The term Bourbon Triumvirate refers to Georgia's three most powerful and prominent politicians of the post-Reconstruction era: Joseph E. Brown, Alfred H. Colquitt, and John B. Gordon. This trio practically held a lock on the state's U.S. Senate seats and governor's office from 1872 to 1890: Brown as a senator from 1880 until 1890; Colquitt as governor from 1876 through 1882, and as a senator from 1883 until 1894; and Gordon as a senator from 1872 until 1880, governor from 1886 until 1890, and senator again from 1891 until 1897. The political careers of all three men benefited from their service during the Civil War (1861-65); Brown had served as the governor of Confederate Georgia, and Colquitt and Gordon had both risen to the rank of major general in the Confederate army by the war's end
