 In a 1949 newspaper article in the West Point, Mississippi Daily Times includes the photo and gives Silas the title of slave, not soldier.However, by the 1990s, a descendant of Silas's named Bobbie Chandler believed that Silas might have been a soldier - possibly having learned this from a write-up in the neo-Confederate publication, the "Southern Partisan".In 1994, the Sons of Confederate Veterans and the United Daughters of the Confederacy placed a metal cross beside his tomb in West Point, Mississippi to honor his service as a Confederate soldier.