Simon Bolivar Buckner was an American Confederate soldier. He is remembered for his military service as a Confederate general during the United States Civil War and for his political efforts serving as a governor of Kentucky.
Background
Simon Bolivar Buckner was born on April 1, 1823, of English ancestry near Munfordville in Hart County, Kentucky, United States. He was the son of Aylett Hartswell Buckner and Elizabeth Ann Morehead Buckner. His father was a farmer and iron manufacturer, who had taken part in the second war with Great Britain and who was present at the battle of the Thames.
Education
After attending the academy at Hopkinsville, Kentucky, Simon graduated eleventh in a class of twenty-five from the United States Military Academy in 1844.
After Simon Buckner finished the course in a class of the West Point Military Academy in 1844 not conspicuous for subsequent greatness and was immediately made brevet second lieutenant of the 2nd Regiment of Infantry and stationed at Sackets Harbor, New York. The next year he was appointed assistant professor of ethics at West Point but in 1846 on the outbreak of the war with Mexico, he was released at his own request to enter active service. He was now attached to the 6th Infantry as second lieutenant where he served as regimental quartermaster from August until December 1847.
At first, he was attached to General Taylor's army and was with him at Saltillo. He was then joined to General Scott's command and was actively engaged at the siege and capture of Vera Cruz.
He was in almost every engagement from the sea to Mexico City, and for bravery, at Churubusco, he was brevetted first lieutenant and for gallantry, at Molino del Rey he was promoted to the rank of captain. Before leaving Mexico he visited the volcano of Popocatepetl and wrote an account of his trip which was published in Putnam's Magazine (April 1853).
He returned to West Point in August 1848 as an assistant professor in infantry tactics and filled this position until January 1850 when he was ordered to New York harbor. He remained there only a few months before going to Fort Snelling in Minnesota Territory.
In September 1851 Simon was moved to Fort Atkinson on the Upper Arkansas River. Here he came in contact with the wildlife of the Indians for a year, after which he was ordered back to New York where he served as a captain in the subsistence department. Seeing no great future in the army and no private fortune whatever, he resigned in 1855 to enter the business, engaging in work which led him to short residences in Nashville, Tennessee, and in Chicago. At the latter place, he was made superintendent in charge of the construction of the Chicago customs house, and while here he laid in city real estate the beginnings of a small fortune.
When the difficulties with Brigham Young and his Mormons arose in Utah, Buckner was made a colonel in a regiment of Illinois volunteers, who were, however, never called into service. In 1858 he removed to Louisville. Buckner had shown good business sense and had accumulated a considerable amount of wealth, but he could never quite forget his love and regard for military affairs.
As the dangers of a civil war approached he showed no disposition to take part in politics and in the sectional debate as did many others; he chose rather express his energies in the way of military preparedness for Kentucky. In 1860 he drew up an elaborate militia bill which the legislature adopted in March of that year. By its provisions, all able-bodied men between eighteen and forty-five years of age were made to constitute what was termed the enrolled militia, from whom should be selected the active militia or state guards.
The legislature at the time made him inspector-general with the rank of major-general. He now feverishly set to work to develop a well-trained and well-armed force which he hoped might play an important part in any war that might come. With funds that he secured from private sources, he held an encampment in the summer of 1860 near Louisville, which was made to assume much the purpose of an officers' training camp.
By the beginning of 1861, Buckner had developed a well-organized army of sixty-one companies. For the purpose of further arming the state, he advocated the expenditure of $3,500,000, but by this time the interplay of the various forces of party desires and ambitions led many Kentuckians to fear for the outcome if the state guards were enlarged and armed under the command of Buckner. The result was that most of the money spent for military purposes by the state during the summer of 1861 went to another force called the home guards, over whom Buckner had no control.
Out of the initial confusion came the state's neutrality doctrine which was fully adopted by May 24, 1861. In the meantime Governor Beriah Magoffin, hoping to avert war, attempted to set up a League of Neutrality among the border states, North and South in the Mississippi Valley, and sent Buckner to the states of Missouri and Tennessee to secure their adherence. Buckner succeeded in his mission, but the league was never organized because of the attitude of the states north of the Ohio River.
Kentucky alone having declared her neutrality, Buckner in June entered into negotiations with General George B. McClellan, who commanded Federal troops north of Ohio, and secured an agreement wherein the latter promised to respect Kentucky's position.
On June 24, carrying out the pact agreed upon, Buckner sent six companies of troops to Columbus, on the Mississippi River, to relieve the danger of invasion by the Confederates; but a little later when Federal forces from Cairo invaded Kentucky and when Buckner called on McClellan to act, he refused. This ended the agreement and strongly inclined Buckner toward the Confederates.
During the summer of 1861, Governor Magoffin sent Buckner to Washington to secure Lincoln's adherence to Kentucky's neutrality. Accompanied by John J. Crittenden he saw the President but received a cautious and equivocal answer, though the President offered him a commission as brigadier-general in the Federal army. Still bent on maintaining Kentucky's neutrality Buckner declined the offer.
By July the Union leadership in Kentucky had become so strong and had so hampered the military power that Buckner resigned his command, and in September visited Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy, where he was offered a commission in the Confederate army. This, too, he declined. On his return, he heard at Nashville of General Leonidas Polk's invasion of Kentucky and seizure of Columbus.
He considered it a great political blunder and sought without avail to have the Confederates withdraw. When the state legislature officially abandoned neutrality, he issued an address in which he bitterly denounced that body for betraying the state.
He forthwith joined the Confederates, receiving a commission as brigadier-general. His control over the state guards and his popularity with them had been so complete that many had already left to join the Confederates and now most of those remaining departed to join their comrades. Bitterly disappointed, the Union leaders declared Buckner a traitor and in November the Federal army seized his estate in Hart County.
On joining the Confederates Buckner was attached to General Albert Sidney Johnston's command and stationed at Bowling Green. On the retreat of the Confederates out of Kentucky, he was ordered with eight regiments in February 1862 to go to the rescue of Fort Donelson. After General Grant's forces had surrounded the fort Buckner sought to cut his way through the Federal lines but did not succeed, owing to the failure of Generals Floyd and Pillow to cooperate. When capture seemed inevitable, Floyd and Pillow escaped and left Buckner in command. Soon thereafter the latter was forced to surrender unconditionally to Grant.
He was taken as a prisoner first to Camp Morton in Indianapolis, and soon afterward to Fort Warren in Boston harbor where he was kept in solitary confinement until his exchange in the following August (1862). While Buckner was in prison, Garret Davis, a United States senator from Kentucky, sought unsuccessfully to have him turned over to the civil authorities to be tried for treason.
After Buckner's return to the Confederacy, he was promoted to be a major-general and was assigned to Gen. Bragg's army in Chattanooga. He took part in Bragg's invasion of Kentucky in the fall of 1862, commanding the 3rd division of infantry under General Hardee. For a time he was detached at Lexington for recruiting service but took his regular command again in time to be present at the battle of Perryville on October 8. In December he was sent by President Davis to build the defenses of Mobile and after four months' work, he succeeded in creating a strongly fortified city.
In the summer of 1863, he was placed in command of East Tennessee and in September of that year, he joined Bragg in northern Georgia. In the battle of Chickamauga which followed he commanded a corps of the left-wing. The next year he was put in command of the Department of Louisiana and was made a lieutenant-general. Little fighting took place there, and after Lee's surrender at Appomattox Buckner and General Sterling Price negotiated terms of capitulation with General Canby for the trans-Mississippi armies. Being denied by the terms of surrender the right to return to Kentucky, Buckner settled in New Orleans where he engaged in newspaper work and in the insurance business.
In 1866 he became the head of an insurance company. By 1868 the Confederate element in Kentucky had become so completely dominant that Buckner thought it would be to his advantage to return. He received wide applause and immediately became editor of the Louisville Courier, a newspaper which during the war had been driven out of the state by the Federal regime.
For a number of years, Buckner was busied with efforts to regain various properties that had been confiscated. When he had joined the Confederates in 1861 he had deeded some valuable property in the heart of Chicago to a brother-in-law who joined the Federal army, and who before his death willed it back to Buckner.
After long-drawn-out litigation, Buckner succeeded in recovering the property, which he sold for $500,000. As a record of service in the Confederate army was now a great political advantage in Kentucky he received the Democratic nomination for governor in 1887 and was elected by a large majority. His four years' term as governor was creditable but not brilliant.
In 1891 Buckner was elected a delegate to the constitutional convention and was instrumental in making the Kentucky constitution of that year. He then returned to his estate, "Glen Lily," near Munfordville, where he carried on farming operations, often engaging in manual labor himself. He visited Louisville frequently and was a familiar figure at the historic Galt House, where he might often be seen in the lobby smoking his corn-cob pipe.
In 1896 when the Democrats embraced free silver he bolted the party and was himself nominated for the vice-presidency on a national Democratic ticket headed by John M. Palmer, another native-born Kentuckian. Buckner was active in the campaign and so completely was the Democratic party split in Kentucky that McKinley received the state vote, the first time the Republicans ever received the electoral vote of the state.
Achievements
Religion
Simon was a member of the Episcopalian church.
Politics
Buckner was a member of the Democratic party and when the Democrats embraced free silver he bolted the party and was himself nominated for the vice-presidency on a national Democratic ticket headed by John M. Palmer, another native-born Kentuckian in 1896.
Personality
Tall and manly in appearance, Simon was friendly and considerate to the lowliest and was always unassuming in whatever position he occupied.
Connections
Simon was married twice: first on May 2, 1850, to Mary Jane Kingsbury, who died soon after the Civil War, and then on June 10, 1885, to Delia Hayes Claiborne of Richmond, Virginia.