The following article is from the Confederate Veteran, Vol. XII, No. 2 Nashville, Tenn., February, 1904.

GEN. BEN McCULLOCH

B. M. Hord

Ben McCulloch was born in Rutherford County, Tenn, November 11, 1811, of Scotch-Irish ancestry. His father, Maj. Alexander McCulloch, was a veteran of the wars of 1812-15, participating in the battle of New Orleans, and was aid-decamp to Gen. Coffee in the campaign against the Creek Indians. He moved to West Tennessee when that portion of the State was very sparsely settled and known as the Western District of Tennessee. There were no school facilities, but fortunately Maj. McCulloch owned an extensive library for that day, of which young Ben was a diligent and retentive reader, but the wild country, the abundance of game, and a close and intimate association with the sons of Davy Crockett, and with the famous Tennesseean himself, stimulated a natural love in young McCulloch for woodcraft, hunting, and shooting, qualities in which he excelled and that were valuable to him in after years in his border warfare with the Indians and Mexicans on the Texas frontier and battlefields of Mexico. When Texas was making a fight for her independence of Mexico, the adventurous spirit of young McCulloch, encouraged by his older friend, Col. Davy Crockett, prompted him to cast his fortunes with this little band of patriots. A severe illness prevented his meeting with Crockett in Texas, or doubtless he would have been, with his friend, a member of the heroic garrison massacred in the Alamo. At the battle. of San Jacinto Gen. Houston gave him command of a piece of artillery. It was McCulloch’s first experience with a gun of this kind (he afterwards became an expert in the use of all kinds of firearms, and as such was sent to Europe by the United States to examine and report upon all the most improved weapons of war); but he fought his little gun at San Jacinto, advancing “hand to front” after every discharge, until within less than a hundred and fifty yards of the Mexican lines, when Houston, at the head of his little army, rushed by him on a charge that routed the Mexicans. “For conspicuous gallantry,” Gen. Houston promoted the quiet and modest young Tennesseean on the field to first lieutenant of artillery. The battle of San Jacinto established the Republic of Texas, and McCulloch was elected a member of her Congress. After peace was proclaimed, he settled at Gonzales to follow his profession of surveyor, but his time was about evenly divided between surveying and, as captain of a company of Rangers, fighting Indians and Mexicans, who were constantly depredating on the settlers. When hostilities opened between the United States and Mexico he promptly joined, with his company of Rangers, the forces under Gen. Taylor, with whom he served until the close of the war, winning a national reputation as a gallant soldier, and from that sturdy old warrior, Gen. Taylor, the rank of major with the encomium of ôa bold, daring, successful scout and desperate fighter,ö and in his official report of the battle of Buena Vista he says: “The success of the day was largely due to the information furnished by Maj. McCulloch.”

He was a member of the first Legislature that assembled in the State of Texas; was appointed by President Pierce Marshal of the Eastern District, a position he held for nearly eight, years; but when a bill passed Congress in 1855, creating a new cavalry regiment, so brilliant and successful had been his services in the war with Mexico that, notwithstanding he was a civilian, a strong pressure from all parts of the country was brought to bear upon the administration for his appointment as colonel of the regiment. The friends of Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston were also pressing his claims for the same position. In the life of this great soldier, written by his son, Col. William Preston Johnston, he says: “That gallant and popular partisan leader, Maj. Ben. McCulloch, was vehemently pressed for the same appointment (colonel of the Second Cavalry), but it was Gen. Johnston’s good fortune to have in the Secretary of War (Jefferson Davis) a friend who had known him from boyhood and who esteemed him as high as any man living. McCulloch, not having received the rank of colonel, refused the rank of major tendered him. He had been a gallant and enterprising leader of partisan troops, and deserved well of his country. His nomination for major was a high compliment, as he was the only field officer selected from civil life.”

It was indeed a high compliment to McCullochÆs ability as a soldier, for this regiment was officered by Albert Sidney Johnston as colonel and R. E. Lee as lieutenant colonel. W. J. Hardee (appointed to the majorship declined by McCulloch) and George H. Thomas were the majors, and from its subordinate officers came more distinguished generals on both sides in the War between the States than any other regiment in the United States army. Mr. Davis, as Secretary of War, and later as President of the Confederacy, was averse to appointing any one to high military rank in the field who was not a West Pointer or who had not demonstrated his ability to command; but he had, as colonel of a Mississippi regiment, served in the same column with McCulloch under Gen. Taylor in the Mexican war, and was familiar with the services he had rendered. On the bloody and hard-fought field of Buena Vista, after victory had been won, he unwound his own sash from his person and tied it on McCulloch in appreciation of the gallant services he had rendered that day. And in evidence of his appreciation of McCulloch’s ability, the first commission as brigadier general issued to a civilian in the Confederate States army, and among the first issued to any one, was to Gen. Ben McCulloch, of ærexas. In fact, at the time this commission was issued there were but four officers in the Confederate army, in the field, who ranked him---Gens. A. S. Johnston, Joe Johnston, Beauregard, and Bragg. The commissions of Gens. R. E. Lee and Ben McCulloch as brigadiers bear the same date, May 14, 1861.

Of these distinguished generals, only A. S. Johnston and Ben McCulloch were killed in battle. Both fell early in the war—McCulloch at Elkhorn or Pea Ridge, March 7, 1862; Johnston a month later almost to a day, at Shiloh, April 6, 1862, and both under strikingly like circumstances: both at the flood tide of victory, and the troops of both defeated after they fell; but McCulloch, before he fell, had fought and won, at Wilson’s Creek, the most complete and decisive victory over the Federal generals Lyon and Siegel that up to that time had been fought west of the Mississippi.

McCulloch. was as magnanimous as he was brave. After declining the rank of major in the Second Cavalry, President Pierce appointed him, with Gov. Powell, of Kentucky, Peace Commissioner to Utah to settle the troubles then existing betweenÆ the Mormons and the United States. The Second Cavalry, under Col. A. S. Johnston, was sent to support the demands of the Commissioners. After returning from his successful mission a friend of Col. Johnston’s, writing him from Washington, says: “Ben McCulloch told me yesterday that he was rejoiced that you had been appointed, instead of himself, colonel of the regiment, as, from close observation in Utah, he believed you were the best man that could have been sent there.” (“Life of A. S. Johnston.”)

He was wonderfully magnetic. The assembled convention that passed the ordinance of secession in his State commissioned him to collect as soon as possible a force sufficient to capture the United States garrison at San Antonio. Such was his popularity that within less than three days, at his call, eight hundred men had assembled, and the garrison, under Gen. Twiggs, with all of its ordnance and supplies, surrendered without firing a gun. He shrank almost to timidity from notoriety, never wore a uniform or insignia of rank of any kind, except a star on his hat, hut was scrupulously neat in his dress, and when killed had on a suit of black velvet.

Texas, as yet, has done herself but little credit in honoring the memory of one whose name adds luster to the brightest pages of her glorious history; one who with strong arm and matchless courage helped to hold aloft the wavering lone star flag of an unborn Republic: one who stood in the shock of battle from Matamoras to Buena Vista that she might join the sisterhood of States; one who, at her behest, led her gallant sons to victory beneath the battle flag of the Confederacy, and, on the bloody field of Elkhorn, in front of his victorious legions, yielded up the life that he had gallantly risked a hundred times for the honor and glory of Texas. No more deserving or heroic dust rests beneath her historic sod than that of Ben McCulloch, yet no monument marks his resting place save a block of Texas granite, placed there by his nephew, Capt. Ben E. McCulloch, bearing the words: “Brigadier General Ben McCulloch, killed at Elkhorn, Ark., March 7, 1862, aged fifty years. Patriot, Soldier, Gentleman. He gave his life for Texas.”