When the American Civil War began, Simon Bolivar Buckner held the position of Inspector General of the Kentucky Militia. He was offered a commission in the Union Army, but refused it. In September 1861, he was appointed to the rank of Brigadier General of the Confederate Army and was given command of the garrison at Fort Donelson between the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers near the Kentucky / Tennessee border. As fate would have it, in February of 1862 Union General Ulysses S. Grant began the first major campaign in the West, pushing southward along the Tenessee River in an attempt to gain control of the Mississippi Valley. The assault on Fort Donelson was fierce, and Buckner proposed an armistice. His old West point buddy, Grant, would hear nothing of it. He offered “no terms except the unconditional and immediate surrender” of the garrison. Grant took 15,000 prisoners, including Simon. In August 1862 he gained his freedom in an exchange program. The battle at Fort Donelson would be the last time that Simon B. Buckner and Ulysses S. Grant would communicate directly. Twenty-three years later, though, they would meet again when Buckner would be asked (and agree) to serve as a pallbearer at Grant’s funeral. Other pallbearers for Grant’s coffin were Joseph E. Johnston and the Union Generals, Philip H. Sheridan and William T. Sherman.