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Brigadier General
Missouri Senator
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Francis Marion Cockrell
(October 1, 1834 – December
13, 1915) was a Confederate military commander and American politician
from the state of Missouri. He served as a United States Senator from
Missouri for five terms. He was a prominent member of the famed
South–Cockrell–Hargis family of Southern politicians.
Cockrell was born in Warrensburg, Johnson County, Missouri to Joseph
and Nancy Cockrell, and was a grandson to Reverend Simon and Mary
Magdalene (Vardeman) Cockrell. His older brother was Jeremiah Vardaman
Cockrell, who was also a Confederate colonel and subsequently a United
States Congressman from Texas in the 1890s. Francis Cockrell attended
local schools and became a lawyer as a young man, practicing law in
Warrensburg.
At the beginning
of the American Civil War in 1861, Cockrell joined the Confederate Army
as a captain. He eventually rose to the rank of brigadier general and
was an important leader in the Vicksburg Campaign. In April 1865,
shortly before the end of the war which resulted in defeat for the
Confederates, Cockrell was captured at Fort Blakeley Alabama, but was paroled after a
few weeks. He returned to his law practice in Missouri.
In 1874, Cockrell, who became a member of the
United States Democratic Party, was elected to the U.S. Senate from
Missouri by the state legislature. He served in the Senate from 1875 to
1905, when he retired. He held several committee chairmanships,
including the chairmanships of the Claims Committee, Engrossed Bills
Committee and Appropriations Committee during his senate career.
He was appointed to the Interstate Commerce
Commission by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1905. He served on the
Commission until 1910. Cockrell then became part of a commission which
negotiated the boundaries between the state of Texas and the New Mexico
Territory, which was about to become a state. In 1912, he became a
director of ordnance at the War Department. He remained in that job
until his death in Washington, D.C. Dec. 15, 1915 with internment in
Warrensburg Cemetery, Warrensburg, Mo.
Biography researched by David Vardiman
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