Background
HELM, Benjamin Hardin was born on June 2, 1831 in Elizabethtown, Hardin County, Kentucky, United States, United States. Son of John Lame and Lucinda Barbour (Hardin) Helm.
HELM, Benjamin Hardin was born on June 2, 1831 in Elizabethtown, Hardin County, Kentucky, United States, United States. Son of John Lame and Lucinda Barbour (Hardin) Helm.
Private school, United States Military Academy.
He graduated ninth in a class of forty-two from the U.S. Military Academy in 1851. Helm, a Whig who became a Southern rights Democrat, married Emilie Todd, a half-sister of the wife of Abraham Lincoln, in 1856. In 1852, he resigned from the service to practice law in Elizabethtown and later in Louisville, Kentucky.
He served in the Kentucky legislature in 1855-1856 and was state’s attorney from 1856 to 1858. In 1861, Lincoln offered him the position as paymaster general in the army. He declined the post.
When the Civil War began, Helm organized the 1st Kentucky Cavalry and served as its colonel. He was promoted to brigadier general on March 14,1862, and was injured at Vicksburg in June of that year. He saw duty in the District of the Gulf and returned as a part-time division commander during the Tullahoma campaign of 1863 in Tennessee.
Helm was mortally wounded at the battle of Chickamauga, Georgia.
"Peculiar institution" of slavery was not only expedient but also ordained by God and upheld in Holy Scripture.
Stands for preserving slavery, states' rights, and political liberty for whites. Every individual state is sovereign, even to the point of secession.