By Todd Hatton / Berry Craig
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/wkms/local-wkms-993481.mp3
Murray, KY – This week on the Kentucky Civil War Dispatch, as we know, Federals and Confederates were implacable foes during the conflict. But they did deal with each other off the battlefield from time to time, and did so with civility. They even occasionally forged friendships across the lines. We look at one such relationship, established after the Battle of Belmont.
On this date in 1861, General Leonidas Polk, the Confederate commander at Columbus, was preparing to meet Colonel Napoleon Bonaparte Buford, a Woodford County, Kentucky native, and c-o of the 27th Illinois Infantry, about prisoner-of-war exchanges and other matters related to the recent Battle of Belmont, Missouri.
General Ulysses S. Grant and about 3,000 Union troops had attacked Belmont on November 7th. Belmont was the Rebel outpost across the Mississippi River from Columbus, Kentucky. After seizing the Missouri town, Grant found himself surrounded by 5,000 Rebels led by General Gideon Pillow.
Grant refused to surrender. Instead, he ordered his troops to fight their way out. The Union forces battled their way to the transport boats and safely returned to their Cairo, Illinois base.
Buford, a veteran of the fight at Belmont, was back in the neighborhood by November 12th. He, Polk and their officers met on the rebel general's boat at Columbus.
That day, Polk wrote his wife, Frances Ann Deveraux Polk, confiding in her that Buford was "as good a fellow as ever lived, and most devotedly my friend a true Christian, a true soldier, and a gentleman every inch of him."
Polk added, "He said it did him good to come down and talk with me, and hoped it might be the means of peace and so on. I was very plain and clear in my position, as you may know, but very kind."
Polk said that after completing the prisoner swap, he still had about 100 Yankee captives, including 15 or 20 men of the 27th Illinois. "These he was very anxious I should let him take back.
"He urged me in every way, even on the score of our friendship, but I could not yield He was obliged to leave without them, but we had a very pleasant day."
Polk said Buford, the half-brother of General John Buford, who would become a Union hero of the Battle of Gettysburg, invited him to spend the night in Cairo. Polk declined, but told his spouse, "you see how much we have done on this line toward ameliorating the severities of this unfortunate and wretched state of things."
Polk's personal wretchedness included a near-death experience. After Belmont, the accidental explosion of a Columbus cannon killed nine men and blew Polk's uniform off. He was shaken, but unhurt.
On November 15th, he wrote Frances Ann again: "Since the accident I have been up the river on two occasions to meet flags of truce; once to meet Grant, and to-day to meet my friend Buford. My interview with General Grant was, on the whole, satisfactory. It was about an exchange of prisoners. He looked rather grave, I thought, like a man who was not at his ease. We talked pleasantly and I succeeded in getting a smile out of him and then got on well enough. I discussed the principles on which I thought the war should be conducted; denounced all the barbarity, vandalism, plundering and all that, and got him to say that he would join me in putting it down."
WKMS produces Kentucky Civil War Dispatches from West Kentucky Community and Technical College history professor Berry Craig. The Murray State alumnus is the author of Hidden History of Kentucky in the Civil War, Hidden History of Kentucky Soldiers and True Tales of Old-Time Kentucky Politics: Bombast, Bourbon, and Burgoo. For WKMS News, I'm Todd Hatton.