property and moved to Chicago to manage it. Still interested in military affairs, Buckner joined the Illinois State Militia of Cook County as a major. On April 3, 1857, he was appointed adjutant general of Illinois by Governor William Henry Bissell. He resigned the post in October of the same year. Following the Mountain Meadows massacre, a regiment of Illinois volunteers organized for potential service in a campaign against the Mormons. Buckner was offered command of the unit and a promotion to the rank of colonel. He accepted the position, but predicted that the unit would not see action. His prediction proved correct, as negotiations between the federal government and Mormon leaders eased tensions between the two. In late 1857, Buckner and his family returned to his native state and settled in Louisville. Buckner's daughter, Lily, was born there on March 7, 1858. Later that year, a Louisville militia known as the Citizens' Guard was formed, and Buckner was made its captain. He served in this capacity until 1860, when the Guard was incorporated into the Kentucky State Guard's Second Regiment. He was appointed inspector general of Kentucky in 1860. Civil War In 1861 Kentucky governor Beriah Magoffin appointed Buckner adjutant general, promoted him to major general, and charged him with revising the state's militia laws. The state was torn between Union and Confederacy, with the legislature supporting the former and the governor the latter. This led the state to declare itself officially neutral. Buckner assembled 61 companies to defend Kentucky's neutrality. The state board that controlled the militia considered it to be pro-secessionist and ordered it to store its arms. On July 20, 1861, Buckner resigned from the state militia, declaring that he could no longer perform his duties due to the board's actions. That August he was twice offered a commission as a brigadier general in the Union Army—the first from general in chief Winfield Scott, and the second from Secretary of War Simon Cameron following the personal order of President Abraham Lincoln—but he declined. After Confederate Maj. Gen. Leonidas Polk occupied Columbus, Kentucky, violating the state's neutrality, Buckner accepted a commission as a brigadier general in the Confederate States Army on September 14, 1861, and was followed by many of the men he formerly commanded in the state militia. When his Confederate commission was approved, Union officials in Louisville indicted him for treason and seized his property.