Alexandria gazette. [volume] (Alexandria, D.C.) 1834-1974, 1899-12-01
SOUTHERN lRRECoNCILABLEs.
From the New York Ttibune.l

SUI HEkN lRRECONClLAbLG
From the New York Tlibune.]
gLieutenant C. c. Wood, Of Her Brit
annie Majesty's North Lancashire regi
ment,' whose death at Kimberley from
wounds received in action against the
Beers was reported in last weeks dis
patches, was the son of an American
and the great grandson of q .chary Tay-
lor. Many of his cousins, through the
Taylor branch of his family, are to be
found in Kentucky. and perhaps in
other parts of the union, who are good
Americans and would scorn to be any
thing else. To those Americana who,
like most Americans, have spent all
,heir lives in thsir own country or gone
obroad only for an occasional summer
holiday in the beaten track OF the tour
ist this announcement may have ap'
peared a remarkably strange reversal
# the natural order. To those who
aave roamed much aboard the fact that
Lieutenant Woods father was an ez-
Confederate, living in self-imposed ex'
Ia, will Only put the case in line with
mary others more or less like it. There
nay not be many men now serving ID
be British army, who. like this young
officer, are descendants of the makers
ot early Uoited States history, but in
be cities of Europe, especially London,
many an 'unreconstructed rebel" has
passed away within the last fifteen or
swenty wears, and of these many must
nave left children, born on foreign soil,
who have never even dreamed that
they ought to be Americans.
During the decade Immediately
following the close of the civil war
many officers of the heroic but defeated
Confederate army drifted to Canada,
and some to the British West Indies.
Some of them eventually came back to
their old States and helped on the slow,
painful work of national reconciliation.
In a single city just on the far SIDE OF
Mason and Dixon's line list of The
tenmen of greatest prominence in
the local, industrial and finan-
cial life would include not few
er than four ex-confederates who
in 1865 had turned their backs on
his republic with but little hope OF
ever returning within its borders. Fer
haps some of these can now look back
to The days when they themselves were
lust as irreconcilable as those others
who have never come back-even as
Colonel A., some time of the atlanta
Light Horse, who used to explain his
position briefly and forcibly by sayi' s
that nothing would ever induce him
TO live in country dominated ny
those blasted Yankees" :"
All the same, there were two days in
the year when the little cigar store ca
the south side of Hanway street closa TO
the Tottenham Court Road displayed
the starred and striped emblem OF the
..hlasted Yankees :" one was the Fourth
of July, and Thanksgiving Day was
the other. Living in London, with
which he was wonderfully familiar, the
Colonel never ceased to abuse the eli
mate. the manners, the police, the cook
ino the social and political arrange
ments OF England in general aud Lon
don in particular. He was much too
we'll bred to force his criticisms upon
strangers or mere casual acquaintance,
bnt his friends and his regular custom
ers who loved to tilt back their chairs
and puff pipes or cigars by the hour in
that little shop, would there hear more
invectiye against their country than
thew could hear anywhere else in the
same time. And the strange thlng was
that none of them seemed to oDJecf, or
to like the colonel one bit the less on
acconnt of his candor. But then they
ali knew that he could give it to the
,shlasted Yankee" even harder than to
the London fog or the House OF Lords
and M with it al, there was the couVic-
tion that this perfectly groomed man
with the soldierly bearing and the su,
perbly waxed mustache, VINO woulu you q
sell YOU threepence worth OF TOBACCO II !,
you wanted that quantity, ana on
whose word you could always rely:
who never called cigar good unless u
was was good-had fought, and fought hsro5;
1sd %d cavalry charges, been wounded
haen M made prisoner and had tsKen
oe4m os;sonars in the service of the lost
cause. for which most hondoners, II nos
most Engllsnm men, aiw0S :. -,.e
less Less sympathy-especially after 1t wss
lost. caoro;an by
birth. His family gave its name 10 !.
one of the counties nearest 10 a., az
LAM Isnts. His father owned large tobacco D, co
estate es in that neighborhood, with many many
slaves. AS boy the colonel Iao haa osea : ~
ssat'I, sont to West Point, and thence mao nae
Sess SO assed into the United States cavalry
RasJ He fought Apaches for several year year.,
oH a and on. Many OF his pest seol,ss as
vn we're e, from that Apache fighting ! pefloo, aou;
Then. T when Georgia Seeded ne ne sens ssa1
from H. m,' Arizona to Atlanta, where rene ne
;a;ned ;.; the Confederate regimen&I Nv WIZ tb1
sa o,atu afsrwsrds commanded. Alter .ss .Se
mar ns r- his West Point record ana ,a1G th5
Taited Tai a9 Safes commission he had sdr hm hH,o
wade atI things particularly hard a, ioa nt% the
He could not get possession Of even sub rd'
ramnant ran of bis patrimony witnousS ,; Se euO. he
mittipg to the ''ironclad oath oath" too5 81 ns :
a1if,sS 0if his ar:stocratic feelings, tooS -
1 ujsce in New York clothing sloie
made little money by introoaclhhG 10 q.