Mmy son’s last stateside duty station was in a suburb of Baltimore. On my last trip before he moved we made a day trip to Point Lookout, Maryland.

This was the prisoner of war camp where Simeon Corley of Lexington was held. He served the Confederacy but would have been considered a unionist and abolitionist.

The Point Lookout museum had no information on Simeon Corley so I copied my file and sent it to them.

I am sure Uncle Sim would have something to say in light of today’s events. Since he is no longer here, I will say it for him.

From prison, Simeon Corley wrote his father-in-law in Vermont who sent him $30.

He wrote that he would send as much as needed with the stipulation that, whatever amount Simeon gave his friends, they were to pay back after the war, provided they were able to. Otherwise it was all right.

PI Rawl, Company K, 20th SC Volunteers, CSA, later wrote: “Kind words never die. The kind words and offered deeds of Comrade Corley and his father-in-law are just as fresh in memory as it was 57 years ago, when they were first offered. Such a generous offer like that from a friend and life-long patron was never heard of by this humble scribe, especially to a hungry, dirty, rebel prisoner, when the chances seemed the debt could never be repaid.”

AFTER THE WAR Simeon Corley became a member of Congress and served as a delegate to the SC Constitutional Convention.

He gave a noteworthy speech championing voting rights for all men and women as a “natural and inherent right that cannot be denied to any citizen of sound mind, having attained his or her majority, except for rebellion or crime.”

Corley went on to serve as a US Treasury special agent, Lexington County treasurer, SC Commissioner of Agriculture and treasurer of the Lutheran Synod.

Corley died at age 70 in 1902.

He and his wife Martha Richardson are buried in Lexington.