Second Lieutenant Elias Franklin Benner was human and, like all humans, he made mistakes. But he chose not to let those mistakes define him. Soldiering on to reclaim his reputation after what could have been a career-ending court martial during the early days of the Reconstruction Era, he went on to be honorably discharged from the military, marry, greet the arrival of a son, and make a respectable living for himself and those he loved in Indiana during the latter part of the nineteenth century.

Formative Years

Born in Kutztown, Berks County, Pennsylvania in February 1843, Elias Franklin Benner was a son of Israel Benner (1811-1885), a native of Pennsylvania, and Judith Wellington (Rupp) Benner (1813-1904). Known to family and friends as “Frank,” he was the brother of: Louis Obediah Benner (1839-1910), Rosalie Benner (1845-1931, who later wed Jonathan D. Sanders (1844-1926), and Samuel W. Benner (1847-1915), who grew up to become a jeweler in Kutztown, Berks County, Pennsylvania.

Their initially stable lives became increasingly worrisome, however, as the fever of disunion swept across their nation’s Deep South, propelling the United States into a disastrous civil war that would end with more than seven hundred thousand of its citizens ailing, wounded by gun or cannon fire, missing, or dead.

American Civil War

As that conflict heated up, Elias F. Benner became one of the early responders to President Abraham Lincoln’s call for volunteers to help bring a swift end to the American Civil War. Following his enrollment for military service in Lehigh County on 21 August 1861, he traveled to Camp Curtin in Dauphin County, where he was officially mustered in as a corporal with Company K of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry on 17 September.

* Note: Formed with the intent of being an “all-German company,” Company K was almost entirely composed of recent immigrants from Germany and Lehigh Valley residents of Pennsylvania German/Pennsylvania Dutch heritage. Its founder and first commanding officer, George Junker, was a German immigrant who had become a tombstone carved in Allentown.

Military records described Corporal Elias Benner as a twenty a two-year-old watchmaker living in Saegersville, Lehigh County, who was five feet, eight inches tall with brown hair, gray eyes and a dark complexion. Those same records appear to indicate that he may have misrepresented his year of birth as 1839, rather than 1843, perhaps to ensure that he would be considered old enough for acceptance as a corporal by the army officers processing his paperwork.

Following a brief training period in light infantry tactics at Camp Curtin, Corporal Elias Benner and his fellow 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers were marched to the Harrisburg train station, where they boarded Northern Central Railway cars on 20 September and headed for the nation’s capital. Arriving in Washington, D.C. during the wee hours of the next morning, they disembarked and marched to that city’s Soldiers’ Rest, where they were fed and allowed to sleep for a few hours before marching for the Kalorama Heights in Georgetown in the District of Columbia.

Ordered to pitch their tents at Camp Kalorama, roughly two miles from the White House, they continued to train. On 22 September, C Company Musician Henry D. Wharton penned these words to his hometown newspaper, the Sunbury American:

After a tedious ride we have, at last, arrived at the City of ‘magnificent distances.’ We left Harrisburg on Friday last at 1 o’clock A.M. and reached this camp yesterday (Saturday) at 4 P.M., as tired and worn out a setting [sic, set] of mortals as can possibly exist. On arriving at Washington we were marched to the ‘Soldiers Retreat,’ a building purposefully erected for the benefit of the soldier, where every comfort is extended to him and the wants of the ‘inner man’ supplied.

After partaking of refreshments we were ordered into line and marched, about three miles, to this camp. So tired were the men that, on marching out, some gave out, and had to leave the ranks, but J. Boulton Young, our ‘little Zouave,’ stood it bravely, and acted like a veteran. So small a drummer is scarcely seen in the army, and on the march through Washington he was twice the recipient of three cheers.

We were reviewed by Gen. McClellan yesterday [21 September] without our knowing it. All along the march we noticed a considerable number of officers, both mounted and on foot; the horse of one of the officers was so beautiful that he was noticed by the whole regiment, in fact, so adapt [sic, wrapped] up were they in the horse, the rider wasn’t noticed, and the boys were considerably mortified this morning on discovering they had missed the sight of, and the neglect of not saluting the soldier next in command to Gen. Scott.

Col. Good, who has command of our regiment, is an excellent man and a splendid soldier. He is a man of very few words, and is continually attending to his duties and the wants of the Regiment.

…. Our Regiment will now be put to hard work; such as drilling and the usual business of camp life, and the boys expect and hope for an occasional ‘pop’ at the enemy.

Acclimated somewhat to their new life, the soldiers of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry finally became part of the Army of the United States when they were officially mustered into federal service on 24 September. Three days later, they were assigned to the 3rd Brigade of Brigadier-General Isaac Ingalls Stevens, which also included the 33rd, 49th and 79th New York regiments. By that afternoon, the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers were on the move again.

Ordered onward by Brigadier-General Silas Casey, the Mississippi rifle-armed 47th Pennsylvania infantrymen marched behind their Regimental Band until reaching Camp Lyon, Maryland on the Potomac River’s eastern shore. At 5 p.m., they joined the 46th Pennsylvania in moving double-quick (one hundred and sixty five steps per minute using thirty-three-inch steps) across the “Chain Bridge” marked on federal maps, and continued on for roughly another mile before being ordered to make camp.

The next morning, they broke camp and moved again. Marching toward Falls Church, Virginia, they arrived at Camp Advance around dusk. There, about two miles from the bridge they had crossed a day earlier, they re-pitched their tents in a deep ravine near a new federal fort under construction (Fort Ethan Allen). They had completed a roughly eight-mile trek, were situated close to the headquarters of Brigadier-General William Farrar Smith (also known as “Baldy”) and were now part of the massive U.S. Army of the Potomac (“Mr. Lincoln’s Army”). Under Smith’s leadership, their regiment and brigade would help to defend the nation’s capital from the time of their arrival through late January when the men of the 47th Pennsylvania would be shipped south.

Once again, Company C Musician Henry Wharton recalled the regiment’s activities, noting, via his 29 September letter to the Sunbury American:

On Friday last we left Camp Kalorama, and the same night encamped about one mile from the Chain Bridge on the opposite side of the Potomac from Washington. The next morning, Saturday, we were ordered to this camp [Camp Advance near Fort Ethan Allen, Virginia], one and a half miles from the one we occupied the night previous. I should have mentioned that we halted on a high hill (on our march here) at the Chain Bridge, called Camp Lyon, but were immediately ordered on this side of the river. On the route from Kalorama we were for two hours exposed to the harrdest rain I ever experienced. Whew, it was a whopper; but the fellows stood it well – not a murmur – and they waited in their wet clothes until nine o’clock at night for their supper. Our Camp adjoins that of the N.Y. 79th (Highlanders.)….

We had not been in this Camp more than six hours before our boys were supplied with twenty rounds of ball and cartridge, and ordered to march and meet the enemy; they were out all night and got back to Camp at nine o’clock this morning, without having a fight. They are now in their tents taking a snooze preparatory to another march the morning…. I don’t know how long the boys will be gone, but the orders are to cook two days’ rations and take it with them in their haversacks….

There was a nice little affair came off at Lavensville [sic, Lewinsville], a few miles from here on Wednesday last; our troops surprised a party of rebels (much larger than our own.) killing ten, took a Major prisoner, and captured a large number of horses, sheep and cattle, besides a large quantity of corn and potatoes, and about ninety six tons of hay. A nice day’s work. The boys are well, in fact, there is no sickness of any consequence at all in our Regiment….

Sometime during this phase of duty, as part of the 3rd Brigade, the 47th Pennsylvanians were moved to a site they initially christened “Camp Big Chestnut,” in reference to a large chestnut tree growing there. The site would eventually become known to them as “Camp Griffin,” and was located roughly ten miles from Washington, D.C.

On 11 October, the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers marched in the Grand Review at Bailey’s Cross Roads. In a mid-October letter to his own family and friends, Captain John Peter Shindel Gobin, the commanding officer of Company C, reported that Companies D, A, C, F, and I (the 47th Pennsylvania’s right wing) were ordered to picket duty after the regiment’s left-wing companies (B, E, G, H, and K) had been forced to return to camp by Confederate troops.

Captain Gobin had been referring to Brigadier-General James Ewell Brown (“J. E. B.”) Stuart, commanding officer of the Confederate Army of the Potomac (later known as the Army of Northern Virginia), under whose authority the 4th Virginia Cavalry (“Black Horse Cavalry”) fell. Stuart’s Fairfax County, Virginia home had been commandeered by the Union Army and used by the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers and other Union troops as their base of operations for picket lines in that area.

In his letter of 13 October, Musician Henry Wharton described the duties of the average 47th Pennsylvanian, as well as the regiment’s new home:

The location of our new camp is fine and the scenery would be splendid if the view was not obstructed by heavy thickets of pine and innumerable chesnut [sic, chestnut] trees. The country around us is excellent for the Rebel scouts to display their bravery; that is, to lurk in the dense woods and pick off one of our unsuspecting pickets. Last night, however, they (the Rebels) calculated wide of their mark; some of the New York 33d boys were out on picket; some fourteen or fifteen shots were exchanged, when our side succeeded in bringing to the dust, (or rather mud,) an officer and two privates of the enemy’s mounted pickets. The officer was shot by a Lieutenant in Company H [?], of the 33d.

Our own boys have seen hard service since we have been on the ‘sacred soil.’ One day and night on picket, next day working on entrenchments at the Fort (Ethan Allen.) another on guard, next on march and so on continually, but the hardest was on picket from last Thursday morning ’till Saturday morning – all the time four miles from camp, and both of the nights the rain poured in torrents, so much so that their clothes were completely saturated with the rain. They stood it nobly – not one complaining; but from the size of their haversacks on their return, it is no wonder that they were satisfied and are so eager to go again tomorrow. I heard one of them say ‘there was such nice cabbage, sweet and Irish potatoes, turnips, &c., out where their duty called them, and then there was a likelihood of a Rebel sheep or young porker advancing over our lines and then he could take take them as ‘contraband’ and have them for his own use.’ When they were out they saw about a dozen of the Rebel cavalry and would have had a bout with them, had it not been for … unlucky circumstance – one of the men caught the hammer of his rifle in the strap of his knapsack and caused his gun to fire; the Rebels heard the report and scampered in quick time….

On Friday morning, 22 October, the 47th Pennsylvania engaged in a divisional review, described by regimental historian Lewis Schmidt as massing “about 10,000 infantry, 1000 cavalry, and twenty pieces of artillery all in one big open field.”

Also around this same time, Captain George Junker issued his first Special Order to his Company K subordinates:

I. 15 minutes after breakfast every tent will be cleaned. The commander of each tent will be held responsible for it, and every soldier must obey the orders of the tent commander. If not, said commanders will report such men to the orderly Sgt. who will report them to headquarters.

II. There will be company drills every two hours during the day, including regimental drills with knapsacks. No one will be excused except by order of the regimental surgeon. The hours will be fixed by the commander, and as it is not certain therefore, every man must stay in his quarter, being always ready for duty. The roll will be called each time and anyone in camp found not answering will be punished the first time with extra duty. The second with carrying the 75 lb. weights, increased to 95 lb. The talking in ranks is strictly forbidden. The first offense will be punished with carrying 80 lb. weights increased to 95 lbs. for four hours.

In his letter of 17 November, Musician Henry Wharton revealed still more details about life at Camp Griffin:

This morning our brigade was out for inspection; arms, accoutrements, clothing, knapsacks, etc., all were out through a through examination, and if I must say it myself, our company [Company C] stood best, A No. 1, for cleanliness. We have a new commander to our brigade, Brigadier General Brannon [sic, Brannan], of the U.S. Army, and if looks are any criterion, I think he is a strict disciplinarian and one who will be as able to get his men out of danger as he is willing to lead them to battle….

The boys have plenty of work to do, such as piquet [sic, picket] duty, standing guard, wood-chopping, police duty and day drill; but then they have the most substantial food; our rations consist of fresh beef (three times a week), pickled pork, pickled beef, smoked pork, fresh bread, daily, which is baked by our own bakers, the Quartermaster having procured portable ovens for that purpose, potatoes, split peas, beans, occasionally molasses and plenty of good coffee, so you see Uncle Sam supplies us plentifully….

A few nights ago our Company was out on piquet [sic, picket]; it was a terrible night, raining very hard the whole night, and what made it worse, the boys had to stand well to their work and dare not leave to look for shelter. Some of them consider they are well paid for their exposure, as they captured two ancient muskets belonging to Secessia. One of them is of English manufacture, and the other has the Virginia militia mark on it. They are both in a dilapidated condition, but the boys hold them in high estimation as they are trophies from the enemy, and besides they were taken from the house of Mrs. Stewart, sister to the rebel Jackson who assassinated the lamented Ellsworth at Alexandria. The honorable lady, Mrs. Stewart, is now a prisoner at Washington and her house is the headquarters of the command of the piquets [sic, pickets]….

Since the success of the secret expedition, we have all kinds of rumors in camp. One is that our brigade will be sent to the relief of Gen. Sherman, in South Carolina. The boys all desire it and if the news in the ‘Press’ is correct, that a large force is to be sent there, I think their wish will be gratified.

On 21 November, the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers participated in a morning Divisional Review that was viewed by the 47th’s founder and commanding officer, Colonel Tilghman Good, followed by brigade and division drills all afternoon. According to Schmidt, “each man was supplied with ten blank cartridges. Afterward, “Gen. Smith requested Gen. Brannan to inform Col. Good that the 47th was the best regiment in the whole division.”

As a reward for the regiment’s impressive performance that day, and in preparation for the even bigger adventures and honors that were yet to come, Brigadier-General John Milton Brannan, ordered his staff to ensure that brand new Springfield rifles were obtained and distributed to every member of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers.

1862

Ordered to move from their Virginia encampment back to Maryland, the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers left Camp Griffin at 8:30 a.m. on Wednesday, 22 January 1862. Marching through deep mud with their equipment for three miles in order to reach the railroad station at Falls Church, they were transported to Alexandria, where they boarded the steamship City of Richmond and sailed the Potomac River to the Washington Arsenal, where they disembarked and were re-equipped. Subsequently marched to the Soldiers’ Rest in Washington, D.C., they were once again fed and given the opportunity to rest there. The next afternoon, they were marched to the railroad station, where they hopped aboard a train from the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, and headed for Annapolis, Maryland.

Arriving around 10 p.m., they disembarked and were marched to a barracks at the United States Naval Academy, where they bedded down for the night. They then spent that Friday through Monday (24-27 January) loading their equipment and supplies onto the U.S.S. Oriental.

During the afternoon of 27 January, the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers began boarding the Oriental, enlisted men first, and then, per the directive of Brigadier-General Brannan, they steamed away at 4 p.m. and headed for Florida, which, despite its secession from the United States remained strategically important to the Union due to the presence of several key federal installations.

Arriving in Key West, Florida by early February 1862, the men of Company K and their fellow 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers disembarked and were ordered to pitch their tents on the beach, where they rested and were subsequently directed to their respective quarters inside and outside of Fort Taylor. Assigned to garrison the fort, they drilled daily in infantry and artillery tactics, began strengthening the fortifications of this key federal installation and also began making infrastructure improvements to the city by felling trees and building new roads.

During the weekend of 14 February, the regiment introduced itself to area residents via a parade through the city’s streets. That Sunday, the 47th Pennsylvanians began mingling with locals at area church services.

Among the lighter moments, the regiment commemorated the birthday of President George Washington with a parade, a special ceremony involving the reading of Washington’s farewell address to the nation (first delivered in 1796), the firing of cannon at the fort, and a sack race and other games on 22 February. The festivities resumed two days later when the Regimental Band hosted an officers’ ball at which “all parties enjoyed themselves, for three o’clock of the morning sounded on their ears before any motion was made to move homewards,” according to Musician Henry Wharton. This was then followed by a concert by the regimental band on Wednesday evening, 26 February.

Next ordered to Hilton Head, South Carolina, from early June through July, the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers camped near Fort Walker before relocating roughly thirty-five miles away in the Beaufort District in the U.S. Army’s Department of the South. Frequently assigned to hazardous picket duty north of their main camp, they faced an increased risk of enemy sniper fire. Despite this danger, though, the men of the 47th Pennsylvania “received the highest commendation from Generals Hunter and Brannan” for their “attention to duty, discipline and soldierly bearing,” according to historian Samuel P. Bates.

Detachments from the regiment were also assigned to the Expedition to Fenwick Island (9 July) and the Demonstration against Pocotaligo (10 July).

From 20-31 August, the men from Company K were assigned to picket duty and were stationed at “Barnwells” near Beaufort (so labeled by C Company Captain John Peter Shindel Gobin).

Capture of Saint John’s Bluff, Florida and a Confederate Steamer

During a return expedition to Florida, beginning 30 September, the 47th Pennsylvania joined with the 1st Connecticut Battery, 7th Connecticut Infantry and part of the 1st Massachusetts Cavalry in assaulting Confederate forces at their heavily protected camp at Saint John’s Bluff, overlooking the Saint John’s River. Trekking through roughly twenty-five miles of swampland and forests, after disembarking from their Union troop transports at Mayport Mills on 1 October, the 47th Pennsylvanians captured artillery and ammunition stores (on 3 October) that had been abandoned during the Union Navy’s bombardment of the bluff.

Men from the 47th Pennsylvania’s Companies E and K were then led by Captain Charles H. Yard on a special mission; initially joining with other Union troops in the reconnaissance and capture of Jacksonville, Florida, they were subsequently ordered to sail up the Saint John’s River to seek out and capture any Confederate ships they found. Departing aboard the Darlington, a former Confederate steamer, with protection by the Union gunboat Hale, they traveled two hundred miles upriver, captured the Governor Milton, a Confederate steamer that was docked near Hawkinsville, and returned back down the river with both Union ships and their new Confederate prize without incident. (Identified as a thorn that needed to be plucked from the Union’s side, that steamer had been engaged in ferrying Confederate troops and supplies around the region.)

Integration of the Regiment

Meanwhile, back at its South Carolina base of operations, the 47th Pennsylvania was making history as it became an integrated regiment. On 5 and 15 October, the regiment added to its rosters several young Black men who had endured plantation enslavement near Beaufort and other areas of South Carolina, including Bristor Gethers, Abraham Jassum and Edward Jassum.

Battle of Pocotaligo, South Carolina

From 21-23 October 1862, under the brigade and regimental commands of Colonel Tilghman Good and Lieutenant-Colonel George Warren Alexander, the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers joined with other Union troops in engaging heavily protected Confederate troops in and around Pocotaligo, South Carolina, including at Frampton’s Plantation and the Pocotaligo Bridge, a key piece of Deep South infrastructure that senior Union military leaders felt should be eliminated.

Harried by snipers while en route to destroy the bridge, they met resistance from an entrenched, heavily fortified Confederate battery that opened fire on the Union troops as they entered an open cotton field.

Those headed toward higher ground at the Frampton Plantation fared no better as they encountered artillery and infantry fire from the surrounding forests. But the Union soldiers would not give in. Grappling with the Confederates where they found them, they pursued the Rebels for four miles as the Confederate Army retreated to the bridge. Once there, the 47th Pennsylvania relieved the 7th Connecticut.

Unfortunately, the enemy was just too well armed. After two hours of intense fighting in an attempt to take the ravine and bridge, the 47th Pennsylvanians were forced by depleted ammunition to withdraw to Mackay’s Point.

The engagement proved to be a costly one for the 47th Pennsylvania with multiple members of the regiment killed instantly or so grievously wounded that they died the next day or within weeks of the battle. Among those mortally wounded was K Company Captain George Junker, who died the day after the battle while receiving medical care at the Union’s general hospital at Hilton Head.

Following the 47th Pennsylvania’s return to Hilton Head on 23 October, members of the regiment mourned their lost friends and attempted to heal from the medical and physical trauma they had sustained. A week later, members of the regiment were called upon to serve as the funeral honor guard for Major-General Ormsby M. Mitchel, commander of the U.S. Army’s 10th Corps (X Corps) and Department of the South, who died from yellow fever on 30 October.

Having been ordered back to Key West on 15 November 1862, the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers would spend much of 1863 guarding federal installations in Florida as part of the 10th Corps, Department of the South. Companies A, B, C, E, G, and I would once again garrison Fort Taylor in Key West, while the men of Companies D, F, H, and K would garrison Fort Jefferson, the Union’s remote outpost in the Dry Tortugas off the southern coast of Florida.

After packing their belongings at their Beaufort, South Carolina encampment and loading their equipment onto the U.S. Steamer Cosmopolitan, the officers and enlisted members of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry sailed toward the mouth of the Broad River on 15 December 1862, and anchored briefly at Port Royal Harbor in order to allow the regiment’s medical director, Elisha W. Baily, M.D., and members of the regiment who had recuperated enough from their Pocotaligo-related battle injuries at the Union’s general hospital at Hilton Head, to rejoin the regiment.

At 5 p.m. that same evening, the regiment sailed for Florida, during what was described by several members of the regiment as a treacherous and nerve-wracking voyage. According to Schmidt, the ship’s captain “steered a course along the coast of Florida for most of the voyage,” which made the voyage more precarious “because of all the reefs.” On 16 December, “the second night, the ship was jarred as it ran aground on one during a storm, but broke free, and finally steered a course further from shore, out in the Gulf Stream.”

In a letter penned to the Sunbury American on 21 December, Musician Henry Wharton provided the following details about the regiment’s trip:

On the passage down, we ran along almost the whole coast of Florida. Rather all dangerous ground, and the reefs are no playthings. We we jarred considerably by running on one, and not liking the sensation our course was altered for the Gulf Stream. We had heavy sea all the time. I had often heard of ‘waves as big as a house,’ and thought it was a sailors yarn, but I have seen ’em and am perfectly satisfied; so now, not having a nautical turn of mind, I prefer our movements being done on terra firma, and leave old neptune to those who have more desire for his better acquaintance. A nearer chance of a shipwreck never took place than ours, and it was only through Providence that we were saved. The Cosmopolitan is a good riverboat, but to send her to sea, loadened [sic, loaded] with U.S. troops is a shame, and looks as though those in authority wish to get clear of soldiers in another way than that of battle. There was some sea sickness on our passage; several of the boys ‘casting up their accounts’ on the wrong side of the ledger.

According to Corporal George Nichols of Company E, “When we got to Key West the Steamer had Six foot of water in her hole [sic, hold]. Waves Mountain High and nothing but an old river Steamer. With Eleven hundred Men on I looked for her to go to the Bottom Every Minute.”

Although the Cosmopolitan arrived at the Key West Harbor on Thursday, 18 December, the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers did not set foot on Florida soil until noon the next day. The men from Companies C and I were immediately marched to Fort Taylor, where they were placed under the command of Major William Gausler, the regiment’s third-in-command. The men from Companies B and E were assigned to the older barracks that had been erected by the United States Army, and were placed under the command of B Company Captain Emanuel P. Rhoads, while the men from Companies A and G were placed under the command of A Company Captain Richard Graeffe, and stationed at newer facilities known as the “Lighthouse Barracks,” which were located on “Lighthouse Key.”

On Saturday, 21 December, Lieutenant-Colonel George W. Alexander, the regiment’s second-in-command, sailed away aboard the Cosmopolitan with the men from Companies D, F, H, and K, and headed south to Fort Jefferson, roughly seventy miles off the coast of Florida (in the Gulf of Mexico) to assume garrison duties there. According to Musician Henry Wharton:

We landed here [Fort Taylor] on last Thursday at noon, and immediately marched to quarters. Company I. and C., in Fort Taylor, Company E. and B. in the old Barracks, and A. and G. in the new Barracks. Lieut. Col. Alexander, with the other four companies proceeded to Tortugas, Col. Good having command of all the forces in and around Key West. Our regiment relieved the 90th Regiment N. Y. S. Vols. Col. Joseph Morgan, who will proceed to Hilton Head to report to the General commanding. His actions have been severely criticized by the people, but, as it is in bad taste to say anything against ones [sic, one’s] superiors, I merely mention, judging from the expression of the citizens, they were very glad of the return of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers….

Key West has improved very little since we left last June, but there is one improvement for which the 90th New York deserve a great deal of praise, and that is the beautifying of the ‘home’ of dec’d soldiers. A neat and strong wall of stone encloses the yard, the ground is laid off in squares, all the graves are flat and are nicely put in proper shape by boards eight or ten inches high on the end sides, covered with white sand, while a head and foot board, with the full name, company and regiment, marks the last resting place of the patriot who sacrificed himself for his country….

1863

Although water quality was a challenge for members of the regiment at both of their duty stations in Florida throughout 1863, it was particularly problematic for the 47th Pennsylvanians who were stationed at Fort Jefferson. According to Schmidt:

‘Fresh’ water was provided by channeling the rains from the city’s barbette through channels in the interior walls, to filter trays filled with sand; and finally to the 114 cisterns located under the fort which held, 1,231,000 gallons of water. The cisterns were accessible in each of the first level cells or rooms through a ‘trap hole’ in the floor covered by a temporary wooden cover…. Considerable dirt must have found its way into these access points and was responsible for some of the problems resulting in the water’s impurity…. The fort began to settle and the asphalt covering on the outer walls began to deteriorate and allow the sea water (polluted by debris in the moat) to penetrate the system…. Two steam condensers were available … and distilled 7000 gallons of tepid water per day for a separate system of reservoirs located in the northern section of the parade ground near the officers [sic, officers’] quarters. No provisions were made to use any of this water for personal hygiene of the [planned 1,500-soldier garrison force]….

As a result, the soldiers stationed there washed themselves and their clothes, using saltwater from the ocean. As if that weren’t difficult enough, “toilet facilities were located outside of the fort,” according to Schmidt:

At least one location was near the wharf and sallyport, and another was reached through a door-sized hole in a gunport and a walk across the moat on planks at the northwest wall…. These toilets were flushed twice each day by the actions of the tides, a procedure that did not work very well and contributed to the spread of disease. It was intended that the tidal flush should move the wastes into the moat, and from there, by similar tidal action, into the sea. But since the moat surrounding the fort was used clandestinely by the troops to dispose of litter and other wastes … it was a continuous problem for Col. Alexander and his surgeon.

As for daily operations in the Dry Tortugas, there was a fort post office and the “interior parade grounds, with numerous trees and shrubs in evidence, contained officers’ quarters, [a] magazine, kitchens and out houses,” per Schmidt, as well as “a ‘hot shot oven’ which was completed in 1863 and used to heat shot before firing.”

Most quarters for the garrison … were established in wooden sheds and tents inside the parade [grounds] or inside the walls of the fort in second-tier gun rooms of ‘East’ front no. 2, and adjacent bastions  … with prisoners housed in isolated sections of the first and second tiers of the southeast, or no. 3 front, and bastions C and D, located in the general area of the sallyport. The bakery was located in the lower tier of the northwest bastion ‘F’, located near the central kitchen….

Additional Duties: Diminishing Florida’s Role as the “Supplier of the Confederacy”

On top of the strategic role played by the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers in preventing foreign powers from assisting the Confederate Army and Navy in gaining control over federal forts in the Deep South, the regiment was also called upon to play an ongoing role in weakening Florida’s abilities to supply and transport food and troops throughout areas held by the Confederate States of America.

Prior to intervention by the Union Army and Navy, the owners of plantations and livestock ranches, as well as the operators of small, family farms across Florida, had been able to consistently furnish beef and pork, fish, fruits, and vegetables to Confederate troops stationed throughout the Deep South during the first year of the American Civil War. Large herds of cattle were raised near Fort Myers, for example, while orchard owners in the Saint John’s River area were actively engaged in cultivating sizeable orange groves (while other types of citrus trees were found growing throughout more rural areas of the state).

Florida was also a major producer of salt, which was used as a preservative for food. As a result, the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers and other Union troops across Florida were ordered to capture or destroy salt manufacturing facilities in order to further curtail the enemy’s access to food.

But they were undertaking all of these duties in conditions that were far more challenging than any they had previously faced (and that were far more challenging than what many other Union troops were facing up north). The weather was frequently hot and humid as spring turned to summer, mosquitos and other insects were an ever-present annoyance (and serious threat when they were carrying tropical diseases) and there were also scorpions and snakes that put the men’s health at further risk.

Despite all of these hardships, when members of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry were offered the opportunity to re-enlist during the fall of 1863, more than half of the regiment’s personnel did so without hesitation. Among those opting to re-up, was Corporal Elias F. Benner, who re-enrolled at the same rank with the same company of the same regiment on 27 October 1863.

1864

In early January 1864, the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers experienced yet another significant change when members of the regiment were ordered to expand the Union’s reach by sending part of the regiment north to retake possession of Fort Myers, a federal installation that had been abandoned in 1858, following the federal government’s third war with the Seminole Indians. In response, A Company Captain Richard Graeffe and a group of soldiers from Company A traveled north, captured the fort and began conducting cattle raids to provide food for the growing Union troop presence across Florida. They subsequently turned the fort not only into their base of operations, but into a shelter for pro-union supporters, escaped slaves, Confederate deserters, and others fleeing Rebel troops.

Red River Campaign

Meanwhile, all of the other companies of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry had begun preparing for the regiment’s history-making journey to Louisiana. Boarding yet another steamer, the Charles Thomas, the men from Companies B, C, D, I, and K headed for Algiers, Louisiana (across the river from New Orleans), followed on 1 March by the men from Companies E, F, G, and H.

Upon the second group’s arrival, the now almost-fully-reunited regiment moved by train to Brashear City (now Morgan City, Louisiana) before heading to Franklin by steamer through the Bayou Teche. There, the 47th Pennsylvania Infantry joined the 2nd Brigade, 1st Division of the Department of the Gulf’s 19th Army Corps (XIX Corps), and became the only Pennsylvania regiment to serve in the Red River Campaign of Union Major-General Nathaniel P. Banks. (Unable to reach Louisiana until 23 March, the soldiers from Company A were assigned to detached duty while awaiting transport that enabled them to reconnect with their regiment at Alexandria, Louisiana on 9 April).

The early days on the ground quickly woke the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers up to just how grueling their new phase of duty would be. From 14-26 March, most members of the 47th marched for Alexandria and Natchitoches, near the top of the L-shaped state. Among the towns that the 47th Pennsylvanians passed through during their long marches were New Iberia, Vermilionville (now part of Lafayette), Opelousas, and Washington.

From 4-5 April 1864, the regiment added to its roster of young Black soldiers when Aaron Bullard (later known as Aaron French), JamesBullard, John Bullard, Samuel Jones, and Hamilton Blanchard (also known as John Hamilton) enrolled for military service with the 47th Pennsylvania at Natchitoches. According to their respective entries in the Civil War Veterans’ Card File at the Pennsylvania State Archives and on regimental muster rolls, the men were officially mustered in for duty on 22 June at Morganza, Louisiana. Several of their entries noted that they were assigned the rank of “Colored Cook” while others were given the rank of “Under Cook.”

Often short on food and water throughout their long, harsh-climate trek, the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers encamped briefly at Pleasant Hill (now the Village of Pleasant Hill) the night of 7 April before continuing on the next day.

Rushed into battle ahead of other regiments in the second division, sixty members of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry were cut down on 8 April 1864 during the intense volley of fire unleashed in the Battle of Sabine Cross Roads (also known as the Battle of Mansfield due to its proximity to the town of Mansfield). The fighting waned only when darkness fell. The exhausted, but uninjured collapsed beside the gravely wounded and dead. After midnight, the surviving Union troops withdrew to Pleasant Hill.

The next day, the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers were ordered into a critically important defensive position at the far right of the Union lines, their right flank spreading up onto a high bluff. By 3 p.m., after enduring a midday charge by the troops of Confederate Major-General Richard Taylor (a plantation owner who was the son of Zachary Taylor, former president of the United States), the brutal fighting still showed no signs of ending. Suddenly, just as the 47th was shifting to the left side of the Union force, the men of the 47th Pennsylvania were forced to bolster the 165th New York’s buckling lines by blocking another Confederate assault.

During that engagement (now known as the Battle of Pleasant Hill), the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers succeeded in recapturing a Massachusetts artillery battery that had been lost during the earlier Confederate assault. Unfortunately, the regiment’s second-in-command, Lieutenant-Colonel George W. Alexander, and its two color-bearers, Sergeants Benjamin Walls and William Pyers, were wounded. Alexander sustained wounds to both of his legs, and Walls was shot in the left shoulder as he attempted to mount the 47th Pennsylvania’s colors on caissons that had been recaptured, while Pyers was wounded as he grabbed the flag from Walls to prevent it from falling into Confederate hands.

All three survived the day, however, and continued to serve with the regiment, but many others, like K Company’s Second Lieutenant Alfred Swoyer, were killed in action during those two days of chaotic fighting, or were wounded so severely that they were unable to continue the fight. (Swoyer’s final words were, “They’re coming nine deep!” Shot in the right temple shortly afterward, his body was never recovered.)

Still others were captured by Confederate troops, marched roughly one hundred and twenty-five miles to Camp Ford, a Confederate Army prison camp near Tyler, Texas, and held there as prisoners of war until they were released during prisoner exchanges that began on 22 July and continued through November. At least two members of the regiment never made it out of that prison camp alive; another died at a Confederate hospital in Shreveport.

Meanwhile, as the captured 47th Pennsylvanians were being spirited away to Camp Ford, the bulk of the regiment was carrying out orders from senior Union Army leaders to head for Grand Ecore, Louisiana. Encamped there from 11-22 April, they engaged in the hard labor of strengthening regimental and brigade fortifications.

They then moved back to Natchitoches Parish on 22 April. While en route, they were attacked again, this time, at the rear of their retreating brigade, but they were able to end the encounter quickly and move on to reach Cloutierville at 10 p.m. that same night (after a forty-five-mile march).

The next morning (23 April), episodic skirmishing quickly roared into the flames of a robust fight. As part of the advance party led by Union Brigadier-General William Emory, the 47th Pennsylvanians took on the Confederate cavalry of Brigadier-General Hamilton P. Bee in the Battle of Cane River (also known as “the Affair at Monett’s Ferry” or the “Cane River Crossing”).

Responding to a barrage from the Confederate artillery’s twenty-pound Parrott guns and raking fire from enemy troops positioned near a bayou and atop a bluff, Brigadier-General Emory directed one of his brigades to keep Bee’s Confederates busy while sending two other brigades to find a safe spot for the Union force to cross the Cane River. As part of the “beekeepers,” the 47th Pennsylvania supported Emory’s artillery.

Meanwhile, additional troops under Smith’s command, attacked Bee’s flank to force a Rebel retreat, and then erected a series of pontoon bridges that enabled the 47th Pennsylvania and other Union troops to make the Cane River Crossing by the next day. As the Confederates retreated, they torched their own food stores, as well as the cotton supplies of their fellow southerners. In a letter penned from Morganza, C Company Musician Henry Wharton described what had happened:

Our sojourn at Grand Ecore was for eleven days, during which time our position was well fortified by entrenchments for a length of five miles, made of heavy logs, five feet high and six feet wide, filled in with dirt. In front of this, trees were felled for a distance of two hundred yards, so that if the enemy attacked we had an open space before us which would enable our forces to repel them and follow if necessary. But our labor seemed to the men as useless, for on the morning of 22d April, the army abandoned these works and started for Alexandria. From our scouts it was ascertained that the enemy had passed some miles to our left with the intention of making a stand against our right at Bayou Cane, where there is a high bluff and dense woods, and at the same attack Smith’s forces who were bringing up the rear. This first day was a hard one on the boys, for at 10 o’clock at night they made Cloutierville, a distance of forty-five miles. On that day the rear was attacked which caused our forces to reverse their front and form in line of battle, expecting too, to go back to the relief of Smith, but he needed no assistance, sending word to the front that he had ‘whipped them, and could do it again.’ It was well that Banks made so long a march on that day, for on the next we found the enemy prepared to carry out their design of attacking us front and rear. Skirmishing commenced early in the morning and as our columns advanced he fell back towards the bayou, when we soon discovered the position of their batteries on the bluff. There was then an artillery duel by the smaller pieces, and some sharp fighting by the cavalry, when the ‘mule battery,’ twenty pound Parrott guns opened a heavy fire, which soon dislodged them, forcing the chivalry to flee in a manner not at all suitable to their boasted courage. Before this one cavalry, the 3d Brigade of the 1st Div., and Birges’ brigade of the second, had crossed the bayou and were doing good service, which, with the other work, made the enemy show their heels. The 3d brigade done some daring deeds in this fight, as also did the cavalry. In one instance the 3d charged up a hill almost perpendicular, driving the enemy back by the bayonet without firing a gun. The woods on this bluff was so thick that the cavalry had to dismount and fight on foot. During the whole of the day, our brigade, the 2d, was supporting artillery, under fire all the time, and could not give Mr. Reb a return shot.

While we were fighting in front, Smith was engaged some miles in the rear, but he done his part well and drove them back. The rebel commanders thought by attacking us in the rear, and having a large face on the bluffs, they would be able to capture our train and take us all prisoners, but in this they were mistaken, for our march was so rapid that we were on them before they had thrown up the necessary earthworks. Besides they underrated the amount of our artillery, calculating from the number engaged at Pleasant Hill. The rebels say ‘it seems as though the Yankees manufacture, on short notice, artillery to order, and the men are furnished with wings when they wish to make a certain point.’

The damage done to the Confederate cause by the burning of cotton was immense. On the night of the 22d our route was lighted up for miles and millions of dollars worth of this production was destroyed. This loss will be felt more by Davis & Co., than several defeats in this region, for the basis of the loan in England was on the cotton in Louisiana.

After the rebels had fled from the bluff the negro troops put down the pontoons, and by ten that night we were six miles beyond the bayou safely encamped. The next morning we moved forward and in two days were in Alexandria. Johnnys followed Smith’s forces, keeping out of range of his guns, except when he had gained the eminence across the bayou, when he punished them (the rebs) severely.

Having finally reached Alexandria on 26 April, they learned they would remain at their latest new camp for at least two weeks. Placed temporarily under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Joseph Bailey, they were assigned yet again to the hard labor of construction work, helping to erect “Bailey’s Dam,” a timber structure that was designed to enable Union Navy gunboats to safely navigate the fluctuating waters of the Red River. According to Wharton:

We were at Alexandria seventeen days, during which time the men were kept busy at throwing up earthworks, foraging and three times went out some distance to meet the enemy, but they did not make their appearance in numbers large enough for an engagement. The water in the Red river had fallen so much that it prevented the gun boats from operating with us, and kept our transports from supplying the troops with rations, (and you know soldiers, like other people will eat), so Banks was compelled to relinquish his designs on Shreveport and fall back to the Mississippi. To do this a large dam had to be built on the falls at Alexandria to get the iron clads down the river. After a great deal of labor this was accomplished and by the morning of May 13th the last one was through the shute [sic, chute], when we bade adieu to Alexandria, marching through the town with banners flying and keeping step to the music of ‘Rally around the flag,’ and ‘When this cruel war is over.’ The next morning, at our camping place, the fleet of boats passed us, when we were informed that Alexandria had been destroyed by fire – the act of a dissatisfied citizen and several negroes. Incendiary acts were strictly forbidden in a general order before we left the place, and a cavalry guard was left in the rear to see the order enforced. After marching a few miles skirmishing commenced in front between the cavalry and the enemy in riflepits on the bank of the river, but they were easily driven away. When we came up we discovered their pits and places where there had been batteries planted. At this point the John Warren, an unarmed transport, on which were sick soldiers and women, was fired into and sunk, killing many and those that were not drowned taken prisoners. A tin-clad gun boat was destroyed at the same place, by which we lost a large mail. Many letters and directed envelopes were found on the bank – thrown there after the contents had been read by the unprincipled scoundrels. The inhumanity of Guerrilla bands in this department is beyond belief, and if one did not know the truth of it or saw some of their barbarities, he would write it down as the story of a ‘reliable gentleman’ or as told by an ‘intelligent contraband.’ Not satisfied with his murderous intent on unarmed transports he fires into the Hospital steamer Laurel Hill, with four hundred sick on board. This boat had the usual hospital signal floating fore and aft, yet, notwithstanding all this, and the customs of war, they fired on them, proving by this act that they are more hardened than the Indians on the frontier.

Continuing their march, the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers headed toward Avoyelles Parish. According to Wharton:

On Sunday, May 15th, we left the river road and took a short route through the woods, saving considerable distance. The windings of the Red river are so numerous that it resembles the tape-worm railroad where with the politicians frightened the dear people during the administration of Ritner and Stevens. – We stopped several hours in the woods to leave cavalry pass, when we moved forward and by four o’clock emerged into a large open plain where we formed in line of battle, expecting a regular engagement. The enemy, however, retired, and we advanced ’till dark, when the forces halted for the night with orders to rest on their arms. – ‘Twas here that Banks rode through our regiment, amidst the cheers of the boys, and gave the pleasant news that Grant had defeated Lee.

“Resting on their arms,” (half-dozing, without pitching their tents, and with their rifles right beside them), they were now positioned just outside of Marksville, on the eve of the 16 May 1864 Battle of Mansura, which unfolded as follows, according to Wharton:

Early next morning we marched through Marksville into a prairie nine miles long and six wide where every preparation was made for a fight. The whole of our force was formed in line, in support of artillery in front, who commenced operations on the enemy driving him gradually from the prairie into the woods. As the enemy retreated before the heavy fire of our artillery, they reached Missoula [sic, Mansura], where they formed in column, taking the whole field in an attempt to flank the enemy, but their running qualities were so good that we were foiled. The maneuvring [sic, maneuvering] of the troops was handsomely done, and the movements was [sic, were] one of the finest things of the war. The fight of artillery was a steady one of five miles. The enemy merely stood that they might cover the retreat of their infantry and train under cover of their artillery. Our loss was slight. Of the rebels we could not ascertain correctly, but learned from citizens who had secreted themselves during the fight, that they had many killed and wounded, who threw them into wagons, promiscuously, and drove them off so that we could not learn their casualties. The next day we moved to Simmsport [sic, Simmesport] on the Achafalaya [sic, Atchafalaya] river, where a bridge was made by putting the transports side by side, which enabled the troops and train to pass safely over. – The day before we crossed the rebels attacked Smith, thinking it was but the rear guard, in which they, the graybacks, were awfully cut up, and four hundred prisoners fell into our hands. Our loss in killed and wounded was ninety. This fight was the last one of the expedition. The whole of the force is safe on the Mississippi, gunboats, transports and trains. The 16th and 17th have gone to their old commands.

It is amusing to read the statements of correspondents to papers North, concerning our movements and the losses of the army. I have it from the best source that the Federal loss from Franklin to Mansfield, and from their [sic, there] to this point does not exceed thirty-five hundred in killed, wounded and missing, while that of the rebels is over eight thousand.

Continuing on, the surviving members of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry marched for Simmesport and then Morganza, where they made camp again. While encamped there, the nine formerly enslaved Black men who had enlisted with the regiment in Beaufort, South Carolina (October 1862) and Natchitoches, Louisiana (April 1864) were officially mustered into the regiment between 20-24 June 1864.

The regiment then moved on and arrived in New Orleans in late June. On 4 July, the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers received orders to return to the East Coast. Three days later, they began loading their men onto ships, a process that unfolded in two stages. Companies A, C, D, E, F, H, and I boarded the U.S. Steamer McClellan on 7 July and steamed away that day, while the members of Companies B, G and K remained behind, awaiting transport. They subsequently departed aboard the Blackstone, weighing anchor and sailing forth at the end of that month. Arriving in Virginia on 28 July, the second group reconnected with the first group at Monocacy, having missed out on the Battle of Cool Spring, the fight in which the first group had engaged at Snickers Gap, Virginia in mid-July.

Sheridan’s 1864 Shenandoah Valley Campaign

Attached to the Middle Military Division, U.S. Army of the Shenandoah, beginning in early August 1864, and placed under the command of Union Major-General Philip H. Sheridan, the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry was assigned to defensive duties in and around Halltown, and also engaged over the next several weeks in a series of back-and-forth movements between Halltown, Berryville, Middletown, Charlestown, and Winchester as part of a “mimic war” being waged by Sheridan’s Union forces with those commanded by Confederate Lieutenant-General Jubal Early.

The 47th Pennsylvania then engaged with Confederate forces in the Battle of Berryville, from 3-4 September. On 14 September 1864, Corporal Elias F. Benner was promoted to the rank of sergeant.

Battles of Opequan and Fisher’s Hill

Less than a week after his promotion, Sergeant Elias Benner and his fellow 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers began a series of battles that would turn the tide of the American Civil War firmly in the Union’s favor and help President Abraham Lincoln secure re-election.

Together, with other regiments under the command of Union Major-General Philip Sheridan and Brigadier-General William Emory, commander of the 19th Corps (XIX Corps), the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers helped to inflict heavy casualties on Lieutenant-General Jubal Early’s Confederate forces in the Battle of Opequan (also spelled as “Opequon” and known as “Third Winchester”).

The 47th Pennsylvania’s march toward destiny began at 2 a.m. on 19 September as the regiment left camp and joined up with other regiments in the Union’s 19th Corps. Advancing from Berryville toward Winchester, the 19th Corps bogged down for several hours as Union wagon trains made their way slowly across the terrain. As a result, Early’s Confederates were able to dig in and wait.

The fighting, which began in earnest at noon, was long and brutal. The Union’s left flank (6th Corps) took a beating from Confederate artillery that was positioned on higher ground.

Meanwhile, the 47th Pennsylvania and other 19th Corps regiments were directed by Brigadier-General Emory to attack and pursue Major-General John B. Gordon’s Confederate forces. Some success was achieved, but casualties mounted as a Confederate artillery group opened fire on Union troops that were trying to cross a clearing. When a nearly fatal gap began to open between the 6th and 19th Corps, Sheridan sent in units that were led by Brigadier-Generals Emory Upton and David A. Russell. Russell, hit twice (once in the chest), was mortally wounded.

The 47th Pennsylvania subsequently opened its lines long enough to enable the Union cavalry under William Woods Averell and the foot soldiers of Brigadier-General George Crook to charge the Confederates’ left flank. As the 19th Corps began pushing the Confederates back, with the 47th Pennsylvania involved in the thick of the fight, Early’s “grays” retreated. Sheridan’s “blue jackets” ultimately went on to win the day.

Leaving 2,500 wounded behind, the Rebels retreated to Fisher’s Hill, eight miles south of Winchester, where a second engagement, the Battle of Fisher’s Hill, was waged from 21-22 September. Following a successful morning flanking attack by Sheridan’s Union forces, which outnumbered Early’s Confederates three to one, Early’s troops fled to Waynesboro, but were pursued by the 47th Pennsylvania and other Union regiments. Afterward, the 47th Pennsylvanians made camp at Cedar Creek.

They would continue to distinguish themselves in battle, but they would do so without their two most senior leaders, Colonel Tilghman H. Good and Lieutenant-Colonel George W. Alexander, who mustered out upon expiration of their respective terms of service, 23-24 September. Fortunately, they were replaced by leaders who were equally respected for their front-line experience and temperament, including Major John Peter Shindel Gobin, formerly of Company C, who had been promoted up through the regimental officers’ corps (and who would be promoted again on 4 November to lieutenant-colonel and appointed as the regiment’s final commanding officer).

Battle of Cedar Creek 

During the fall of 1864, Major-General Philip Sheridan began the first of the Union’s true “scorched earth” campaigns, starving the enemy into submission by destroying Virginia’s farming infrastructure. Viewed today through the lens of history as inhumane, the strategy claimed many innocent civilians, whose lives were uprooted or even cut short by the inability to find food or adequate shelter. This same strategy, however, almost certainly contributed to the further turning of the war in the Union’s favor during the Battle of Cedar Creek on 19 October 1864.

Successful throughout most of their engagement with Union forces at Cedar Creek, Virginia, Early’s Confederates began peeling off in ever-growing numbers to forage for food, thus enabling Sheridan’s well-fed, stronger army to rally and win the day.

From a military standpoint, it was another impressive, but heartbreaking encounter. During the morning of 19 October, Early launched a surprise attack directly on Sheridan’s Cedar Creek-encamped forces. Early’s men were able to capture Union weapons while freeing a number of Confederates who had been taken prisoner during previous battles, all while pushing seven Union divisions back. According to Bates:

When the Army of West Virginia, under Crook, was surprised and driven from its works, the Second Brigade, with the Forty-seventh on the right was thrown into the breach to arrest the retreat…. Scarcely was it in position before the enemy came suddenly upon it, under the cover of fog. The right of the regiment was thrown back until it was almost a semi-circle. The brigade, only fifteen hundred strong, was contending against Gordon’s entire division, and was forced to retire, but, in comparative good order, exposed, as it was, to raking fire. Repeatedly forming, as it was pushed back, and making a stand at every available point, it finally succeeded in checking the enemy’s onset, when General Sheridan suddenly appeared upon the field, who ‘met his crest-fallen, shattered battalions, without a word of reproach, but joyously swinging his cap, shouted to the stragglers, as he rode rapidly past them – ‘Face the other way, boys! We are going back to our camp! We are going to lick them out of their boots!'”

In response, Union troops staged a decisive counterattack that punched Early’s forces into submission. Afterward, the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers were commended for their heroism by General Stephen Thomas, who, in 1892, was awarded the Medal of Honor for his own “distinguished conduct in a desperate hand-to-hand encounter, in which the advance of the enemy was checked” that day.

But the day proved to be a particularly costly one for the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry. The regiment lost the equivalent of two full companies of men in killed, wounded and missing, as well as soldiers who were captured by rebel troops and dragged off to prisoner of war (POW) camps, including the Confederates’ Libby Prison in Virginia, the notorious Salisbury Prison in North Carolina and the hellhole known as “Andersonville” in Georgia. Subjected to harsh treatment at the latter two, many of the 47th Pennsylvanians confined there never made it out alive. Those who did either died soon after their release, or were never the same again.

Following those major battles, the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers were ordered to march to Camp Russell near Winchester, where they rested and began the long recovery process from their physical and mental wounds. Stationed there throughout most of the fall and early winter, they were subsequently ordered to pack up their weapons and ammunition, yet again, and ready themselves for yet another trek during difficult weather.

Five days before Christmas, they marched through a driving snowstorm until they finally reached Camp Fairview, on the outskirts of Charlestown, West Virginia.

1865-1866

New responsibilities arrived with the New Year of 1865 as K Company Captain Charles W. Abbott was commissioned as a lieutenant-colonel and promoted to the position of second-in-command of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry. Still stationed at Camp Fairview in West Virginia, members of the regiment continued to patrol and guard key Union railroad lines in the vicinity of Charlestown, while other 47th Pennsylvanians chased down Confederate guerrillas who had made repeated attempts to disrupt railroad operations and kill soldiers from other Union regiments.

While stationed with the regiment near Stephenson, Virginia, on 23 January 1865, Sergeant Elias F. Benner left the ranks of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry to become a commissioned officer with the same company in his regiment. Now officially Second Lieutenant Elias Benner, he would continue to command others who had been his brothers-in-arms since September 1861, but from a higher level role and perspective.

Assigned in February 1865 to the Provisional Division of the 2nd Brigade of the U.S. Army of the Shenandoah, the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers continued to perform their guerrilla-fighting duties until late March, when they were ordered to head back to Washington, D.C., by way of Winchester and Kernstown, Virginia.

Joyous News and Then Tragedy

As April 1865 opened, the battles between the Army of the United States and the Confederate States Army intensified, finally reaching the decisive moment when the Confederate troops of General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Union General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox on 9 April.

The long war, it seemed, was finally over. Less than a week later, however, the fragile peace was threatened when an assassin’s bullet ended the life of President Abraham Lincoln. Shot while attending an evening performance of Our American Cousin at Ford’s Theatre on 14 April 1865, he had died from his wound at 7:22 a.m. the next morning.

Shocked, and devastated by the news, which was received at their Fort Stevens encampment, the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers were given little time to mourn their beloved commander-in-chief before they were ordered to grab their weapons and move into the regiment’s assigned position, from which it helped to protect the nation’s capital and thwart any attempt by Confederate soldiers and their sympathizers to re-ignite the flames of civil war that had finally been stamped out.

So key was their assignment that the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers were not even allowed to march in the funeral procession of their slain leader. Instead, they took part in a memorial service with other members of their brigade that was officiated by the 47th Pennsylvania’s regimental chaplain, the Reverend William D. C. Rodrock.

Present-day researchers who read letters sent by 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers to family and friends back home in Pennsylvania during this period, or post-war interviews conducted by newspaper reporters with veterans of the regiment in later years, will learn that the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers were collectively heartbroken by Lincoln’s death and deeply angry at those whose actions had culminated in his murder. Researchers will also learn that at least one member of the regiment, C Company Drummer Samuel Hunter Pyers, was given the high honor of guarding President Lincoln’s funeral train, while other members of the regiment were assigned to guard duty at the prison where the key assassination conspirators were being held during the early days of their imprisonment and trial, which began on 9 May 1865. During this phase of duty, the regiment was headquartered at Camp Brightwood in the Brightwood section of Washington, D.C.

Attached to Dwight’s Division of the 2nd Brigade of the Department of Washington’s 22nd Corps, the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers also participated in the Union’s Grand Review, which took place in Washington, D.C. from 23 May.

Helping a Shattered Nation Rebuild

On their final tour of America’s Deep South, the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers were initially stationed in Savannah, Georgia. Assigned to provost (military police) and other Reconstruction-related duties there from 31 May to 4 June 1865, as part of Dwight’s Division, 3rd Brigade, Department of the South, they were subsequently ordered to Charleston, South Carolina, where they were assigned to similar duties from early July through the remainder of the year.

Sometime after the regiment’s arrival in Charleston, Second Lieutenant Elias Benner was placed in command of the Charleston City Jail. His performance of these duties, however, was called into question after several prisoners slipped away from the guards under his command, a failure that resulted in his court martial by the army.

Arrested and charged with “Neglect of Duty,” Second Lieutenant Benner appeared before the court martial panel in Hilton Head on 6 October 1865. According to the 10 October edition of The Charleston Daily News:

HEADQ’RS DEPARTMENT OF SO. CA. HILTON HEAD, S.C., October 6, 1865

[General Orders, No. 47.]

I. BEFORE A GENERAL COURT MARTIAL, WHICH convened at Charleston, S.C., pursuant to Special Orders, No. 34, Paragraph I, dated Headquarters Department of South Carolina, Hilton Head, S.C., August 16, 1865, and Special Orders, No. 44, dated Headquarters Department of South Carolina, Hilton Head, S.C., August 24, 1865, and of which, Lieutenant-Colonel A. J. Willard was President, was arraigned and tried:

Lieutenant E. T. BENNER [sic], 4th Pennsylvania Veteran Volunteers [sic].

CHARGE. “Neglect of Duty.”

Specification 1st. In this, that he, Lieutenant E. T. Benner [sic], Company K, 47th Pennsylvania Veteran Volunteers, Commanding City Jail, Charleston, S.C., did, through grievous negligence, allow, on or about the 22d of August, 1865, eight prisoners to escape from the City Jail, Charleston, S.C.

Specification 2d. In this, that he, Lieutenant E. T. BENNER [sic], Company K, 47th Pennsylvania Veteran Volunteers, Commanding City Jail, Charleston, S.C., did, on or about the 31st of August, 1865, allow five prisoners to escape from the City Jail, Charleston, S.C.

All this in the City of Charleston, S.C., on or about the 22d and 31st days of August, 1865. 

To which Charge and Specifications the accused pleaded “Not Guilty.”

FINDING.

The Court, having maturely considered the evidence adduced, find the accused, Lieutenant E. T. BENNER [sic], 47th Pennsylvania Veteran Volunteers, as follows:

Of the 1st Specification of the Charge, “Guilty,” excepting the words “Eight.”

Of the 2d Specification of the Charge, “Not Guilty.”

Of the Charge, “Guilty.”

SENTENCE.

And the Court do, therefore, sentence him, Lieutenant E. T. BENNER [sic], 47th Pennsylvania Veteran Volunteers, “To be Reprimanded in General Orders.”

The proceedings, findings and sentence of the Court, in this case, are approved.

The Commanding General hopes that it will not be necessary to notice such gross negligence of duty in Lieutenant BENNER again. He will be released from arrest and returned to duty.

By command of Brevet Major CHARLES DEVINS. W. L. M. BURGER, Assistant Adjutant General. 

Official: T. D. HODGES, Captain, 35th U.S.C.T., Assistant Adjutant General. October 10.

Despite this blemish on his record, Second Lieutenant Elias F. Benner continued to serve with the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry until it was mustered out in Charleston for the final time on Christmas Day in 1865.

He was then transported north by ship with his fellow 47th Pennsylvania Veteran Volunteers to New York City, and then by train to Philadelphia, where he was given his honorable discharge papers at Camp Cadwalader in early January 1866.

Return to Civilian Life

Following his honorable discharge from the military, Elias Benner returned home to Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley, but did not remain there for long. Deciding to make his way west before the decade ended, he initially opted to settle in Ohio, where he wed Ohio native Elizabeth Fox (1851-1905) in 1869. A son, Albert Wellington Benner, was born in Ohio later that same year (alternate birth year 1870), followed by another son, Otis Lee Benner (1871-1935), in 1871.

Sometime after that, Elias Benner packed up his young family and moved them to Indiana. Their daughter, Lillian, was subsequently born in Indiana in August 1873, followed by another son, Lewis, circa 1878. By 1880, they were residing in Kendallville, Noble County, Indiana, where Elias was employed as a piano tuner.

Residing in Orange Township, Noble County with his wife and daughter, Lillian, after the turn of the century, Elias Benner was engaged in watch repair, while his wife and daughter were employed as dressmakers.

On New Year’s Day in 1901, daughter Lillian wed Wallace W. Huntsman in Noble County. Son Otis L. Benner then married Minnie Augusta Luck (1887-1961) in Lake County, Indiana, the day after Christmas in 1903.

On 7 November 1905, son Albert wed Nora Edna Congdon. The ceremony, which was held at the home of her parents in Fort Wayne, Allen County, Indiana, was described by The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette as “a quiet affair” that included “only relatives and near friends of the couple.” Their daughter, Flora Benner, was born later that year (alternate birth date: early 1906).

Illness, Death and Internment

Predeceased by his wife in 1905, Elias Benner fell ill shortly thereafter. Paralyzed as his health declined further, he was cared for by his son, Otis. On 23 May 1906, he died at his son’s home in Fort Wayne, Allen County, Indiana, and was laid to rest at the Orange Cemetery in Rome City, Noble County, Indiana.

What Happened to Elias Bennett’s Children?

Albert W. Benner and his wife, Nora, welcomed the birth of daughter Dorothy Virginia Benner circa 1907. By 1910, Albert lived with them in Fort Wayne, Allen County, Indiana, where he was employed as a watchmaker in the retail jewelry industry. Residents of Wayne Township in Allen County by 1920, their household now also included Nora’s mother, Johanna. Albert, however, was now supporting his family on the wages of an optician, a job he continued to hold in 1930 when his household had shrunk back to its original three members.

Empty nesters after their daughter married, Albert and Nora continued to reside in Wayne Township until the end of his life. Following his death from heart disease in Fort Wayne on 31 May 1943, he was laid to rest at the Greenlawn Memorial Park in Fort Wayne.

Meanwhile, Lillian (Benner) Huntsman and her husband, Wallace, had relocated to the city of Denver, Colorado by 1910, where he was employed as a merchant. Widowed by her husband in 1933, after having returned to Indiana with him, she survived him by roughly six years. Following her death in 1939, she was laid to rest beside him at the Orange Cemetery in Rome City.

Otis L. Benner and his wife, Minnie, welcomed the birth of a daughter, Roma Louise Benner (1911-2007), on 8 February 1911. She would later go on to marry Richard Fredrick Hale (1911-1990). Another daughter, May Benner, arrived circa 1914, followed by a son, Otis C. Benner, who was born in Gary, Lake County on 26 April 1918.

By 1920, Otis Benner was employed as a laborer at a sawmill; his household included his wife, Minnie, their fifteen-year-old daughter, Flora, their nine-year-old daughter, Roma, their six-year-old daughter, May, and their nine-month-old son, Otis.  Still residents Gary as of 1930, their household was reduced in size by the absence of daughter, Flora, who had likely begun her own family.

Employed in a good-paying, stable job as a laborer at a steel mill, Otis Benner had done well enough for himself to also become a homeowner by the mid-nineteenth century. He continued to enjoy life until his death in Gary, Indiana in 1935. He still rests at that city’s Ridgelawn Cemetery.

 

Sources:

1. Albert W. Benner, in Death Certificates (registered no.: 15791, date of death: 31 May 1943). Indiana: Indiana State Board of Health.
2. Bates, Samuel P. History of Pennsylvania Volunteers, 1861-5, vol. 1. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: B. Singerly, State Printer, 1869.
3. Benner, Albert, Nora and Dorothy, in U.S. Census (Fort Wayne, Allen County, Indiana, 1910). Washington, D.C.: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.
4. Benner, Albert, Nora and Dorothy, and Congdon, Johanna, in U.S. Census (Wayne Township, Allen County, Indiana, 1920). Washington, D.C.: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.
5. Benner, Albert, Nora and Dorothy, in U.S. Census (Wayne Township, Allen County, Indiana, 1930). Washington, D.C.: U.S. National Archives and Administration.
6. Benner, Albert and Nora, in U.S. Census (Wayne Township, Allen County, Indiana, 1940). Washington, D.C.: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.
7. Benner, Elias F., in Civil War Muster Rolls (Company K, 47th Pennsylvania Infantry). Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State Archives.
8. Benner, Elias F., in Civil War Veterans’ Card File, 1861-1865 (Company K, 47th Pennsylvania Infantry). Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State Archives.
9. Benner, Elias F., in Death Certificates (record no. 323, date of death: 16 May 1906). Indiana: Indiana State Board of Health.
10. Benner, Elias, Elizabeth, Albert, Otis, Lillie, and Lewis, in U.S. Census (Kendallville, Noble County, Indiana, 1880). Washington, D.C.: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.
11. Benner, Elias, Elizabeth and Lillian, in U.S. Census (Orange Township, Noble County, Indiana, 1900). Washington, D.C.: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.
12. Benner, Lillian and Wallace Huntsman, in Marriage Records (Noble County, Indiana, January 1, 1901). Noble County, Indiana: Clerk of the Orphans’ Court.
13. Benner, Otis (father), Minnie, Flora, Roma, May, and Otis (son), in U.S. Census (Calumet, Lake County, Indiana, 1920). Washington, D.C.: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.
14. Benner, Otis (father), Minnie, Roma, Mae, and Otis (son), in U.S. Census (Gary City, Cabinet Township, Lake County, Indiana, 1930). Washington, D.C.: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.
15. Benner, Otis C. (grandson of Elias F. Benner), in Death Certificates (92-009161, date of death: 19 February 1992). Indiana: Indiana State Board of Health.
16. Elias Benner (obituary). Allentown, Pennsylvania: The Allentown Leader, 23 May 1906.
17. “General Orders, No. 47.” Charleston, South Carolina: The Daily News, 10 October 1865.
18. Huntsman, Wallace and Lillian, in U.S. Census (City of Denver, Denver County, Colorado, 1910). Washington, D.C.: U.S National Archives and Records Administration.
19. Huntsman, Wallace and Lillian, in U.S. Census (Rome City, Noble County, Indiana, 1930). Washington, D.C.: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.
20. “Personal and Society” (wedding announcement of Albert W. Benner and Nora Edna Congdon). Fort Wayne, Indiana: The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, 7 November 1905.
21. Schmidt, Lewis. A Civil War History of the 47th Regiment of Pennsylvania Veteran Volunteers. Allentown, Pennsylvania: Self-published, 1986.