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Category Archives: Samuel Nicoll Benjamin
Reprise: Bleak House
One reader of the novel recently emailed to say he‘d Googled “Bleak House” and was surprised to see that it still stands. This is an old photo of the Armstrong home—which hosted Gen. Longstreet’s headquarters during the siege—when it was still a … Continue reading
Hamilton Fish
Lieutenant Samuel Nicoll Benjamin, commander of the artillery at Fort Sanders and, in fact, of the fort itself during the Confederate attack, later married a daughter of Hamilton Fish of New York City. President Grant chose Fish, a former governor … Continue reading
Benjamin’s Battery
Lieutenant Samuel N. Benjamin’s Battery E, Second U.S. Artillery, has gotten short shrift in post-Civil War history. Even in the history of the war—except for Antietam and Fredericksburg—its record was scanted. Rather more has been recorded about it in recent … Continue reading
Lieutenant Benjamin’s grave
His grave marker in Putnam County, New York. Or is it? There’s another one, here, and some confusion over the spelling of his middle name.
Friedrich Engels on rifled weapons
Benjamin’s Parrott guns were rifled for greater range and accuracy. So were the 3-inch bronze and steel cannon of Parker’s “Boy Battery.” Both types of cannon were new, and also not so easy to make, according to these 1860 newspaper … Continue reading
General Order 100: Code of Conduct
In the novel, some Confederate prisoners are killed in the Northwest Bastion. The killings are supported in the historical record by one cryptic sentence in Lieutenant Benjamin’s after-action report to General Burnside. The lieutenant, in describing the zeal of the … Continue reading
Reenactor anachronisms
The rifled parrott gun in this mock Northwest Bastion of a pretend Fort Sanders (miles away from where the original sat) is just one of the anachronisms the reenactor community puts up with. The only big guns in the bastion … Continue reading
The dancing master in the bomb-proof
Gen. Edward Ferraro, a New York dancing master turned politically-appointed Union general, nominally commanded the troops who defended Fort Sanders. In fact, Ferraro didn’t lead anyone but spent the battle for the fort in his bomb-proof shelter along the north … Continue reading
Agincourt, 1415
In the novel, I had the outcome of the attack on Fort Sanders remind its commander, Lieutenant Samuel Nicoll Benjamin, of the Battle of Agincourt, 448 years before—where the outnumbered English under King Henry V defeated the numerically-superior French. If … Continue reading
Hot water freezes faster than cold
Some readers—including my good editor who scoured out my misspellings and grammar errors—stumbled over the notion that Union troops would pour hot water down the exterior slope of the fort’s northwest bastion to make overnight ice to slow if not … Continue reading
