The Colorful History of the Second Mrs. Pillow

Readers of Grant's memoirs will probably recall that he held a low opinion of his Confederate counterpart and opponent in late 1861 and early 1862, Gideon Pillow. This blowhard was a model of downward mobility, serving as a politically connected (to President Polk) major general in the Mexican War, but not rising above brigadier in the Civil War. A very rich speculator and lawyer, he managed to lose all his money, leaving his much younger second wife to raise their children in straitened circumstances at his death in 1878.

Pillow was buried in Tennessee, as was his first wife, although not in the same cemetery. His second wife, however, as can be seen above, managed to find a place in Arlington National Cemetery, on the strength of her late husband's Mexican War service. Her career as a widow included an adulterous and litigious relationship which led to the homicide of her lawyer by her onetime lover.