George Pickett

Fun Facts

George E. Pickett died in Norfolk, Virginia, on July 30, 1875. The cause of death was a liver abscess, although whether it was alcohol-related, amoebic or bacterial is not clear. He was initially interred in Cedar Grove Cemetery in Norfolk. His remains were disinterred on October 23, and he was buried in Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, Virginia, on October 24, 1875. More than 40,000 people lined the funeral route, while another 5,000 marched in the funeral procession.

After her husband died, Sallie succeeded in reinventing herself as a professional Confederate widow, a popular writer, speaker and champion of the Old South. She attended veteran reunions, parades and monument dedications, signing autographs and becoming so popular that she was known as Mother Pickett. In lectures to Northern audiences, Sallie told many a story of happy and contented slaves. As she once insisted:  “There was no word held in more reverential love and fear by the faithful Southern slave than the one word ‘Master.’ On stage she famously performed what she insisted was “phonetically genuine” slave dialect, carefully recorded by herself. The stories she told about her husband were no more credible than the slave dialect.  As one writer observed, Sallie Pickett’s postbellum career as a writer and Lost Cause icon “was marked by a curious admixture of charlatanry and self-delusion.”  She faked an entire set of wartime correspondence from her husband, and published it in The Heart of a Soldier, as Revealed in the Intimate Letters of General George E. Pickett, CSA.  She even forged a letter from Abraham Lincoln singing the General’s praises.

LaSalle Corbell Pickett died on March 22, 1931, having outlived her husband by more than 55 years. Initially, Hollywood Cemetery declined to allow her to be buried next to her husband. Pickett’s grandson, Lieutenant George E. Pickett III, threatened to have his grandfather disinterred and moved to Arlington National Cemetery, where both grandparents could be buried side by side. Hollywood Cemetery quickly agreed to permit LaSalle’s interment at Hollywood, but this did not immediately occur for reasons which are not clear, and LaSalle was cremated and buried at Abbey Mausoleum in Arlington County, Virginia. Originally a mausoleum for the wealthy, it went bankrupt in 1968. The structure fell into disrepair, and it was vandalized many times and several graves desecrated. In early 1998, the Military Order of the Stars and Bars and United Daughters of the Confederacy worked together to pay for LaSalle’s disinterment and reburial in front of the George E. Pickett Memorial in Hollywood Cemetery. LaSalle Pickett was buried on Saturday, March 21, 1998. She was the first woman interred in the Confederate military burial section.