About Me
I was born on December 25, 1813 near Red Bank (now Saluda), South Carolina, the son of Virginia native Capt. James Bonham and Sophie Smith Bonham, the niece of Capt. James Butler, who was the head of an illustrious South Carolina family. I am a 1st cousin once removed to Andrew Pickens Butler}. I attended private schools in the Edgefield District and at Abbeville. I graduated with honors from South Carolina College at Columbia in 1834. I served as major and adjutant general of the South Carolina Brigade in the Seminole War in Florida in 1836. That same year, my older brother James Butler Bonham perished at the Battle of the Alamo.I studied law and was admitted to the bar, in 1837, and commenced practice in Edgefield. During the Mexican-American War, I was lieutenant colonel and colonel of the Twelfth Regiment, United States Infantry. After I returned home, I was the major general of the South Carolina Militia. Entering politics, I served in the state house of representatives from 1840–1843. I married Ann Patience Griffin on November 13, 1845. I was solicitor of the southern circuit of South Carolina from 1848–1857. I was elected as a Democrat to the Thirty-fifth United States Congress (succeeding my cousin, Preston Smith Brooks) and the Thirty-sixth United States Congress, and served from March 4, 1857, until my retirement on December 21, 1860.In early 1861, the Southern states that had seceded from the Union appointed special commissioners to travel to those other slaveholding Southern states that had yet to seceded. I served as the Commissioner from South Carolina to the Mississippi Secession Convention, trying to persuade their politicians to vote to join in seceding from the Union.I was appointed major general and commander of the Army of South Carolina by my best friend Gov. Francis W. Pickens in February of 1861. I was appointed brigadier general in the Confederate Army on April 19, 1861, and commanded the First Brigade of the Confederate "Army of the Potomac" under P.G.T. Beauregard. I fought in the First Battle of Manassas, commanding my brigade as well as two artillery batteries and six companies of cavalry in the defense of Mitchell's Ford on Bull Run.I resigned my commission January 27, 1862, to enter the Confederate Congress. On December 17, 1862, the South Carolina General Assembly elected me as governor by secret ballot. I served until December of 1864. During my term, the General Assembly enacted a prohibition against distilling in 1863 and also that year, it demanded that more land be used to grow food instead of cotton to increase the supply of food in the state. I rejoined the Confederate Army as brigadier general of cavalry in February 1865, and was actively engaged in recruiting when the war ended.I owned an insurance business in Edgefield and in Atlanta, Georgia, from 1865-1878. Returning to politics, I was again a member of the South Carolina House of Representatives from 1865–1866 and a delegate to the Democratic National Convention in 1868. I was a member of the South Carolina taxpayers’ convention in 1871 and 1874. Retiring from public service, I resumed the practice of law in Edgefield and engaged in planting. I was appointed state railroad commissioner in 1878 and served until my death at White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia on August 27, 1890.
