Simon Bolivar Buckner
Brown won acclaim from the railroad companies for vetoing a proposed railroad tax increase, but soon drew their ire for preventing the merger of the state's two largest railways, the Louisville and Nashville Railroad and the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway. The Mason and Foard Company, which leased convict labor to build railroads, resented Brown's prison reforms. Brown accused his predecessor, Simon Bolivar Buckner, of illegally allowing Mason and Foard to use convict labor, a charge Buckner vehemently denied.