While discussung the series of paintings that includes The Next to Last Confederate and The Last Civil War Veteran, Rivers has said: "...there was this one guy left from the Civil War. Now he was a media thing immediately; the last Civil War veteran. So I began getting interested in him and I did paintings. Then he died. They started to look up his records and it turned out that maybe he lied - and the guy who was supposed to be the 'next-to-the-last' was actually the last. But this was covered up - and Mr. Walter Williams, I believe his name was, was buried with honors."

"This Last Civil War Veteran was done from a photograph that appeared in Life magazine of the vet in his coffin with a Marine guard. When it appeared, Ray Parker, the artist, sent it to me with a note reading 'Go!' He wanted me to do something with it, make a painting of it. He knew that somehow this had become a subject of mine."

(Excerpt from the book Larry Rivers by Sam Humter, Arthur A. Bartley Publishers, 1989)

The 1959 version of The Last Civil War Veteran is in the collection of the Museum of Mordern Art. The 1961 version of The Last Civil War Veteran is in the collection of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco de Young Museum.