11. Edmund W. Rucker, Confederate States Army
Unlike many of the senior officers of the Confederate States Army, Edmund Rucker did not attend the United States Military Academy, nor serve in the Army prior to the Civil War. He served as the City Engineer at Memphis, Tennessee when that state seceded, and enlisted in the Confederate Army in 1861. He first served as a miner, later in the artillery, and later still in the cavalry. For the latter, he served under the infamous Nathan Bedford Forrest. At the Battle of Nashville, Rucker suffered a severe wound which led to his capture by Union troops. Union doctors amputated his left arm and sent him to a prisoner of war camp at Johnson’s Island near Sandusky, Ohio.
After a prisoner of war exchange arranged by Nathan Bedford Forrest, Rucker returned to his unit and continued to serve until it surrendered in Alabama in May, 1865. Following the war, Rucker became a leading businessman in Birmingham, Alabama. He maintained close ties with former Confederate Generals Joseph Johnston, and Nathan Bedford Forrest. He received an honorary title of General from his former colleagues and used it in some correspondence. Whether Rucker joined Bedford Forrest in the Ku Klux Klan remains a matter of conjecture and debate among scholars, there is anecdotal evidence that he did, as well as he did not.