Smithsonian Civil War Studies: Article - Albert Pike - Hero or Scoundrel? Welcome to Civil War Studies past articles Vol. 1 Study Leader Profile - Ed Bearss Study Leader Profile - Gary Scott Book Review - Lincoln: The Road to War Tour Review - Clara Barton: New Discoveries and Historic Sites Passover in a Civil War Camp Why Did Women Fight in the Civil War? Book Review - A Guide to Civil War Sites in Maryland, Blue and Gray in a Border State Tour Review - The Civil War Enshrined in the Nation's Capital Book Review - His Name Is Still Mudd Vol. 2 Book Review - Gettysburg's Unknown Soldier, The Life, Death, and Celebrity of Amos Humiston Book Review - A Clearing in the Distance--Frederick Law Olmsted and America in the Nineteenth Century The Spring of 1863--A Call to Arms Only in America? Book Review - Don't Shoot That Boy! 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Six Degrees of Separation - Or Less Why Women Study the Civil War 2002 Jeannette Cabell Coley Book Review - They Fought Like Demons, Women Soldiers in the Civil War The Monocacy Aqueduct The Smithsonian During the Civil War The 1860's - When Men Were Men and They Played Baseball in Washington> Vol. 6 Portrait of a Patriot - My Ancestor, Isaac Bowman Book Review - Surviving the Confederacy: Rebellion, Ruin, and Recovery - Roger and Sara Pryor During the Civil War The Other Families of Arlington House Special Delivery - The Story of Henry "Box" Brown Study Tour Review - The Civil War in West Virginia with Ed Bearss Escape of an Assassin Old Soldiers Never Die . . . Abraham Lincoln Vol. 7 Discussion in the Round Mr. Lincoln Goes to Gettysburg The All-American Christmas - isn't "Man of Mark" Parallel Portraits America's Game! 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The Smithsonian Associates Civil War E-Mail Newsletter, Volume 5, Number 1 Carved at the base of Albert Pike's statue at Third and D Streets in Northwest Washington are the words, "philosopher, jurist, orator, author, poet, scholar, soldier." Some of his contemporaries could accurately add, ";libertine, traitor, glutton, incompetent, murderer." Born in Massachusetts, Pike was six feet tall and weighed 300 pounds, an imposing image even without his waist length hair. He claimed he attended Harvard but no record of it exists. He made up for any lack of verifiable formal education with a self-taught curriculum in the classics and poetry, and he could converse in Sanskrit, Hebrew, Greek, Latin and French. With this training he became a schoolteacher, but by 1831 he left for the wilds of the west after rumors of affairs made it impossible for him to remain in Massachusetts. After many adventures traveling south from Tennessee to the Mexican territories, Pike settled in Arkansas. He practiced law, specializing in claims on behalf of Native Americans against the federal government. In spite of his northern sympathies, he sided with the Confederates when the Civil War began. He negotiated treaties with several Native American tribes to fight for the South, and was made a brigadier general to lead them. In March 1862, his brigade fought at the Battle of Pea Ridge, resulting in a Confederate rout after which his men were accused of desertion as well as scalping and defiling the bodies of Union dead. For this, he was forced to resign and later he was even imprisoned when his fellow officers charged him with misappropriating funds. After the war he abandoned his wife in Arkansas and roamed the east and mid-west practicing law, writing poetry, editing a newspaper, and reputedly creating the rituals of the Ku Klux Klan for Nathan Bedford Forest. This is quite possible, since at that time he was immersed in rewriting the rituals of Freemasonry, becoming Grand Commander of the Scottish Rite Masons. Pike finally settled in Washington DC in 1868, where he soon added more ammunition for his detractors to use against him by carrying on with the vivacious 19-year-old sculptress, Vinnie Ream, forty years his junior. Undoubtedly, Albert Pike was brilliant and notorious, and perhaps because of both, contingents representing the Daughters of the Confederacy and the Masons came to regale his memory and decorate his statue when it was installed in 1901. Speeches that day extolled his work for the Masons, but carefully ignored his infamous reputation. One speechmaker predicted that, "the name of Albert Pike will grow bright as the ages roll by." Today, few recall his name and fewer yet recognize who that giant statue at Judiciary Square might have been. 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