For the rest of his Life , Underwood was devoted to genealogy and the Lost Cause of the Confederacy through the United Confederate Veterans . He raised money to construct a Confederate Memorial at Oak Woods Cemetery in Chicago , Illinois to commemorate the Confederate prisoners who died at Camp Douglas , and whose remains were exhumed and moved there after closure of the previous cemetery and expansion of Grant Park during urban renewal following the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 . Underwood then agreed to raise money for a Confederate monument in Richmond , Virginia . However , the project was embroiled in legal controversies which ruined him financially and physically . In 1910 , oil portraits of many of the twenty Confederate generals he had commissioned from E.F. Andrews were auctioned by a Covington , Kentucky warehouse to pay storage fees , and most ended up in Virginia . By that time , Underwood 's wife had died and he lived in Manhattan , New York and described himself in the census as an author
Great Chicago Fire
Great Chicago Fire
John C. Underwood