small number of blacks by private bills, and, in 1927, allowed them to apply for a newly-established "Class B" pension, Williamson's pension was awarded under the original authorizing act. When Williamson died in 1915, obituaries in Southern newspapers described him as "a follower of the Confederacy", and an article a year before he died said that "he still remained loyal to the South till the end of the war." However, in 1874, Williamson applied to the Southern Claims Commission for reimbursement for a horse and cart taken by Union raiders in July 1863. One of the necessary criteria for having such a claim succeed was that the claimant must have remained loyal to the Union throughout the course of the war. Benjamin Weston, who testified for Williamson, confirmed that "like all his race", Williamson was always a loyal Unionist. Williamson's daughter also stated that "although working for the Confederacy, he helped many Union soldiers..." When Williamson left North Carolina to live in Washington, D.C., and therefore lost his state pension, an appeal was published in 1914 in the Albemarle Observer by a white ship captain, George Withy, asking for donations from white Southerners to help this "faithful old darkey". Withy wrote that "[A]fter the Battle of Roanoke Island this old darkey could have gone over to the Federals in the capacity of a Pilot ... [but] preferr[ed] to stay loyal to his friends and the South." The appeal did not mention that when he had recovered from his broken arm, Williamson avoided returning to service in the Confederate Navy. Southern newspapers which reprinted the obituary from a Washington, D.C. paper omitted a sentence which detailed that "The Confederates kept a strict guard over Williamson until the close of the war", and one paper even claimed that Williamson had received an honorable discharge from the navy, which, as an impressed sailor and not a volunteer, he would not have needed. These falsehoods and overlooked facts helped to contribute to the myth of the loyal "Black Confederate" which is part of the overriding myth of the Lost Cause of the Confederacy. References Notes Bibliography Bruce, Edward (1860) Loungings in the Footprints of the Pioneers. Harper's New Monthly Magazine v.18, pp. 726–727 Domby, Adam H. (2020) The False Cause: Fraud, Fabrication, and White Supremacy in Confederate Memory. Charlottesville, Virginia: University of Virginia Press. Olson, Christopher (1997) An Historical and Archaeological Investigation of the