Benjamin Franklin Gordon

Who was Benjamin Franklin Gordon?

Benjamin Franklin Gordon was a Confederate States Army colonel during the American Civil War. Gordon had been a private and bugler for a Missouri regiment serving in the U.S. Army during the Mexican-American War. Gordon served in the Confederate Army under Brigadier General Joseph O. "Jo" Shelby in Missouri and Arkansas in the Confederate Trans-Mississippi Department throughout the war. On May 16, 1865, with the war coming to an end, General E. Kirby Smith, as the Confederate commander of the Trans-Mississippi Department, assigned Gordon to duty as a brigadier general. The Confederate government took no action on the appointment and Confederate President Jefferson Davis did not officially appoint and nominate Gordon to the rank of brigadier general because the Confederate Senate last met on March 18, 1865 and Davis was captured by Union troops on May 10, 1865. Although he was only aged 40 at his death, Gordon survived the war by little more than a year.