Samuel A ' Court Ashe Samuel A ' Court Ashe ( September 13 , 1840 – 1938 ) was a Confederate infantry captain in the American Civil War and celebrated editor , historian , and North Carolina legislator . Prior to his death in 1938 , he was the last surviving commissioned officer of the Confederate States Army . Samuel ' s father , William Shepperd Ashe ( 1814 – 1862 ) , served in the North Carolina state senate and United States Congressman . The United Confederate Veterans conferred the title of Brigadier General upon Samuel A . Ashe in 1936 in New Orleans , Louisiana . Ashe is also noted for his booklet on the war titled " A Southern View of the Invasion of the Southern States and War of 1861 - 65 . " Born in Wrightsville Beach , North Carolina in 1840 , Ashe grew up near Wilmington and spent much of his life in Raleigh . He attended the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis , where he met future naval historian and lifelong friend Alfred Thayer Mahan . When the war erupted , Ashe enlisted in the Confederate Army and served for its duration , rising to the rank of captain . Among his duty assignments was serving at Fort Caswell , on the eastern end of Oak Island . After the war , Samuel married Hannah Emerson Willard in 1871 and had nine children ( one of whom was William Willard Ashe , the noted botanist and associate of the United States Forest Service ) . Samuel studied law in Wilmington , later establishing a law practice there . Active in the Democratic Party , Ashe worked for several government departments and ultimately served in the North Carolina House of Representatives . As a legislator , Ashe revised North Carolina tax laws concerning the resolution of state debt s . Ashe became editor of the Raleigh Daily News , and subsequently purchased the Raleigh Daily Observer , merging the two to become editor of both publications . A prolific writer , he wrote many materials between the period of 1908 and 1935 on the subjects of North Carolina history , the Civil War , and the post - war South . Perhaps Captain Ashe ' s most renown publication is his booklet on the war published in 1935 and titled " A Southern View of the Invasion of the Southern States and War of 1861 - 65 " , in which he addressed the subject of the constitutionality of the South ' s secession from the United States and other similar topics pertaining to the Confederacy , Abraham Lincoln , and the war . The contents of " A Southern View . . . " are as follows : ( 1 ) The Slave Trade ; ( 2 ) Steps Leading to War ; ( 3 ) Nullification , North and South ; ( 4 ) The States Made the Union ; ( 5 ) The Right of Secession ; ( 6 ) Virginia ' s Ratification of the Constitution ; ( 7 ) Motion of Thursday , the 26th of June , 1788 ; ( 8 ) Ratification by New York and Rhode Island ; ( 9 ) Secession , Insurrection of the Negroes , and Northern Incendiarism ; ( 10 ) The Modern Case of John Brown ; ( 11 ) Why South Carolina Seceded ; ( 12 ) Secession of the Cotton States ; ( 13 ) President Lincoln ' s Inaugural ; ( 14 ) Lincoln and the Constitution ; ( 15 ) Lincoln , The Lawyer ; ( 16 ) Lincoln , The Usurper ; ( 17 ) Abraham Lincoln , The Citizen ; ( 18 ) Lincoln as a Strategist ; ( 19 ) Conditions Just After the War ; ( 20 ) The War Between the Northern States and the Southern States ; ( 21 ) The Patriotic Address of Jefferson Davis ; ( 22 ) Postscript A Letter to a Boston Newspaper . Ashe ' s monument denotes that he was " a patriot , soldier , historian , legislator , editor , and Christian citizen . "