14 - Henry Benning's War

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The streets of Columbus erupted in wild celebration with the secession of South Carolina from the United States in December 1860.

Bonfires blazed, and a torch-lit parade snaked through avenues illuminated by new gas lamps. There were impassioned speeches and stirring band music, capped off with an explosion of fireworks.

Rural areas, especially plantations, also reveled over this first rupture of the Union. Wealthy planters along the Chattahoochee River tended to form a close-knit society, and one of their principal forms of recreation was visiting one another's homes for elaborate parties. The festivities cemented business alliances and deals and often led to romances and marriages.

The Christmas season of 1860 gave the planters something else to cheer besides the usual holiday get-togethers, caroling, and egg nog. A favorite party song, as they hailed Georgia's possible secession, was We Conquer or Die.

Quickly tagged as rebels, instigators of the formation of the Confederate States of America nonetheless organized their revolt in a democratic and orderly fashion. Elections were held in both Georgia and Alabama to choose delegates to secession conventions. Henry Benning, for whom Fort Benning is named, was among representatives selected from Muscogee County. About six feet tall, Benning cut an impressive figure and left an indelible impression on most who met him, in part because of the way he spoke. He enunciated each syllable crisply in a deep, booming baritone.

His speaking ability likely helped Benning build a successful legal practice, culminating in his serving for six years as a judge of the Georgia Supreme Court. As a Muscogee County delegate to the secession convention, he was on the committee that introduced the bill calling for Georgia to withdraw from the United States. The convention voted on January 19, 1861 to secede, sparking even giddier rounds of celebration. The tally was 208 for secession, 89 against.

The enthusiasm continued for a time, with the first two years of the Civil War finding most secessionists brimming with optimism as combat reports favorable to the South dominated. General Robert E. Lee and his Confederate army fought superior Union forces either to a standstill or achieved astonishing victories. General T.J. (Stonewall) Jackson, with an army briefly separated from Lee's, played havoc with Union efforts to capture Virginia's picturesque Shenandoah Valley.

Jackson, seemingly trapped between two converging Union armies, attacked one force, then wheeled around and attacked the other, all within two days, sending both Union armies into disorganized retreat. Jackson's soldiers moved so fast that they seemed to be in two places at once, fueling rumors that kept official Washington, D.C. on edge, anticipating an attack. When Jackson rejoined Lee, the Army of Northern Virginia seemed virtually invincible.

Henry Benning of Columbus, a colonel in the Confederate army, participated in the early fighting in Virginia where he joined Robert E. Lee's forces. Despite his distinguished civilian career, Benning's beginning days with the army were stormy. Early in his military career, he, along with many other defenders of "states' rights," vehemently questioned the legality of the Confederate government's conscription act. Benning even refused to obey orders based on the law sanctioning the draft, and for a while was on the verge of being court marshaled. An influential friend and fellow Georgian, Colonel T.R.R. Cobb, intervened to dissuade Confederate officials from placing Benning on trial.

Even more precarious to Benning's reputation was an early misstep in battle. In September 1862, Lee boldly divided his army in half and attacked the Union army from the front and rear at the second battle of Manassas in Virginia (also referred to as the second Battle of Bull Run). The Union general, John Pope, was hopelessly outmaneuvered and eventually saw his army shattered, but not before a perilous interval when the outcome was in doubt.

During the bitter fighting, Benning lost control of an entire brigade of about 2,000 men under the onslaught of a Union charge. Bewildered, Benning climbed on an artillery horse and rode to General James Longstreet, Lee's other top subordinate, to seek help.

Benning shouted to Longstreet above the din of fighting, "General, I am ruined! My brigade was suddenly attacked and every man was killed. No one is to be found. Please, give orders where I can do some fighting." Longstreet coolly assessed that Benning was befuddled and responded with icy sarcasm: "Nonsense, Colonel. You are not so badly hurt. Look about you. I know you will find at least one man [to command]."

Then Longstreet flung one further jab at the stunned colonel. When Benning managed to find that "one man," Longstreet commanded, he should "report your brigade to me, and you two shall have a place in the fighting line."

The ridicule snapped Benning out of his fog. Spurring his horse back into the battle, he soon located his missing brigade and rallied the men to fight throughout the rest of the battle. There was apparently no further question about either his valor or judgment under fire.

It seems that Benning was not above flattering his immediate superior, Brigadier General Robert Toombs. A fellow Georgian and former United States senator, Toombs was a controversial figure. Overweight and pale, he was 51 when Georgia broke away from the Union. Toombs, renown for his oratory, was considered intelligent, but critics complained he was often illogical. Howell Cobb, who later led the defense of Columbus from Union forces, said of Toombs, he "disagrees with himself between meals."

Toombs was also known for his ambition and reportedly was sorely disappointed he wasn't chosen president of the Confederacy instead of Jefferson Davis. He served, sullenly, a short while in Davis' cabinet before resigning to join the Confederate army where he was critical of just about everyone.

In 1862, not long before the second battle of Manassas, Toombs was ordered to advance a brigade of soldiers in Virginia to a road near the Rapidan River. When the rider arrived with the command, Toombs was away from his brigade, visiting an old political acquaintance who lived nearby. One of Toombs' subordinates accepted the orders and proceeded to send the soldiers toward the road. But as the troops began moving, Toombs arrived and commanded them to halt. Later, Toombs explained his disobedience by claiming that he thought his men had not had enough time to cook their rations. He also asserted that other Confederate troops blocked their way, a claim which turned out to be false.

His refusal to carry out orders resulted in near disaster for the Confederacy. Federal cavalry slipped up the road Toombs and his troops were supposed to be guarding and surprised J.E.B. (Jeb) Stuart and his officers camping beside a nearby farmhouse.

The Union soldiers, guns blazing, came riding up on a startled Stuart, who ran to his horse and vaulted into the saddle, then sped into a gallop across an open field. With dirt flying from its hooves, the horse leaped the garden fence and disappeared into nearby woods. The fiery cavalry commander escaped just ahead of the Union bullets.

When his officers finally reassembled, shaken but unhurt, they noted that Stuart, in his haste, had lost both his cloak and prized plumed hat. Under a blistering summer sun, Stuart improvised by wrapping a handkerchief over his reddish hair. Throughout the rest of the day, he was subjected to catcalls and kidding remarks. Repeatedly, soldiers called out, "Hey, Jeb, where's your hat?"

Robert Toombs' failure to follow orders, however, was no laughing matter. His action spawned a near fiasco that almost caused the death or capture of Stuart, who had already assumed mythical renown for Southerners. Toombs was arrested and removed from active duty.

However, because of the pressing needs of war, and, perhaps, because of his many well-placed political connections, Toombs was soon released to return to his troops. They received him with much cheering during the second battle of Manassas. It was then that Toombs supposedly uttered the famous words, "Go to it boys: I am with you. Jeff Davis can make a general, but it takes God almighty to make a soldier."

In fact, Toombs probably never made such a statement, according to historian Douglas Southall Freeman. The words were likely fabricated by an inventive subordinate, Colonel Henry Benning, who apparently inserted them into an official report he penned about the battle.

Benning, who came to be called "Old Rock" by his men because of his courage under fire, began to gain renown in his own right just when the South's fortunes started spiraling downward. After his victory at the second baffle of Manassas, Lee decided to seize the opportunity by invading the North. This first major foray into Union territory would, Lee hoped, force Abraham Lincoln's government to sue for peace.

Lee seemed to have every reason to be confident. The Confederate forces in Virginia had repeatedly outmaneuvered and out fought the enemy. And there was another reason for Lee's assurance. The commander of the Union army, General George B. McClellan, while quite capable in defense, had repeatedly vacillated and shrunk away on the slightest pretext from attacking Lee's army. He regularly overestimated the number of Lee's troops and used the inflated figures to wheedle more supplies and soldiers from Lincoln.

Then, near the small village of Sharpsburg, Maryland, McClellan suddenly turned uncharacteristically aggressive. What Lee didn't realize was that a Union soldier had discovered the Confederates' complete battle plans wrapped around several cigars. Lee suddenly found his army penned between the Potomac River and Antietam Creek, with no room to execute any of the brilliant maneuvers that had so perplexed Union generals. He could have retreated, but Lee chose to fight, despite having only 40,000 men against a Union force of 70,000.

McClellan directed his first heavy assault directly at the left side of Lee's army, commanded by Stonewall Jackson. The Union soldiers attacked at dawn, and Jackson's forces buckled under the fierce onslaught. There were heavy casualties. Never had so many high-ranking Confederate officers been put out of action so quickly. As Union soldiers charged into gaps forced in the Confederates' defenses, they encountered a new batch of Southerners moving up quickly from the rear. Hardened Texas veterans led by John B. Hood rushed into the breaches, helping to temporarily halt the Union advance. Hood's veterans, survivors of many battles, were appalled at the bloodshed and carnage they saw all around them.

Doggedly the Texans moved forward, loading their rifles and firing, loading and firing, as they stepped over rows of dead comrades killed in the first Union charge. Hood later recalled, "Never before was I so continuously troubled with fear that my horse would further injure some wounded fellow soldier, lying helpless on the ground."

Stonewall Jackson saw his lines collapsing and dispatched Sandie Pendleton into the fray for a more thorough assessment. Pendleton later described his harrowing ride: "Such a storm of balls I never conceived it possible for men to live through. Shot and shell shrieking and crashing, canister and bullets whistling and hissing most fiend-like through the air until you could almost see them. In that mile's ride I never expected to come back alive."

Lee, struggling to save his men from annihilation, shifted units from the right wing of his army to the left side. The tactic worked. The left held, and the attack there subsided. A similar fierce attack hit Lee's center, but again the Confederates held, if only barely. The greatest danger, however, lay on the right. Numerically weak, even before the battle began, the right side was gradually depleted throughout the morning as troops were diverted to the army's left and center.

Soon there were only about 2,000 soldiers left to defend approximately a mile of territory against untold numbers of Union troops. Defending a bridge across Antietam Creek was crucial for the Confederates to hold their position. The man in charge of the small band of soldiers responsible for the bridge was Colonel Henry Benning.

All morning, from sunrise to noon, Benning's men held the bridge, facing attack after attack and repulsing every one. Finally, when they were running out of ammunition, Benning ordered withdrawal. The troops moved to the rear to replenish their cartridge boxes before rejoining the fight.

The Confederate army held throughout that terrible day, enduring 12 hours or more of fighting. Remembered one soldier, "The sun seemed almost to go backwards, and it appeared as if night would never come."

The following day, McClellan unexpectedly did not renew the attack as the two armies anxiously faced each other. The day after that Lee withdrew back into the South. The cost of his Northern invasion was horrific. Some 13,600 Confederate soldiers died. The battles fought, including the one at Sharpsburg, cost the Union forces even more - about 27,700 casualties. But despite Union losses double those of the South, the Confederacy was hurt most. Lincoln's government could keep funneling more men and supplies to its armies, while the Confederate government of Jefferson Davis could not. There would be other victories for the South, but the Confederacy's decline was inevitable. Even in victories, such as the battle at Chancellorsville, Virginia, the toll was high. Stonewall Jackson was killed, shot accidentally by his own men.

In July 1863, there were disastrous Confederate defeats at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania and Vicksburg, Mississippi. Then Lee and his generals pulled another bold move, and Henry Benning, now a brigadier general, was again a key figure.

The battle plan called for a large portion of the Confederate army in northern Virginia to break off from Lee and travel by train hundreds of miles South. These soldiers, led by General James Longstreet, would then mass for attack with forces already in northwestern Georgia to drive away the Union army from around Chattanooga, Tennessee. The strategy depended on surprise and the rapid transport of thousands of troops by rail. The Civil War was the first major conflict in which the railroad figured so prominently in tactics.

Longstreet's forces began leaving northern Virginia on September 9, 1863 and had traveled only as far as Richmond when Longstreet saw that the mission was endangered. He had hoped to travel directly from Richmond to Chattanooga at a lightning pace. However, in Richmond he learned that the Union army had apparently seized portions of the railway and blocked his planned route. The alternative was a slower journey through Atlanta. There the forces would have to transfer to other tracks heading north and west of the city into the hill and valley region near Chattanooga. Longstreet also learned of a potentially far more serious problem while he organized his invasion force in Richmond. A New York City newspaper, The Herald, printed exact details of his operation, including specifics about which troops he had with him. The critical element of surprise was rapidly disappearing.

Some of the first soldiers to depart for Atlanta were those under the command of Henry Benning. An odd assortment of railroad trains was assembled to accommodate the huge troop movement. Soldiers packed inside and on top of all sorts of rolling stock-box cars, passenger cars, baggage carriers, scooped out coal bins, and flat-topped platform cars. The pace was slow and precarious over rickety tracks, neglected because of the war. As one soldier wrote, "...all and every sort [of railroad car] was wobbling on the jumping strap iron."

Still, a festive air developed on board, despite the devastating pounding the men had taken at Gettysburg, just a few weeks earlier. All along the route, the soldiers yelled and whistled and waved at cheering bystanders lining the tracks. Women waved handkerchiefs and Confederate flags. Old men and young boys threw their hats in the air as the trains rolled through the Carolinas and Georgia.

Soldiers jammed inside the box cars were missing out on the celebration that their comrades riding on top of the cars were enjoying. The weather was also hot, so the troops began tearing off the side paneling. With knives and axes they pried away the outer shells of the box cars, leaving only the skeletal frames and roofs. Then the men inside could also enjoy the pleasant scenery and bask in the enthusiasm of the adoring crowds.

Benning's troops were the first to arrive in Atlanta where they faced another delay, symptomatic of supply problems beginning to pinch the South's ability to wage war. Arriving on September 12, Benning had to stop to get shoes for his men. He was stalled for two days.

Slowly, the soldiers from Virginia began pouring into northwest Georgia. Many climbed off the trains and walked directly into the fierce battle erupting along Chickamauga Creek. The Union army commanded by General William Rosecrans, with about 58,000 men, faced Braxton Bragg's Confederate force of about 43,000. With reinforcements from Virginia and elsewhere in the South, the Confederate army swelled to about 66,000 soldiers. Despite all the problems the troops had reaching Georgia, the numerical advantage had swung to the South.

Fighting began shortly after dawn on the morning of September 19, spreading out along a front about four miles long. The battle raged all day, often in hand-to-hand combat. By sunset, the Confederate forces had pushed the Union army back about a mile. Unlike many previous fights, this one was not in open fields, but in dense forest and thick underbrush, which impeded movement and visibility. Officers on both sides had difficulty keeping up with their units, much less directing them.

The next day began with a Confederate charge at the Union's left side. So intense was the fighting that the Union generals began shifting units from their right side. This was the pivotal moment in the battle. As some of the Union troops left the right side, the Confederate forces from Virginia charged through a resulting gap. After fierce fighting, a major portion of the Union army gave way and began fleeing.

Benning was one of the Confederate heroes, according to Frank Hanner, director of the Infantry Museum at Fort Benning. In the midst of the battle, his horse was shot from under him. Benning, undeterred by the bullets flying all around him, grabbed another mount and charged back at Union forces. Then the second horse was hit and collapsed. This time Benning spied a replacement harnessed to a two-wheeled wagon pulling a cannon. Benning cut this "horse away from the artillery cason, rode it bareback, and continued to lead his troops," says Hanner.

The cost of the Battle of Chickamauga was devastating. There were some 18,000 Confederate casualties and 16,000 Union losses. In one day, the 22nd Alabama Regiment of the Confederate army lost more than half its soldiers. Seventeen of 23 officers in the 20th Georgia fell in the fight.

One Union officer from Kansas remembered his troops were "sometimes driving the enemy and in turn being driven by them, until we had fought over the [same] ground over and over again, and almost half of our number lay dead and wounded." A Confederate general sadly recalled that Chickamauga was a sluggish river of death." The Union army came within an eyelash of being destroyed.

When all appeared to be lost, however, General George H. Thomas, a Virginian who chose to fight for the United States, rallied remnants of the Union force on Snodgrass Hill.

With grim determination and unflinching courage, Thomas' soldiers held out against overwhelming odds, facing down one charge after another, halting the Confederate advance. Thomas did not withdraw until darkness fell. He had earned his new nickname, the "Rock of Chickamauga."

The battle brought the realities of war home to Columbus, Georgia as nothing had before. Hundreds of injured soldiers were transported to the local hospitals. One of the physicians who treated the wounded was Dr. Francis Orray Ticknor.

Ticknor's experiences illustrate how the conflict impacted people far removed from the gunfire. By 1850, he had settled on an estate he fondly called Torch Hill, now part of Fort Benning. Archeologists hope to preserve the remnants of his former residence for further study.

Ticknor enjoyed his view of the Chattahoochee River, which, he wrote, was "low and rambling," a sight he could see from a spot on "a long cool porch, spacious but not elegant." Rose bushes and fruit trees surrounded his residence. Besides practicing medicine, Ticknor devoted time to studying gardening and agriculture and writing poetry. He also wrote articles about gardening for a publication called The Southern Cultivator.

During the Civil War, the physician spent more and more time in Columbus caring for the swelling tide of wounded brought into the city from the battlefields, which steadily moved closer.

One of his patients, a boy of 16 named Newton Giffen, was wounded seriously at Chickamauga. Ticknor was touched by the youth's courage and to speed his recuperation moved him into his home on Torch Hill. Giffen returned to his unit as soon as he was able. He was killed not long after in the battle to save Atlanta.

Ticknor penned a soulful poem, Little Giffen of Tennessee, about the young boy who fought in 18 battles. The poem became one of the most popular of the era.

Chapter 15: Hard Times

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