Macarthy seemed to spend much of his time on the road lifting his heels just out of reach of the nippy jaws of approaching Union forces. In the summer of 1864, Macarthy played in Savannah, Georgia; a few months later, in December, the coastal city would fall to Major General William T. Sherman’s Union forces. On September 2, 1864, he was in Wilmington, North Carolina, for a benefit performance with some other popular entertainers, including singer Ella Wren and actor Walter Keeble. This city would be surrendered in February 1865, a few months after Macarthy’s visit.

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After performing in Wilmington, Macarthy returned to Richmond and nearby Petersburg, Virginia. By then, the Federal noose was tightening fast around the Confederacy’s neck, and Macarthy decided he had better head north. Somehow he managed to squeeze through Union lines, and the next time he turned up, he was in Philadelphia. Soon afterward, he returned home to Great Britain.

He did not stay home long, however–just long enough for the sectional animosity in the reunited United States to cool off a bit. In the beginning of 1867, he was back in the States, receiving rave reviews wherever he went, North or South. In January, he appeared briefly in Indianapolis, Indiana, before heading to New Orleans. The New Orleans Daily Picayune, described his reception at the familiar Academy of Music as ‘one of the most enthusiastic demonstrations of welcome ever witnessed within the walls of the Academy.’ The concert was sold out, and hundreds of fans waiting in line had to be turned away.

The 1870s were the last fruitful decade of Macarthy’s entertainment career, and he spent most of his working hours giving his personation concerts. By the 1880s, though, the public had lost interest and stopped coming to see him. Although he had earned quite a bit of money over the years, he had spent it all and suddenly was forced to find work as a journeyman actor. He settled in New York City and, when he could not find any more jobs there, he moved to San Francisco. One night in 1888, just before he was about to take the stage, he took ill and died. The Bob Hope of the Confederacy’s passing in a lonely rooming house in Oakland, California, went almost unnoticed.

An obituary for Macarthy appeared in the New Orleans Daily States on November 25. It wound its way through Macarthy’s long career, concluding with an insightful observation about his showmanship–and his ineptitude with financial matters: ‘His dialect was almost perfect; his Irish was inimitable; his Scotch was perfect; his negro was fine; his cockney was true to life; his Yankee was perfect, and then he could sing and dance and could write his own songs, in fact he could do anything but hold on to what he got.’

Macarthy’s death presented a vexing problem for newspaper editors. Because so little was known about his private life, huge holes riddled the stories about him. Many newspapers solved the problem of not knowing much about Macarthy’s personal life by inventing things. The Richmond Dispatch, for example, said Macarthy was a member of Terry’s Texas Rangers, an assertion no doubt rooted in the story of the ruckus that had erupted in New Orleans.

Despite all the accolades he received in his day, Macarthy was soon all but forgotten. No book-length biography was ever written about him. In fact, until now, not even a magazine feature has been published about this man who entertained troops in the field and gave generously to Confederate charities on the home front.

But the veterans he had entertained and inspired never forgot him. Decades later, memories of Macarthy from the greatest years of their lives were still fresh. For many of them, he was much more than the Civil War South’s most popular entertainer. To them, he was simply the greatest entertainer of all.

This article was written by E. Lawrence Abel and originally appeared in the December 2000 issue of Civil War Times magazine.

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