1807
- US Brigadier General Napoleon Bonaparte Buford is born, in Woodford, Kentucky. Buford would attend West Point, graduating third in his class, in 1827. He would serve time in the frontier army and would be given leave to study law at Harvard. After Harvard, Buford would teach at West Point. In his mid-fifties, when the Civil War started, he would be in Illinois, and raise the 27th Illinois Infantry Regiment of which he was commissioned colonel. Assigned to Paducah, Kentucky, he would take part in Ulysses S. Grant’s Battle at Belmont – where he would nearly be stranded after the Confederates regrouped – and attacked. Buford would be part of John Pope’s successful attacking force, at Island 10, helping open the Mississippi, north of Memphis. After fighting at Corinth, in October 1862, Buford would take sick leave and would participate in the court-martial proceedings against Fitz John Porter. Returning to the west, the newly appointed brigadier general would command the district of eastern Arkansas, until war’s end. Napoleon Bonaparte Buford was the older 1/2 brother of US Brigadier General John Buford.
1815
- US Major General William H. French is born, in Baltimore, Maryland. French would graduate, from West Point, in 1837. He would serve in the Second Seminole War and the Mexican War, where he would receive two brevet promotions, making him a major, by brevet, at the end of the war. During the Seminole war, in Florida, French would command the future Confederate lieutenant general, Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson. They did not get along well. With the outbreak of civil hostilities, French would be serving frontier duty in western Texas. With the state’s Confederate government demanding he surrender, he refused and moved to the Gulf of Mexico via the Rio Grande River. In September 1861, French would be promoted to brigadier general and assigned to the Army of the Potomac. During the Peninsula Campaign, French would command a brigade in US Major General Edwin Sumner’s II Corps. Performing well, he would be assigned to command the Third Division in Sumner’s II Corps which he led during the Maryland Campaign. At Antietam, a breakdown in communication would have his division veering off course, towards the “Sunken Road” – now called the “Bloody Lane.” While not in the correct position, his division, due to his leadership, would be instrumental in pushing the Confederates from the Sunken Road. Promoted major general, in November, 1862, he would lead his division in the battles of Fredericksburg, where he was repulsed in front of Marye’s Heights, and at Chancellorsville. During the Gettysburg campaign, French would command portions of the VIII Corps and the District of Harpers Ferry, stationed at Frederick, Maryland. With US Major General Daniel Sickles being severely wounded at Gettysburg, French would take over III Corps command. After the terrible Mine Run Campaign, US Major General George G. Meade, was looking for a place to hang blame. It would be the slow movements of French’s III Corps that received this blame. With the reorganization of the Army of the Potomac, in spring 1864, the depleted III Corps would be dissolved and French would be assigned board duties in Washington D.C. With the removal of his volunteer rank, he would revert to colonel in the U.S. Regular Army.
