A pre-war member of the House of Representatives, Reagan resigned from Congress when his home state of Texas seceded in 1861. Jefferson Davis appointed him postmaster general of the Confederacy.
After the war, he was jailed. Reagan subsequently sparked a controversy when he wrote a letter urging Texans to cooperate with the United States.
In his memoir, he revealed some cynical reasoning behind this advice, writing that granting former slaves limited rights was a necessary "evil" to avoid having the US intervene, set up a military government, and establish full suffrage for African Americans.
Writing in The Austin American-Statesmen, Rich Heyman argues that the former Confederate official "... continued to defend the actions and ideology of the Confederacy to the end of his life, and helped lay the groundwork for key tenets of post-reconstruction white supremacy in Texas, most notably the denial of voting rights to blacks."