Buckner, Simon Bolivar:

$875 · Offered by William Reese Company · No longer available

FROM THE NEW ORLEANS TIMES, SUNDAY, JUNE 4, 1871. CONFISCATION OF POLICIES BY THE NEW YORK LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY [caption title]. An unrecorded broadside printing a lengthy diatribe by former Confederate General Simon Bolivar Buckner against the New York Life Insurance Company. While the company had initially promised to honor the policies of Confederate soldiers, by 1870 they had begun using methods both open and discreet to avoid payments to policy holders "who had taken up arms against the Government." Buckner himself was not a customer, but many of his friends had fallen prey to the company's new policy on policies. He wrote public letters in support of his friend, one General R.M. Gaines, in the NEW ORLEANS TIMES, in which he denounced the company's duplicitous tactics and offered to review their documents himself in an attempt to expose their shady practices. The company ignored his letters, instead responding indirectly by paying their local agent (Dr. Joseph S. Copes) to run an article attacking Buckner personally. This broadside is primarily a response to that attack, although it also outlines the case in general. Buckner is incensed by the company's actions, and more particularly by their attempts to justify them in the name of "equity":"I stated, in my letter to Gen. Gaines, that your conduct in withholding his money and at the same time rejecting his claims, was a violation of equity. You could not controvert my position. But you flew into a passion; got Dr. Cope

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