Benjamin McCulloch was a Civil War Confederate Brigadier General.
Background
Benjamin McCulloch was born on November 11, 1811 in Rutherford County, Tennessee. He was an elder son in a family of six sons and six daughters. His parents were Maj. Alexander McCulloch, an aide-de-camp to Gen. James Coffee in the Creek War and War of 1812, and Frances LeNoir of Virginia. In 1820 the family moved to Alabama, and in 1830, when Ben was nineteen, they moved to Dyersburg, a village in western Tennessee some twenty miles from the Mississippi. Here a cabin was built and a clearing made in the forest. Two years later, after a visit to Missouri, Ben joined his younger brother Henry in the business of cutting cypress logs and floating their rafts in the spring to a market at Natchez or New Orleans. The McCulloch family lived only thirty miles from that of the celebrated David Crockett and, after the fashion of the woods, they regarded one another as neighbors. So when "Davy" Crockett went to Texas to meet a glorious death at the Alamo, he was soon followed by his young friend, Ben McCulloch, and shortly after by Henry and other members of the family.
Career
Ben McCulloch went in time to see service at the battle of San Jacinto, where he was in charge of one of the two little cannons called the "Twin Sisters, " which were the only pieces of artillery in Houston's army. After the battle, McCulloch returned to Tennessee to study surveying under his father but was back in Texas before the opening of the Texas land office in February 1838. The young surveyor established himself at the frontier town of Gonzales. Unmarried and unencumbered with a family, he relieved the tedium of his professional duties by exploits against the Indians. His resourceful activity during the great Comanche raid of August 1840 especially added to his growing reputation.
At the outbreak of the Mexican War, he organized a company of mounted men which rendered effective and daring service to Taylor's army in the campaigns of Monterey and Buena Vista. His exploits caught the attention of the newspaper correspondents, and the reports of George Wilkins Kendall in the New Orleans Picayune had soon made the fame of McCulloch's rangers familiar throughout the South. McCulloch emerged from the war a major. He returned to surveying and devoted his spare time to reading of the campaigns of the great captains of history. In 1849 he joined in the gold rush to California, where he became for a time sheriff of Sacramento. He does not appear to have made his fortune and in 1852 he was again in Texas. In March 1853 he was appointed by President Pierce marshal for the coast district of Texas, a position which he continued to hold by reappointment of President Buchanan until his resignation in the spring of 1859. In 1858 he was sent as one of two commissioners to conciliate the Mormons in Utah, a task which he seems to have performed with reasonable success. In February 1861, with the rank of colonel, he was in command of the Texas troops which received the surrender of General Twiggs at San Antonio. He was subsequently commissioned brigadier-general in the Confederate army and was assigned to the command of the troops in Arkansas. Later, under General Price in Missouri, he had the chief command of the Confederates at the battle of Wilson's Creek (Aug. 10, 1861) and won an important victory. In the spring of 1862, under the command of General Van Dorn, he led his brigade against Union troops at Elkhorn Tavern, and at the opening of that engagement, while reconnoitering the Federal lines, rode into a party of sharp-shooters and was fatally wounded in the breast.
Achievements
Works
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Personality
Of medium height and slender, with quiet manners, McCulloch was not the type which one associates with heroic deeds on the frontier. On horseback and leading a band of Texas rangers, however, he was the idol of his men and one of the most popular figures in Texas.