page_title: Milledge Luke Bonham
section_title: Early life and career
hierarchical_section_title: Milledge Luke Bonham / Early life and career
caption_attribution_description: Milledge Luke Bonham
context_page_description: Milledge Luke Bonham was an American politician and Congressman who served as the 70th Governor of South Carolina from 1862 until 1864. He was a Confederate General during the American Civil War.
context_section_description: Milledge L. Bonham was born near Redbank (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. Milledge was a 1st cousin once removed to Andrew Pickens Butler. He attended private schools in the Edgefield District and at Abbeville. He graduated with honors from South Carolina College at Columbia in 1834. He served as Captain and adjutant general of the South Carolina Brigade in the Seminole War in Florida in 1836. That same year, his older brother James Butler Bonham perished at the Battle of the Alamo.
  Bonham studied law and was admitted to the bar, in 1837, and commenced practice in Edgefield. During the Mexican–American War, he was lieutenant colonel (from March 1847) and colonel (from August 1847) of the 12th US Infantry Regiment. Two other members of his regiment, Major Maxcy Gregg and Captain Abner Monroe Perrin, would also become generals in the Civil War. After he returned home, Bonham was the major general of the South Carolina Militia. Entering politics, he served in the state house of representatives from 1840–1843. He married Ann Patience Griffin on November 13, 1845. Bonham was solicitor of the southern circuit of South Carolina from 1848–1857. He was elected as a Democrat to the Thirty-fifth United States Congress (succeeding his cousin, Preston Smith Brooks) and the Thirty-sixth United States Congress, and served from March 4, 1857, until his retirement on December 21, 1860.
caption: Gen. Milledge Luke Bonham
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