Abraham Charles Myers[1] (also Abram) was born in Georgetown, South Carolina, on 14 May 1811.[2] Myers was born into a Jewish family; his great-grandfather had been the first rabbi of Congregation K.K. Beth Elohim in Charleston, South Carolina. [3] Myers was accepted to the United States Military Academy on 1 July 1828; after repeating his freshman year, he graduated on 1 July 1833.[1] In February 1850, Major GeneralDavid E. Twiggs named Fort Myers for his future son-in-law;[3] Myers married Marion Twiggs before 1861.[1]
From 1848 to 1861, Myers served the Quartermaster Department at various posts, mostly in the Southern United States. While stationed in New Orleans on 28 Jan 1861, at the behest of Louisiana state officials, Myers "surrendered the quartermaster and commissary stores in his possession" before immediately resigning from the US Army.[1]
South Carolina, the State where I was born, and Louisiana, the State of my adoption, having in convention passed ordinances of secession from the United States, I am absolved from my allegiance to the Federal government.[5]
Confederate military career
On 16 Mar 1861, Myers was appointed a lieutenant-colonel in the Confederate Quartermaster-General's Department. He was made the Confederacy's first acting quartermaster-general on 25 March 1861; the role was made official that December, with a promotion to colonel on 15 Feb 1862.[1] After the Confederate capital moved from Montgomery, Alabama, to Richmond, Virginia, Myers' offices were made on the second floor of the building at the southwest corner of 9th and Main Street; his staff would eventually swell to 88 clerks—the largest office in the Confederacy's supply bureau. As president of the military board, Myers helped design the first Confederate Army uniform: "a blue flannel shirt, gray flannel pants, a red flannel undershirt, cotton drawers, wool socks, boots, and a cap."[3]
As quartermaster-general, Myers was hampered by insufficient funds, the failure of the Confederate States dollar, and the poor railroads in the South; the Confederate States Army was never adequately supplied by Myers, especially with regard to clothing and shoes. By the 1930s, it was determined that while Myers had been very skilled at accountancy, he could not think outside his US training and experience, nor could he rise above "the laxity, carelessness, and inefficiency of remote subordinates".[1]
End of service
Myers was ousted as quartermaster-general around the turn of 1864.
A 1938 history of The Boston Club reported that Myers, one of the club's members, was forced out of the service in August 1863.[6]
In 2000, Robert N. Rosen's The Jewish Confederates said that while there had been complaints about Myers from War SecretaryJames Seddon and General Robert E. Lee, President Davis had used the letter of the law to appoint his friend—Lawton—in retaliation for Myers' wife having called Varina Davis a "squaw". (Though as a Jew, Myers had seen some antisemitism in the Confederate ranks, Rosen explicitly argued that it had no bearing on Davis' actions.) Despite the efforts of the congress, Richmond society, and the Fourth Estate, Lawton was confirmed in February 1864. Rosen goes on to say that Myers refused to serve under Lawton, and though the Confederate States Attorney General opined that Myers was not in the army any longer, he himself maintained that "he was a colonel and a commissioned officer and remained on the army list".[3]
Bruce Allardice's 2008 book Confederate Colonels concurs with much of the Rosen's analysis, though merely says that Myers resigned on 10 August 1863.[2]
^ abcdefCullum, George W. (1891). Biographical Register of the Officers and Graduates of the U. S. Military Academy at West Point, N. Y. from its Establishment, in 1802, to 1890 with the Early History of the United States Military Academy. Vol. I. Houghton, Mifflin and Company. p. 562. LCCN01017674.
