Brigadier-General Benjamin McCulloch was a soldier in the Texas Revolution, a Texas Ranger, a major-general in the Texas militia and thereafter a major in the United States Army during the Mexican–American War, sheriff of Sacramento County, a US marshal, and a brigadier-general in the army of the Confederate States during the American Civil War.
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Ben McCulloch was born November 11,1811 in Rutherford County, Tennessee, one of twelve children and the fourth son of Alexander McCulloch and Frances Fisher LeNoir.
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Ben McCulloch's mother was a daughter of a prominent Virginian planter.
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The Ben McCulloch family had been wealthy, politically influential, and socially prominent in North Carolina before the American Revolution, but Alexander had wasted much of his inheritance and was unable even to educate his sons.
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Ben McCulloch reached St Louis just too late to join the fur trappers headed for the mountains for the season.
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Ben McCulloch then tried to join a freight company heading for Santa Fe as a muleskinner, but was told they had a full complement.
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Ben McCulloch moved on to Wisconsin to investigate lead-mining, but found all the best claims already staked by the large mining companies.
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Ben McCulloch subsequently contracted measles and was bedridden for several weeks.
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Ben McCulloch's illness prevented him from arriving in San Antonio until after the Alamo had already fallen.
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Ben McCulloch joined the Texas army under Sam Houston in its retreat to east Texas.
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Ben McCulloch made deadly use of his cannon against the Mexican positions and received a battlefield commission as first lieutenant.
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Ben McCulloch 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.
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Ben McCulloch acquired a reputation as an Indian fighter, favoring shotguns, pistols, and Bowie knives to the regulation saber and carbine.
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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.
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In 1842, Ben McCulloch went back to surveying and intermittent military service.
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Captain Ben McCulloch introduced us to his officers and many of his men, who appeared orderly and well-mannered people.
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In 1845, Ben McCulloch was elected from Gonzales County to the first Texas state legislature following its entry into the union.
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Ben 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.
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Ben McCulloch was appointed US marshal for the Eastern District of Texas in 1852, serving throughout the Pierce and Buchanan administrations.
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Ben McCulloch set up his headquarters at Little Rock, and began piecing together an Army of the West, with regiments from Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana.
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Ben McCulloch disagreed strongly with General Sterling Price of Missouri, but with the assistance of Brigadier-General Albert Pike, he was able to build alliances for the Confederacy with the Cherokee, Choctaw, and Creek nations.
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When Van Dorn launched an expedition against St Louis, a strategy Ben McCulloch strongly opposed, it was again Ben McCulloch's reconnaissance that contributed most to what little success Van Dorn's plan was able to achieve.
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Ben McCulloch commanded the Confederate right wing at the Battle of Pea Ridge, Arkansas, and on March 7,1862, after much maneuvering his troops overran a key Union artillery battery.
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Union resistance stiffened late in the morning and as Ben McCulloch rode forward to scout out enemy positions, he was shot out of the saddle and died instantly.
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Ben McCulloch always disliked army uniforms and was wearing a black velvet civilian suit and Wellington boots at the time of his death.
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Ben McCulloch's body was buried on the field at Pea Ridge, but was removed with other victims of the battle to a cemetery in Little Rock.
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Ben McCulloch was later reinterred in the Texas State Cemetery in Austin; the gravesite is in the cemetery's Republic Hill section, Row N, No 4.
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Ben McCulloch's papers are housed at the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin.
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Ben McCulloch is one of thirty men inducted into the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame at Fort Fisher, Waco.
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Camp Ben McCulloch 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.
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Ben McCulloch 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.
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Ben McCulloch's remains were exhumed in 1938 by the State of Texas and reinterred beside those of Gen.
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