John Bell Hood - Postbellum Career

Postbellum Career

After the war, Hood moved to Louisiana and became a cotton broker and worked as a President of the Life Association of America, an insurance business. In 1868, he married New Orleans native Anna Marie Hennen, with whom he fathered 11 children over 10 years, including three pairs of twins. He also served the community in numerous philanthropic endeavors, assisting in fund raising for orphans, widows, and wounded soldiers. During the postwar period he wrote a memoir, Advance and Retreat: Personal Experiences in the United States and Confederate States Armies, which served to justify his actions, particularly in response to what he considered misleading or false accusations made by Joseph E. Johnston, and to unfavorable portrayals in Sherman's memoirs. His insurance business was ruined by a yellow fever epidemic in New Orleans during the winter of 1878–79 and he succumbed to the disease himself, dying just days after his wife and oldest child, leaving 10 destitute orphans, who were adopted by families in Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia, Kentucky and New York.