How The Brotherhood Began
The Sons of Confederate Veterans was organized in Richmond, Virginia in 1896, and is the direct heir to the United Confederate Veterans. This makes the SCV the oldest hereditary organization for male descendants for male descendants of Confederate soldiers.
The story of the SCV starts after the Civil War when groups of Confederate Veterans, who missed the comrade of their buddies, a friendship that was forged through the many battles and depredations they suffered through, got together and formed something akin to a fraternal organization. The groups that were formed in the various cities and states of the former Confederacy were not initially centralized, or even associated with one another at this time.
The Confederate veteran’s movement began in places like Virginia, Louisiana, Tennessee and Georgia. North Carolina's Society of Ex-Confederate Soldiers and Sailors may have been the first organization to go statewide in October 1881.
A prominent early veteran’s group was the Robert E. Lee Camp #1 (Confederate Veterans), which formed in Richmond on April 1883. It embraced their Northern veterans as "a band of brothers, bound to us by deeds greater than those won on the field of battle or the forum, deeds of brotherly love and charity." By 1883, New Orleans had gained a reputation as the "headquarters of Confederate sentiment, feeling and action."
The organization known as the United Confederate Veterans, which comprised these various fraternal groups, was formed in New Orleans, June 10, 1889.
