The Notorious "Bull" Nelson:
                                              Murdered Civil War General
Donald A. Clark
Maj. Gen. William "Bull" Nelson was an ox of a man who rarely gave heed to verbally assaulting an errant subordinate. When a public display of that brutish behavior was coupled with an physical slap across the face it brought about his death at the hands of a fellow Union officer with the unlikely name of Jefferson C. Davis. This cold-blooded assassination  occurred at a time when the Northern public had become increasingly intolerant of arrogant  professional officers. Consequently many viewed the murder as a justifiable homicide that required no criminal prosecution.
         Bias against Nelson predominated throughout the Civil War era and subsequent generations failed to look for the reality that is often found in the middle of two extremes. For that reason this first ever biography seeks to provide a balanced view of Nelson that allows the reader to arrive at their own conclusions about a unique contributor to the Union cause and the extraordinary event that came to define his life. It is a story without parallel in the annals of American military history.


 
                                                         BIOGRAPHY

After graduation from Centre College of Kentucky, I enlisted in the army and later served as an infantry officer in Vietnam. I then owned and operated various business enterprises before retiring to devote all my energies to a lifelong interest in history. This led to the publication of the first-ever biography of Maj. Gen. William "Bull" Nelson in 2011. I also did six articles for the Encyclopedia of Northern Kentucky, an article for the Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, the Tennessee Historical Quarterly, and Gateway Magazine, a publication of the Missouri History Museum. In 2012, Shipmate Magazine (USNA) will publish and article about "Young Bull" Nelson and Commodore Matthew C. Perry.  Two other articles are currently under review by the Register of the Kentucky Historical Society. The first is a long overlooked biography of Joshua Taylor Bradford an early ovarian surgeon whose contemporaries characterized as second only to Ephraim McDowell. The second provides much needed insight into Battle of Augusta, Kentucky by employing previously ignored primary source material.




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