Henry L. Benning
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Henry Lewis Benning (April 2, 1814 – July 10, 1875) was a lawyer, legislator, judge on the Georgia Supreme Court, and a Confederate general in the American Civil War, for whom the U.S. Army's Fort Benning is named.
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[edit] Early life and politics
Benning was born on a plantation in Columbia County, Georgia, the son of Pleasant Moon and Matilda Meriwether White Benning, the third of eleven children. He attended Franklin College (now the University of Georgia), graduating in 1834. He moved to Columbus, Georgia, which would be his home for the rest of his life. He was admitted to the bar at age 21.
On September 12, 1839, Benning married Mary Howard Jones of Columbus. The couple had ten children; five daughters would survive Benning and one of his sons was mortally wounded during the Civil War.
Benning was active in Southern politics and an ardent secessionist, bitterly opposing abolition or emancipation of slaves. In 1851 he was nominated for the U.S. Congress as a Southern rights Democrat, but was not elected. In 1853 he was elected an associate justice of the Georgia Supreme Court, where he was noted for an opinion that held that a state supreme court is not bound by the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States on constitutional questions, but that the two courts must be held to be "coordinate and co-equal".
Following the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860, Benning took an active part in the state convention that voted to secede from the Union, representing Muscogee County. In March 1861, the Southern states that had seceded appointed special commissioners to travel to those other slaveholding Southern states that had yet to secede. Benning served as the Commissioner from Georgia to the Virginia Secession Convention, trying to persuade Virginia politicians to vote to join Georgia in seceding from the Union.
[edit] Civil War
Although he was considered for a cabinet position in the government of the newly established Confederate States of America, he chose to join the army instead and became the Colonel of the 17th Georgia Infantry, a regiment he raised himself in Columbus on August 29, 1861. The regiment became part of Toombs' Brigade in the Right Wing of the Army of Northern Virginia, under General Robert E. Lee.
As a newly minted army officer, Benning immediately ran into political difficulty. He questioned the legality of the Confederate government's Conscription Act and spoke against it openly as a violation of states rights. Refusing to obey certain orders, he came close to being court-martialed, but influence from his friend, Colonel T.R.R. Cobb, defused the situation. The first significant action he saw was at the Second Battle of Bull Run in July 1862 and, not surprisingly for an officer with no military experience, he started out poorly. During a Union charge against his position, Benning lost control of his brigade and ran off to the army wing commander, Lt. Gen. James Longstreet, for assistance. Longstreet humiliated Benning, but instilled enough determination in him to return to find his brigade and prevail in the battle. At the Battle of Antietam, Benning's brigade was a crucial part in the defense of the Confederate left flank, guarding a bridge across Antietam Creek all day against repeated Union assaults. His courage in battle was no longer questioned by his superiors and he became known as the "Old Rock" to his men. He was promoted to brigadier general on January 17, 1863.
For most of the rest of the war, Benning continued as a brigade commander ("Benning's Brigade") in the division of the aggressive John Bell Hood of Texas. He missed the decisive Confederate victory at the Battle of Chancellorsville because his brigade was stationed in southern Virginia along with the rest of Longstreet's Corps. But they returned for active combat in the Battle of Gettysburg. There, on July 2, 1863, Benning led his brigade in a furious assault against the Union position in the Devil's Den, driving out the defenders at no small cost to themselves. That September, Longstreet's Corps was sent west to assist the forces of General Braxton Bragg in Tennessee. On the second day of the bloody Battle of Chickamauga, Benning distinguished himself in a gallant charge against a gap in the Union line, even as his horse was shot out from under him. He mounted another horse, which was also killed. Finally, he cut loose a horse from a nearby artillery battery and rode into combat bareback.
Returning to Virginia, Benning's brigade fought against Union General Ulysses S. Grant in the Overland Campaign, where Benning was severely wounded in the left shoulder in the Battle of the Wilderness on May 5, 1864. This wound kept him out of the remainder of the campaign and much of the subsequent Siege of Petersburg, but he was able to return in time for the waning days of that lengthy campaign. His brigade withstood strong Union assaults against their entrenchments, but was forced to withdraw along with the rest of Lee's army in the retreat to Appomattox Court House. Benning, heartbroken, was one of the final officers to lead his men to the surrender ceremony.
[edit] Postbellum life
After the war, Benning returned to Columbus to resume the practice of law. He found that his house had been burned and that all of the savings had disappeared, and that now he had to support the widow and children of his wife's brother, who had been killed in the war, along with his own family.
Henry Benning was stricken with apoplexy ten years later on his way to court and died in Columbus. He is buried there in Linwood Cemetery.
[edit] In memoriam
The huge U.S. Army installation, Fort Benning, near Columbus, home of the U.S. Army Infantry School, is named in memory of its former enemy, Henry Benning.
[edit] References
- Eicher, John H., & Eicher, David J., Civil War High Commands, Stanford University Press, 2001, ISBN 0-8047-3641-3.
- Kane, Sharyn, & Keeton, Richard, Fort Benning, the Land and the People, National Park Service.
- Online biography
