Benjamin McCulloch

McCulloch was killed during the Battle of Pea Ridge.

Early life

He was born November 11, 1811, in

The McCulloch family, like many on the frontier, moved often by choice or necessity. In the twenty years following their move from North Carolina and Ben's birth, they lived in eastern Tennessee, Alabama, and then western Tennessee. They finally settled at Dyersburg, where one of their closest neighbors was Davy Crockett, a great influence on young Ben.

In 1834, McCulloch headed west. He reached St. Louis just too late to join the fur trappers headed for the mountains for the season. He then tried to join a freight company heading for

McCulloch was then attached to Captain William H. Smith's cavalry company,[1] but returned to Tennessee to recruit a company of volunteers to return to Texas. He returned a few months later with a company of thirty volunteers which he had placed under the command of his friend, Robert Crockett, David Crockett's son.

By 1838, he had taken up the profession of surveying land for the

On the strength of his new fame, he was elected to the Republic of Texas House of Representatives in 1839. The campaign was contentious, and McCulloch fought a rifle duel the next year against Colonel Reuben Ross, resulting in a wound that left his right arm crippled for life. Ben considered the matter closed, but it flared up again the following year, this time involving Henry McCulloch, who killed Ross with a pistol.

In 1842, McCulloch went back to surveying and intermittent military service. At the

Samuel Reid, a volunteer from Louisiana, described McCulloch and his ranger company as "men in groups with long beards and mustaches, dressed in every variety of garment, with one exception, the slouched hat, the unmistakable uniform of a Texas ranger, and a brace of pistols around their waists, [who] were occupied drying their blankets, cleaning and fixing their guns, and some employed cooking at different fires, while others were grooming their horses. A rougher-looking set we never saw. They were without tents, and a miserable shed afforded them the only shelter. Captain McCulloch introduced us to his officers and many of his men, who appeared orderly and well-mannered people. But from their rough exterior, it was hard to tell who or what they were. Notwithstanding their ferocious and outlaw look, there were among them doctors and lawyers and many a college graduate."

War with Mexico

In 1845, McCulloch was elected from

McCulloch led his scouting company as mounted infantry at the Battle of Monterrey and his expert reconnaissance work preceding the Battle of Buena Vista probably saved Taylor's army from disaster.(how?) After Buena Vista he was promoted to the rank of major of U.S. Volunteers.

At the war's end, McCulloch scouted for Maj. Gen.

Texas seceded from the union on February 1, 1861, and on February 14, McCulloch received a colonel's commission from Confederate President Jefferson Davis, with the comment that "to Texans, a moment's notice is sufficient when their State demands their service." He was authorized to demand the surrender of all federal military posts in the state. Subsequently, on the morning of February 16, U.S. Army General Twiggs, finding that more than 1,000 Texas troops had surrounded his installations in an orderly manner during the night, turned over to McCulloch all federal property in San Antonio. In return Twigg's troops were to be allowed to leave the state unharmed. On May 11, President Davis appointed McCulloch a brigadier-general.

McCulloch was placed in command of the

On August 10, 1861, McCulloch's troops, though relatively poorly armed, handily defeated the army of Brigadier-General Nathaniel Lyon at the Battle of Wilson's Creek, Missouri. "We have an average of only twenty-five rounds of ammunition to the man," McCulloch reported, "and no more to be had short of Fort Smith and Baton Rouge." He did not have a high opinion of Price's Missourians, noting that they were undisciplined, commanded mostly by incompetent and inexperienced politicians, and possessed only a poor mix of weapons and equipment. For some 5,000 of them, their enlistment time was up and they were anxious to go home. Cooperation between the Arkansas and Missouri contingents was feeble, with "little cordiality of feeling between the two armies." His lack of confidence in the Missourians led McCulloch to hesitate when a bold attack might well have destroyed Lyon's smaller force and given Missouri to the Confederacy.

The continuing feud between McCulloch and Price led to the appointment of Major-General

McCulloch commanded the Confederate right wing at the

McCulloch's next in command, Brig. Gen.

McCulloch's body was buried on the field at Pea Ridge, but was subsequently removed with other victims of the battle to a cemetery in Little Rock. He was later reinterred in the Texas State Cemetery in Austin; the gravesite is in the cemetery's Republic Hill section, Row N, No. 4. His papers are housed at the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History (previously the Barker Texas History Center) at the University of Texas at Austin. McCulloch County, Texas, formed in 1856 and located in the present geographical center of the state, was named for him.^[2] He is also one of thirty men inducted into the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame at Fort Fisher, Waco.

Shortly after Pea Ridge, Albert Pike, now a brigadier-general, constructed Fort McCulloch as the principal Confederate fortification in the southern section of the Indian Territory, naming it after his late commander. It was built on a bluff on the south bank of the Blue River and is now located in Bryan County, Oklahoma. It was placed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places in 1971.

Camp Ben McCulloch (see External Links below) was established near Austin in 1896 as a reunion site for the United Confederate Veterans and is the last such site still owned by the UCV's descendant group, the Sons and Daughters of the Confederacy. It is now a public recreation facility of some 200 acres (0.8 km²), operated by the County of Hays, and is a popular location for Central Texas family reunions, picnics, and musical festivals.

Several other members of McCulloch's family followed him to Texas, including his mother. She died in Ellis County in 1866 at the home of another of her sons, John C. McCulloch, who had been a captain in the Confederate army. Her remains were exhumed in 1938 by the State of Texas and reinterred beside those of Gen. Ben McCulloch, and a joint monument was erected. Other siblings lived in Gonzales and in Walker County.

In popular culture

• Steve Earle wrote a song about McCulloch on his album Train a Comin'. "Ben McCulloch" is sung from the perspective of a foot soldier in McCulloch's infantry, marched from Texas to fight in Missouri and growing to hate both McCulloch and the Civil War. Its chorus and refrain is "Goddamn you, Ben McCulloch / I hate you more than any other man alive // And when you die, you'll be a foot soldier just like me / in the Devil's infantry."
• He is the main antagonist in
  Alamo" (2011). [1]
• He is also a character in Janice Woods Windle's True Women which was later made into a TV movie.
• There is a mention of McCulloch's Rangers in Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian on page 95, where the men from the Glanton gang are said to be from McCulloch's Rangers: "(...) Tate from Kentucky who had fought with McCulloch's Rangers as had Tobin and others among them (...)".

See also

• List of American Civil War Generals (Confederate)

Notes

References

• Eicher, John H., and
  ISBN 978-0-8047-3641-1
  .
• ISBN 978-0-8071-0823-9
  .
• OCLC 29443870
  .

• Cutrer, Thomas W. Ben McCulloch and the Frontier Military Tradition. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993.
• Gunn, Jack W. "Ben McCulloch: A Big Captain." Southwestern Historical Quarterly 58 (July 1954).
• McCulloch, Benjamin, "Memoirs", Missouri Historical Review (1932): 354ff.
• Reid, Samuel C. The Scouting Expeditions of McCulloch's Texas Rangers. Philadelphia, 1847; Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press, 1970 (reprint).
• Rose, Victor Marion. The Life and Services of Gen. Ben McCulloch. Philadelphia, 1888; Austin: Steck, 1958 (reprint).
• Undated clipping, probably from Dallas Herald, provided by Thomas R. Lindley; Henry McCulloch to Henry McArdle, January 14, 1891, Henry McArdle San Jacinto Notebook, TXSL.
• Earle, Steve. "Ben McCulloch". A song written from the perspective of a foot soldier in the Texas Infantry.

External links

• McCulloch Family Tree - Ben McCulloch Archived 2022-03-31 at the Wayback Machine
• Account of Ben McCulloch's Peach Creek fight in 1839 from Indian Wars and Pioneers of Texas by John Henry Brown, published 1880, hosted by The Portal to Texas History
• Benjamin McCulloch from the Handbook of Texas Online
• A Guide to the Ben and Henry Eustace McCulloch Family Papers, 1798-1961, Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin.
• murfreesboropost.com Murfreesboro Post site biography of McCulloch.
• nps.gov National Park Service site biography of McCulloch.
• [2] Camp Ben McCulloch, Hays County, Driftwood TX
• [3] Camp Ben McCulloch (map), Hays County TX, Google Maps