Walker, LeRoy Pope, 1817-1884

LeRoy Pope Walker was the first Secretary of War for the Confederate States of America. Born on February 7, 1817, near Huntsville, Alabama, Walker received a private education before attending the University of Alabama and then the University of Virginia in the 1830s. He studied law and became an attorney before turning 21 years old. Coming from an influential family in Alabama, Walker held various public offices in the state in the 1840s, including serving as a circuit court judge.

Walker was an outspoken advocate of secession during the 1850s. Following Alabama’s secession in early 1861, Confederate president Jefferson Davis appointed Walker as Secretary of War. He also served as a secession commissioner from Alabama to Tennessee, in an effort to draw the latter state into the Confederacy. Among his most notable actions as a Confederate cabinet member were public speeches in which he made bold—and very wrong—predictions about the fate of the Confederacy. Early in his tenure he rejected the prospect of large war between the Union and the Confederacy, famously claiming he would wipe up all the blood spilled with his handkerchief. After the firing on Fort Sumter and the sudden rush to war, Walker made another speech prophesizing a Confederate flag waving over the White House in Washington, D.C. By the late summer of 1861 he suffered health problems from work-related stress. President Davis offered him the opportunity to travel to Europe as a representative of the Confederate government, but Walker declined. He stepped down as secretary in September 1861, but accepted a commission as brigadier general in the Confederacy army and (despite no military experience) commanded troops at military forts and posts in Alabama. He resigned his commission in March 1862, but returned to the military in April 1864 to serve as a military judge.

Following the Civil War, Walker was active in opposing Republican Reconstruction in Alabama, including serving as president of the Alabama constitutional convention in 1875 that overturned Reconstruction policies. Following Reconstruction, he worked as an attorney in Alabama. He died on August 23, 1884. Walker was married twice, first to a Miss Hopkins who passed away after bearing him two children. He then married Eliza Dickson Pickett and had three more children. Walker is buried in Maple Hill Cemetery in Huntsville, Alabama. (Wikipedia; FindaGrave; Encyclopedia of Alabama)