Basil Wilson Duke (May 28, 1838 – September 16, 1916) was a Confederate general officer during the American Civil War.

At the end of the war, Duke served among Confederate President Jefferson Davis's bodyguards after his flight from Richmond, Virginia, through the Carolinas.

As a historian, he helped to found the Filson Club in Louisville, Kentucky, and started efforts to preserve the Shiloh battlefield.

"[5] Through his mother, Duke was of partial Scottish descent; his maternal grandfather James Currie served several years in the British Navy before settling in the United States.

Duke placed secessionist flags at prominent locations, looking to start fights with pro-Union forces.

At the Battle of Shiloh, he was swinging his saber at a U.S. soldier when he was shot in the left shoulder by a Brown Bess musket.

Duke was wounded again at Elizabethtown, Kentucky's Rolling Fork River during Morgan's Christmas Raid of 1862.

Duke was in the final Confederate war council at the Burt-Stark Mansion in Abbeville, South Carolina, on May 2, 1865.

[13][16][17] As an officer, Duke had a style of "gently ordering" soldiers under his command; this enhanced their friendly relations.

Despite the L&N Railroad having been a favorite victim of Morgan's raiders during the war, he served as their chief counsel and lobbyist.

He was elected and briefly served in the Kentucky General Assembly from 1869 to 1870, resigning as he felt a conflict of interest as a lobbyist for the L&N.

Although Duke believed it was good that the institution was abolished, he insisted that abolitionist claims of excessive abuse of enslaved people were exaggerated.

Duke was named in the plot to assassinate William Goebel, a state representative who had just been elected as governor and was posthumously inaugurated.

A total of sixteen people, including William S. Taylor, were eventually indicted in Goebel's assassination.

[20][21] In 1904, President Theodore Roosevelt appointed Duke Shiloh National Military Park commissioner after a meeting at the Filson Club.

Duke was devastated when, on October 20, 1909, Henrietta, his wife of fifty years, died of sudden heart failure.

Two years later, during a visit to his daughter, Mary Currie, in Massachusetts, Duke underwent surgery in a New York City hospital because of circulatory problems.