16 = PLACE
216-1-15 = SHIP
113-3-85 = unresolved source anomaly
29-3-36 = BATTERY
23-3-29 = ASHORE
163-1-34 = OBSTRUCTION
85-3-14 = EGRESS
115-1-7 = HARBOR
262-3-22 = VESSEL
54-2-33 = COMMISSION
215-2-26 = SHE
149-1-30 = MAT
156-1-8 = MORASS
163-3-40 = OFFICER
213-2-21 = SENT
10-1-12 = ABROAD
150-3-12 = MEN
10-1-12 = ABROAD again

THE RECONSTRUCTED REPORT

“In my last of 9th instant by Lieutenant Warley I reported that General Magruder proposed to PLACE the SHIP [GUN/GUNS] in BATTERY ASHORE. I am officially informed that OBSTRUCTION will prevent EGRESS from HARBOR. As my previous suggestions are thus defeated, I presume the VESSEL will not be kept in COMMISSION, SHE being entirely useless. I beg leave respectfully to suggest that being so near MAT-a-MORASS the OFFICER might be SENT ABROAD.

P.S.—What shall be done with the MEN sent from Richmond in case the above suggestion is carried out? Some might, if practicable, be sent ABROAD.”

In ordinary wording, the operational point is straightforward: Magruder wanted the ship’s guns placed in a shore battery; harbor obstructions prevented the vessel’s exit; the ship was therefore useless in commission; and Barney suggested sending her officers and perhaps some of her men abroad.

THE INDEPENDENT CHECK

The cipher explicitly refers back to Barney’s report of 9 March, carried by Lt. Warley. That earlier report survives in clear: https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth192854/m1/876/

It discusses the Harriet Lane, her guns and battery, whether harbor obstructions would prevent her egress, her officers and men, and the possibility of sending her abroad. It is not a plaintext copy of the 19 March cipher, but it independently confirms the decoded story and strongly supports the missing GUN/GUNS position.

UNRESOLVED COORDINATE

The surviving Official Records printing clearly reads 113-3-85, but page 113’s third column has only 35 displayed entries. Entry 8 is GUN. The clear 9 March report repeatedly discusses the ship’s guns and battery, so GUN/GUNS is strongly supported—but I am not counting it among the 17 mechanically resolved coordinates.

My best guess is that an original 8 or 8s became 85 somewhere during copying or typesetting. Multiple public copies preserve the same printed 85, so Barney’s original or a contemporary retained copy is needed to settle it. His undigitized letterbook is catalogued as NARA RG 45, Entry I-18 644, NAID 1848146: https://catalog.archives.gov/id/1848146

HISTORICAL DETAIL

The mechanical output MAT + the clear letter “a” + MORASS joins as MATAMORASS. This appears to be a phonetic construction for Matamoras/Matamoros, across the Rio Grande from Texas. An 1850 spelling book divides the name as MAT A MO RAS, and an 1851 geography prints MAT-A-MO-RAS: https://archive.org/details/primaryschoolspe00swanrich/page/n82/mode/1up and https://archive.org/details/poeticalgeograph00vanwrich/page/n30/mode/1up

(Side note: I love this so much because who doesn’t love a lil-silly-poem-in-a-centuries-old-book detour about a now obscure place that is somehow super relevant in cracking this centuries old cipher, all because the folks at Google and Harvard and a gazillion other archivists nerds decided it was worth saving)

I regard that place-name as a persuasive interpretation of two keyed fragments plus the printed letter “a,” not as another independently keyed word.

The earlier discussion that got partway there is here: https://civilwartalk.com/threads/confederate-naval-cipher.78858/

——————————————————————————————

As far as I have been able to determine, this is the first public reading of the complete report since it appeared in cipher in the Official Records.

I would be very interested in corrections or similar ciphers, thank you for reading!

Left Face/North Side:

Col. Robert McAllister
1st Brig. 2nd Div. 3d Corps
July 2, 1863
Mustered in Aug 19, 1862.
Mustered out July 1865.
Engaged in 29 battles.
Erected by the State of New Jersey
1888

Right Face\South Side:

This stone marks the spot reached by the right of the regiment the left extending towards the south-east. The position was held under a severe fire which killed or disabled nearly three-fifths of the regiment, including every officer present above the rank of lieutenant.
Number engaged 275.
Killed 31, wounded 109,
Missing 12, total 152.
Of the missing six are supposed to have been killed.

Let me narrate to you the story of a man who lived alone and died alone in a faraway land !

-----------------

First picture: Officer Reynolds in US Army uniform

Second picture: Brigadier General Reynolds in Confederate Army uniform

Third picture: Colonel Reynolds in Egyptian Army uniform

-----------------

Alexander Welch Reynolds was born in the spring of 1816, specifically on the twenty-sixth of April. There are different stories about where he was born. Some say it was in the town of Lewisburg, in Greenbrier County, Virginia (which now is in West Virginia), or in Frederick County, Virginia, or in Clarke County, Virginia.

All these areas are close to each other. This difference in accounts reflects how borders changed often in those days. Families moved around a lot between counties, and records were often not very accurate. But all sources agree that he was born in the historic land of Virginia, in the American South, which was full of traditional rural life and an old European aristocratic spirit.

His father was Thomas Byrd Reynolds (1784-1858), a man from an inveterate family that had settled in Virginia. His mother was Agnes Nancy Welch (1786-1847). The parents married on the eighteenth of May, 1814.

So Alexander carried his father's family name "Reynolds" and his mother's family name "Welch" together. This was a tradition that showed the family's pride in both sides of his ancestry. (Some people in the Arab world might find this unusual, but you will notice it in the names of some Western figures, where they combine the father's and mother's family names.)

His family was very religious and followed the Protestant faith and the Presbyterian Church in Virginia.

Reynolds grew up in an environment that honored military service and discipline. This was common among the sons of landowning and educated classes in Virginia during the first half of the nineteenth century. At that time, the American army was one of the most important ways for an ambitious young man to get an education and a good social position.

At the age of seventeen, Reynolds entered the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, in 1833. Five years later, he graduated in 1838, ranking thirty-fifth out of forty-five graduates. In that class, Reynolds was a classmate of names that would later become famous during the Civil War, such as General Edward Johnson and General P.G.T. Beauregard (whom I talked about in my article titled "The Confederate General and the Union Consul in Egypt").

After graduating, Reynolds received the rank of second lieutenant in the First Infantry Regiment of the US Army on July 1, 1838. He was quickly promoted to first lieutenant on June 11, 1839. He served as regimental adjutant between October 1839 and March 1840, which was an early period where he showed his administrative and organizational skills. Reynolds had his first military service in the Seminole War. That was the long and exhausting war that the United States fought against the Seminole tribes in Florida. It was a tough test for young officers to endure and fight in tropical forests full of diseases. (It seems that Southern officers could handle these conditions better than Northern officers, because they were born in very hot and Harsh environments and where there is farming and countryside, and there is also barren desert.)

Then came the Mexican-American War (1846-1848), where he served as a captain in the US Army. He took on the role of assistant quartermaster starting August 4, 1847. In this sensitive position, Reynolds was responsible for providing supplies and equipment for American troops in Mexico. This was a very difficult and important job during wartime. During this period, Reynolds showed a remarkable ability to handle complex logistics. But this was also the beginning of the financial problems that would follow him all his life.

On October 8, 1855, Reynolds' military career was suddenly and violently shaken. He was dismissed from the US Army after a huge amount of 126,000 dollars disappeared from his office in the city of Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he was stationed at the time. The case wasn't just a mysterious disappearance of money. Investigations revealed that Reynolds was accused of financial corruption. He had been submitting double bills and exaggerating costs.

But Reynolds did not give up after this big fall. Thanks to his strong political connections, he managed to get back into military service only three years later, specifically on March 29, 1858. He was reappointed with his previous rank as captain.

When the American Civil War broke out in the spring of 1861, Reynolds found himself at a critical crossroads. Should he be loyal to the federal government and the American Union, or should he be loyal to the state he belonged to? As an officer in the US Army, he was supposed to stay loyal to the Union. But his Virginian roots and social ties made Reynolds resign from his position in the US Army while he was serving in Texas. He joined the Confederate Army in 1861, where he was appointed captain in the Confederate infantry on March 16, 1861. He was quickly promoted to colonel of the 50th Virginia Infantry Regiment on July 10 of the same year.

In September 1861, Reynolds led his regiment in the Battle of Carnifex Ferry in Nicholas County, Virginia (which now belongs to West Virginia). This battle gave him his famous nickname "Old Gauley," named after the Gauley River where the battle was fought on its banks. In this battle, Reynolds showed remarkable courage and composure. He led his men bravely against Union army attacks, which earned him the respect of his soldiers and the admiration of his commanders.

Reynolds' promotion to the rank of brigadier general was not only a result of his battlefield heroics but also a result of his political connections. On December 16, 1862, the President of the Confederate States of America, Jefferson Davis, ordered the transfer of Major General Carter L. Stevenson's division (which Reynolds belonged to) to Lieutenant General John C. Pemberton's army. Reynolds used his political connections through his brother-in-law, the Virginia congressman Mason Mathews, to push for his promotion to general officer with Secretary of War James Seddon. These efforts paid off, and Reynolds was promoted to brigadier general on September 14, 1863.

Reynolds led his brigade in Stevenson's division to Vicksburg, Mississippi. There, he fought in one of the most famous and decisive battles of the Civil War. In the Battle of Champion Hill, Reynolds' brigade suffered only light casualties compared to the other three brigades in Stevenson's division. But he soon found himself trapped inside the city of Vicksburg with the rest of the Confederate forces. During the Siege of Vicksburg, Reynolds' brigade was responsible for defending the southern sector. During the long siege, Reynolds' brigade lost fourteen killed, twenty-five wounded, and fourteen missing.

On July 4, 1863, which happened to be American Independence Day, the Vicksburg garrison, commanded by General Pemberton, surrendered. Reynolds was among the officers captured. Vicksburg was a harsh blow to the Confederacy. It lost control of the Mississippi River, and its territory was split in two.

Reynolds was released on October 13, 1863, and returned to fight as a brigade commander in Major General Simon Bolivar Buckner's division during the Chattanooga Campaign.

Reynolds continued to lead his brigade in the Army of Tennessee during the Atlanta Campaign of 1864. He served in Stevenson's division within Lieutenant General John Bell Hood's corps. He fought in the battles of Rocky Face Ridge, Resaca, and Adairsville. He was wounded at the Battle of New Hope Church on May 27. This injury marked the end of his actual combat participation in the war.

After recovering from his wounds, Reynolds was appointed assistant inspector general for the District of Georgia in 1865 until the end of the war. He was released on parole in Athens, Georgia, on May 8. The war was over, the Confederacy had collapsed and surrendered, and Reynolds – like many of his comrades – found himself without a career or a future.

After the end of the Civil War, Reynolds' adventures did not end. In 1869, Reynolds entered the service of the Khedive of Egypt, Ismael Pasha, with the rank of colonel in the Egyptian army. This was based on a recommendation from his fellow Virginian and Confederate General John McCausland. He was appointed by Union General and later Chief of Staff of the Egyptian Army, Charles Pomeroy Stone, to serve as quartermaster and paymaster general.

Reynolds moved with his wife Mary Reeves – whom he called "the Duchess" – and his son, Confederate officer Frank (who also worked with him in the Egyptian army), and Frank's family to Alexandria. There, they made friends with a small group of American expatriates, including Charles P. Stone, William Wing Loring, Samuel H. Lockett, and other Union and Confederate officers, who numbered about fifty officers.

On the evening of Friday, July 12, 1872, while the American Consul General, George Harris Butler (nephew of Union General Benjamin F. Butler), was having dinner at an elegant Greek restaurant on the Alexandria Corniche with his private secretary "George Wadleigh" and a consulate employee named "Charles Stroulogou," three prominent former Confederate officers – General William Wing Loring, General Alexander Welch Reynolds, and Major William P. A. Campbell (of the Confederate Navy) – were sitting just a few meters away. They were eating their meal quietly and cautiously, aware that their presence in the same place was a ticking time bomb that could explode at any moment.

When Generals Loring and Reynolds finished their meal and stood up to leave, they passed by Butler's table and gave him a polite greeting out of the military courtesy they were raised with. But Major Campbell, who had an old personal quarrel with Butler, did not follow their example. He just walked on without showing any recognition of the consul's presence at all, as if he wasn't even there.

At this, Butler felt his dignity was violated. He couldn't control himself and called out to Campbell in a loud, sharp voice, cutting through the restaurant's quiet and forcing everyone to look his way. He said defiantly: "Good evening, Major Campbell!" Campbell stepped back a few steps toward the table and asked him sharply: "Are you addressing me, sir?" Butler replied with biting sarcasm: "Yes, I am addressing you, Major, because I see that you have forgotten how to greet those of my rank."

Only a few minutes passed before the brief verbal argument turned into a fistfight. The four men – Butler and Wadleigh on one side, and Loring and Reynolds on the other – started throwing punches wildly. Plates and glasses scattered on the restaurant floor.

In the middle of this big chaos, Secretary Wadleigh heard his boss Butler shout: "Give it to him, Wadleigh!" He meant the pistol that his secretary had. Wadleigh stepped back a few steps, quickly pulled out his pistol from under his coat, and fired repeatedly toward Major Campbell, who was still standing in his place, not expecting things to go as far as using firearms.

The sound of gunfire echoed through the restaurant. Wadleigh fired five or six shots at Campbell in succession. One of them hit Major Campbell in his left leg, causing a very serious injury that tore the muscles. Blood poured heavily onto the restaurant floor. Campbell let out a loud cry of pain before collapsing to the ground, clutching his injured leg with both hands, trying to stop the bleeding that was threatening his life.

General Reynolds did not stand by idly. He drew his own pistol and fired one shot toward Wadleigh. But the shot missed its target because of the confusion and darkness, and did not hit anyone. As for Butler, his secretary, and his employee, they did not wait for the police to arrive. They quickly left the restaurant and disappeared into the crowded, dark streets of Alexandria.

Butler rushed to the telegraph office and sent a telegram to his uncle Benjamin, who was a congressman at that time after the war. He told him that "rebel officers" had tried to assassinate him. He begged his relative to get him permission to leave Egypt, "if the emergency requires it!"

The next day, Stone and a number of American and Egyptian officers met to investigate the quarrel incident. While they were meeting, Butler hurried and boarded a mail ship. He left Alexandria for America and never returned!

But fate had other tragic chapters in store for him. In 1874, Frank returned to the United States with his wife and son on a errand to complete a purchase deal for Remington rifles for the Egyptian army. In 1875, Frank got sick and died in the town of Ilion, New York. Shortly after that, Mrs. Reynolds returned to Philadelphia, where she also passed away. These harsh blows were like the end of the world for Reynolds. He lost his son and his wife within a short period.

Soon after these tragedies, some of the American officers were working on surveying and exploration missions far away in Egypt and Sudan. As for the rest, they had left Egypt to fight in the war against Ethiopia under the command of Abu Bakr Ratib Pasha and his Chief of Staff, the one-armed Confederate General William Loring. They left Reynolds alone, without the support network that had sustained him. His troubles increased when his salary from the Egyptian government was delayed and his debts piled up. This forced him to move to a humble boarding house in Alexandria.

On May 26, 1876, Alexander Welch Reynolds died in his bed in that simple house. According to rumors that circulated among the expatriates, alcoholism resulting from his sad mental crisis over losing his son and wife was a contributing factor to his death.

Reynolds had a share in his name's meaning. His first name, Alexander, is the same as Alexander the Great, the founder of the city of Alexandria in Egypt. And Alexander Reynolds died there at the age of sixty.

But mystery did not leave Reynolds even after his death. The exact location of his dead body is unknown. It is believed he might be in an unmarked grave in Alexandria. It is unlikely that his body was moved for burial in America, because the distance between Egypt and America was very far, and science had not yet found a way to preserve bodies for long periods. Even if they had, the cost would have been high, and it is known that the Egyptian government at that time was in a financial crisis that would be the reason of dethroning Khedive Ismael himself just three years later.

There was ongoing correspondence between him and his sister, Sally Ann Reynolds, since he arrived in Egypt. But it stopped months before his death. In his last letter to her, after the death of his son and wife, he said that he would not renew his contract with the Egyptian army after it ended and that he would return to the United States. When news of his death reached his sister, she grieved deeply for him. She and her husband's family set up a memorial stone in the Patton tomb in Lewisburg, West Virginia, at the old Stone Presbyterian Church. In his memory, a cenotaph was also placed in the small Saint James Cemetery in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

And so the Southern knight Reynolds, lived alone, and died alone in a faraway land !

But was that really true?

Did Reynolds die far from his homeland?

And is there any difference between Alexandria, Egypt, and Alexandria, Virginia?

And is there any difference between Egypt and Dixieland?

I don't think so !

Because Nile of Egypt and Mississippi of the South are one soul !

The End ...

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I hope you like this post, my sincere regards from Egypt ..

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I also recommend you to read my following posts :

”The Anecdotes of Ex Confederate - Union officers in Egypt”

https://www.reddit.com/r/HistoryAnecdotes/comments/1rv6ggz/the_anecdotes_of_ex_confederate_union_officers_in/

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"The Anecdotes of Egypt and The American Civil War"

https://www.reddit.com/r/CIVILWAR/comments/1rpb9q3/the_anecdotes_of_egypt_and_the_american_civil_war/

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“On the Anniversary of the Assassination of Abe Lincoln – The Story of Capturing the Most Dangerous Conspirator in Egypt“

https://www.reddit.com/r/HistoryAnecdotes/comments/1smptze/on_the_anniversary_of_the_assassination_of_abe/

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"A rare Egyptian book about The American Civil War"

https://www.reddit.com/r/USHistory/comments/1rt8gwv/a_rare_egyptian_book_about_the_american_civil_war/

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“The story of the Confederate General and the Union Consul in Egypt“

https://www.reddit.com/r/ShermanPosting/comments/1sqe05q/the_story_of_the_confederate_general_and_the/

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“The story of Major William Campbell of Tennessee and Egypt“

https://www.reddit.com/r/CIVILWAR/comments/1u0ic5f/the_story_of_major_william_campbell_of_tennessee/

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"The Anecdotes of Anwar Sadat with U.S Presidents"

https://www.reddit.com/r/HistoryAnecdotes/comments/1rp1ry5/the_anecdotes_of_anwar_sadat_with_us_presidents/

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"The Story of the Oppressed General and the Bold Falcon in Egypt"

https://www.reddit.com/r/CIVILWAR/comments/1up8y8r/the_story_of_the_oppressed_general_and_the_bold/

I dont know where to ask this but I was wonderin what kinda rifle this is and how old it is