Buckner Stith Morris (August 19, 1800 – December 16, 1879) served as mayor of Chicago, Illinois (1838–1839) for the Whig Party.

[1] He unsuccessfully ran for the office of Illinois Secretary of State in 1852 under the Whig ticket and served as a Lake County Circuit Court Judge from 1853 to 1855.

Incensed over the treatment of their ancestor, his heirs refused to donate his papers to the Chicago Historical Society when they were requested.

The first use recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary of the phrase to hell in a hand basket, is in The Great North-Western Conspiracy in All Its Startling Details, by I. Windslow Ayer, in alleging that, at a meeting of the Order of the Sons of Liberty, Judge Morris of the Circuit Court of Illinois said: "Thousands of our best men were prisoners in Camp Douglas, and if once at liberty would 'send abolitionists to hell in a hand basket.

'"[3][4] Note that he was portrayed as Judge Morris in that anecdote dated 1865, although his time on the bench was of the previous decade.