Ben McCulloch, like many of his contemporaries, i.e. Jackson, Bowie, Crockett, Houston, and Forrest, was a product of his environment, that produced self-reliant men who could live off the land. The southern frontier of the early to mid-nineteenth century was a violent and dangerous place. The men who flourished in this environment became violent themselves out of necessity. It is a thread common to the backgrounds of the above men.
Violence was a way of life. It was simply how one survived. Violent acts provided food, shelter and survival. Quite often disputes would be resolved outside the judicial system, violence being the court of dispute resolution, where one defended all that was dear to him. In the South of the nineteenth century, one defended one's honor above all else.
It was into this environment on November 11, 1811, Benjamin McCulloch was born at Rutherford County, Tennessee. Shortly after that, Ben's father, Alexander McCulloch, served in the War of 1812. The McCullochs continued to live in Tennessee until 1820, when the family moved to northern Alabama and established a farm.
In 1830, the family moved to Dyer County in western Tennessee. This put him only a few miles from the Mississippi River, which provided ready transportation to heretofore unknown places like St. Louis and New Orleans. By the age of nineteen, Ben had become an accomplished woodsman and begun to look for opportunities to put his skills to use. Ben and his brother Henry floated logs to Natchez and farther south. At about this time, Ben met and became close friends with another woodsman of some reputation, David Crockett.
To Texas
In the fall of 1835, both Crockett and McCulloch decided to travel to Texas and join the revolutionaries attempting to break away from Mexico to establish their own republic. They were to meet each other at Nacogdoches on December 25, but McCulloch never saw Crockett again. Delayed by family matters, McCulloch did not reach Texas until January 1836. By then Crockett had already left to meet his fate at San Antonio.
McCulloch followed Crockett's trail, but was slowed down by a bout of measles. He reached the Brazos only to hear the plight of the besieged Texans at the Alamo. After the fall of the Alamo, the victorious Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, Emperor of Mexico, was determined to drive out all Anglos from Mexican soil. Flying the banners of "No Quarter," the Mexican army began to force the Anglo settlers east. Ben McCulloch found himself swept up in what was to be known as the "Runaway Scrape." The Texans employed the tactic of "scorched earth," destroying their homes, farms, crops and livestock as they fled.
In April, at Graces Crossing, McCulloch enlisted in the Army of Texas under the command of General Sam Houston. McCulloch participated in the battle of San Jacinto, commanding the army's artillery battery nicknamed the "twin sisters." It was near Buffalo Bayou the Texans stopped, turned, and struck back at their pursuers.
After the battle, McCulloch was commissioned as a first lieutenant, but the boredom and routine of a peacetime army was more than he could bear. A restless spirit, he was always looking to "push the envelope" of his environment. In the fall of 1836, he resigned from the Army of Texas.
Surveying
Ben returned briefly to Tennessee to learn the surveying trade from his father. Ben then returned to Texas to join his brother Henry in the frontier town of Gonzales. McCulloch planned to make his living as a surveyor, but it would be more than Ben's surveying skills that would be required.
After the revolution, Texans began pushing their western frontier into territory occupied by the Comanche Indians. A fierce tribe of nomadic warriors and superb horsemen, they would resist the Texan intrusion into their territory. With Gonzales situated on the edge of the frontier, it would become a favorite spot for Comanche raids.
It was a situation well suited to the talents of a man such as Ben McCulloch. Time and time again during the years 1838 and 1839, Ben and Henry alerted the settlers against attack, often pursuing the Indians and ambushing them in violent clashes.
The war between the Comanches and the Texans soon came to a head during a peace parley where all the Comanche chiefs were killed. The Comanches sought revenge by massing 500 to 1000 braves and brazenly attacked the larger Texas cities on the Gulf Coast. They took the towns by surprise and did considerable damage to Victoria and Linville, resulting in twenty-five people killed and Linville being burned to the ground.
Ben McCulloch helped organize the militia, which, along with the contingents of the regular Texas Army and Rangers, pursued, defeated, and routed the larger force of Comanches at the Battle of Plum Creek. His fearless leadership at Plum Creek and other such clashes earned him a reputation as an outstanding frontiersman and Indian fighter. Throughout the period of the Republic, there existed an on-again, off-again, war with Mexico. In March, 1842, after an attempt by Texan forces to capture Santa Fe, New Mexico failed, the Mexicans retaliated by invading and capturing San Antonio. Forced to retreat, after only two days, they invaded again in September. During this time, Ben served as a scout for the Texas army and later, as part of the Texas Rangers, under the command of John C. "Jack" Hayes. The Texas Army Regulars and Rangers drove the Mexicans back to the Rio Grande.
War with Mexico
After the annexation of Texas to the United States, war broke out between the U.S. and Mexico. Many Texans saw this war as an opportunity to seek retribution and to end the menace of Mexico once and for all. Serving in the state Legislature at the time, McCulloch resigned and received state authorization to raise a company of rangers. As a company commander in ÒJackÓ Hays' Regiment of Texas Rangers, McCulloch distinguished himself in many daring scouting missions, providing vital information to General Zachary Taylor and later, farther south, for General Winfield Scott. McCulloch was the epitome of a ranger officer. Leading by example, he never asked his men to do anything he wouldn't do. He was always at the head of his men when charging the enemy.
The exploits of McCulloch and the Rangers during the Mexican War became legend and newspapers reported their exploits, making the rangers known and famous throughout the country. They were already known and infamous to the enemy who knew them as Los Diablos Tejanos. The sight of well-armed Texans was enough to make even some regular army troops a little uneasy.
To quote Walter P. Webb, "Each ranger carried a rifle and two Colt revolvers, two single shot pistols, a short knife, hempen ropes, rawhide riatas. In addition some carried sabres and double-barreled shotguns." Rangers had no uniform look.
Webb again comments, "Their uniforms were an outlandish assortment of long-tailed blue coats and bob-tailed black ones, slouched felt hats, dirty panamas and black leather caps. Most of them wore long bushy beards. Their horses were, without exception, tough, mettlesome and quick."
After the war, McCulloch resigned his commission and went to California to prospect. In the years prior to the Civil War, he served as a presidential peace commissioner in the 1858 Mormon War, as a Federal marshal and as an agent for an arms manufacturer.
Colonel McCulloch
In March, 1861, Texas joined the Confederacy. Ben McCulloch offered his services to the state and was commissioned a colonel of Texas State Cavalry. His first task was to accept the surrender of Federal property in and around San Antonio. This he did with no resistance being offered by U.S. Army Major General David Twiggs.
On May 11, the Confederate Congress commissioned McCulloch a brigadier general in the Confederate Army and assigned him to the Indian Territory, who along with Confederate Indian Commissioner Albert Pike, attempted to draw the various tribes there into the Confederacy and met with considerable success. McCulloch's next task was to organize the Confederate forces in Arkansas. In July and early August, 1861, Confederate forces (Missouri State Guard) under the command of Missouri governor and State Guard Major General Sterling Price, were being pursued by Union militia and regulars led by Brigadier General Nathaniel Lyon. Price hoped to link up with McCulloch's forces in Arkansas and then turn on Lyon.
A dispute arose as to who would be in command of the combined forces. McCulloch insisted that even though Price was a major general in the Missouri State Guard, and he himself only a brigadier general, he should be in overall command and only on that condition would he assist Price. Not in any position to argue, Price gave in.
Once in command of the joint forces, McCulloch became the pursuer and drove Lyon to just outside Springfield, Missouri. McCulloch sensed the Union forces were going to make a stand. McCulloch had planned to attack the Federals on August 9, but postponed the attack because of rain. Meanwhile, Lyon planned an attack of his own for August 10 against the greater number of the enemy. His attack was a complete surprise. However, the superior numbers of Confederates, coupled with the tenacity of McCulloch's leadership and the death of Lyon himself, led to the Union forces being completely routed.
At Wilson's Creek, the Union army lost its nerve when its commander, General Lyon, was killed. Ironically, McCulloch's Arkansas and Texas troops would do the very same thing in March, 1862, at the battle of Pea Ridge in northern Arkansas. At Pea Ridge, Ben McCulloch met his fate, but he died in the way any Texas ranger officer would have had it, at the head of his men, charging the enemy, leading by example -- a violent end for the product of a violent frontier.
Related
Bibliography
Bowden, J. J. The Exodus of Federal Forces from Texas, 1861. Eakin Press, 1986.
Brice, Donaly E. The Great Comanche Raid. Eakin Press, 1987.
Faust, Patricia L. (editor.) Historical Times Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Civil War. Harper & Row, 1986.
Fehrenbach, T. R. Lone Star, A History of Texas and the Texans. MacMillan Company, 1968.
Foote, Shelby. The Civil War: A Narrative; Fort Sumter to Perryville. Random House, 1958.
Kennedy, Francis H. The Civil War Battlefield Guide. Houghton Mifflin, 1990.
Monaghan, Jay. Civil War on the Western Border 1854-1865, pages 139-252, Bonanza Books, 1955.
Proctor, Ben and Harold Simpson. Rangers of Texas, pages 65-109, Texian Press, 1969.
Santos, Richard. Santa Anna's Campaign Against Texas, Texian Press, 1968.
Schreiner III, Chas., Audrey Schreiner, Robert Berrymon and Hal Matheny. A Pictorial History of the Texas Rangers, Y-O Press, 1969.
Shea, William L. and Earl J. Hess. Pea Ridge, Civil War Campaign in the West, University of North Carolina, 1992.
Symonds, Craig L. A Battlefield Atlas of the Civil War, 1983.
Webb, Walter Prescott. The Texas Rangers, A Century of Frontier Service, 6th printing, University Press, 1935.
Wilson, George T. "Battle for Missouri," America's Civil War, January, 1990.
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