Asbury Coward

Asbury Coward was a school leader, Confederate Army officer, and Superintendent of Education. Highly-regarded by General Robert E. Lee during his Confederate Army service in the American Civil War, Coward later served as 8th Superintendent of The Citadel from 1890 to 1908.

Biography

He was born on the Quenby Plantation outside Charleston, South Carolina, and graduated from South Carolina Military Academy in 1854. He and classmate Micah Jenkins established the King's Mountain Military School in Yorkville in 1855. It closed at the start of the American Civil War. It reopened after the war but the boarding school struggled with the challenging times and closed.
During the Civil War, Coward was commissioned as a colonel and served under General James Longstreet in Tennessee and Georgia. He was also a member of the 5th South Carolina Cavalry Regiment and an assistant adjutant on Col. David Rumph Jones' staff. In one of his reports, Gen. Robert E. Lee described Coward as "one of the best Colonels in his army."
He served as president of the Kings Mountain, North Carolina, centennial committee.
In 1890, Coward was named Superintendent of The Citadel. He remained in that office until 1908 and died in 1925. He is buried at Rosehill Cemetery in York County.

The Daughters of the American Revolution erected a monument honoring him at Kings Mountain National Military Park in Blacksburg. The Citadel has a collection of his letters. Winthrop University has a small collection of his letters. His memoir was published in 1968.
The Citadel's mess hall building since 1991, Coward Hall, is named for Colonel Coward.