After William Ogden fulfilled his term as Mayor, the next person to fulfill the duty was a man belonging to the Whig Party, by the name of Buckner Morris. Prior to coming to Chicago, Morris had been born and raised in Kentucky, which is also where he met and married his first wife. In 1834, he moved to Chicago, where he established a law firm. In 1838, he was elected Mayor of Chicago. After his term was up, he served as an alderman(and had a much less colorful tenure than Michael Kenna and John Coughlin did, that's for sure). He would also go on to serve as Illinois Secretary of State, as well as spend time as a Lake County Judge.
When the time came for the Civil War, Morris was violently opposed to it, even to the point of being a suspected Copperhead(which were a faction of Democrats who were in favor of making immediate peace with the South). This desire for reconciliation with the South eventually landed Morris in some hot water. In 1864, there was a conspiracy for a Confederate jailbreak. More precisely, there was a plot to bust many Confederate POWs out of Camp Douglas, a plot that Morris was privy to and a participant in. Many of the conspirators, including Morris, were arrested before the escape could be affected. Morris ended up serving 9 months in prison, during which time most of his business affairs were foreclosed upon due to lack of maintenance. His heirs were so incensed by this action, that they refused to donate any of his personal material to the Chicago Historical Society.
And one final note. If you've ever mused that something is going to hell in a hand basket, you've got Buckner Morris to thank for it. He issued the first recorded utterance of the phrase in reference to the fact that there were POWs in Camp Douglas.
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