Elkanah Greer

Elkanah B. Greer: Confederate Army general

Elkanah Brackin (or Bracken) Greer was a figure who managed to collect titles and affiliations like some people collect dust, transitioning from an antebellum planter and merchant to a general within the ill-fated Confederate States Army during the devastating American Civil War . Born in Tennessee , a state known for its conflicted loyalties, Greer’s journey took him through the battlefields of the Mexican–American War as a humble private in the United States Army , through the politically charged landscape of Mississippi and Texas , before ultimately embracing the cause of the Confederacy with the rank of brigadier general .

His life, spanning from October 11 or 13, 1825, in Paris, Tennessee , to his demise on March 25, 1877, at the age of 51 in DeValls Bluff, Arkansas , was marked by a persistent, if not always successful, engagement with military and political endeavors. Greer’s early military experience under Jefferson Davis in the Mississippi Rifles offered him a taste of command and conflict, which he would later apply, with varying degrees of impact, during the Civil War.

After his initial military service, Greer settled in Marshall, Texas , in 1848, where he carved out a multifaceted career as a lawyer, planter, and merchant. However, his most notable pre-Civil War involvement was arguably as the grand commander of the Knights of the Golden Circle in 1859, a decidedly pro-slavery organization with grand, if ultimately ludicrous, expansionist ambitions.

With the inevitable storm of the American Civil War brewing, Greer wasted no time, raising what would become the 3rd Texas Cavalry Regiment in 1861 and earning his commission as its colonel. His Confederate service saw him engage in significant early conflicts, including the Battle of Wilson’s Creek in August 1861, the Battle of Chustenahlah in December 1861, and the particularly bruising Battle of Pea Ridge in March 1862, where he even sustained an arm wound – a detail he apparently found too trivial to mention in his official reports.

Despite a brief resignation in June 1862, Greer’s commitment to the Confederate cause, or perhaps simply his knack for reappearing, led to his recommissioning as a brigadier general that October. His later war efforts primarily involved a thankless administrative role as the chief of the conscription bureau for the Trans-Mississippi Department from June 1863 until March 1865. This position, a bureaucratic quagmire of conflicting laws and reluctant recruits, proved to be his final significant contribution to a Confederacy teetering on the brink of collapse. Following his resignation in May 1865, Greer faded back into civilian life, eventually dying in DeValls Bluff, Arkansas , in 1877, leaving behind a legacy intertwined with the aspirations and ultimate downfall of the Confederacy.

| Born | October 11 or 13, 1825
Paris, Tennessee , US | | Commands | Greer’s Brigade |