After leaving his job as a ranger on the Butterfield Overland Mail Service, Benjamin Hardin Newton left Arkansas in early 1861 and traveled to his relatives in Spring Place, Murray County Georgia. He may not have met his Georgia relatives before this, since travel between Georgia and Arkansas would not have been easy. But James Edmondson, the patriarch of Spring Place, was Benjamin's maternal uncle. The Arkansas and Georgia branches of the family would have kept in touch over the years, since other family members had also settled in northwest Arkansas.
So Cousin Benjamin arrived in Spring Place in the spring of 1861. That may have been an idyllic time for Benjamin, as he got to know his cousins and experienced a taste of what was probably a more luxurious life than he had been used to in Fort Smith, which was really a rough frontier town. Of course this life he was tasting was about to be completely swept away.
In July, Company C --called the Murray County Rifles-- of the 11th Georgia Infantry was formed. Benjamin joined on the very first day of its organization, as a private.* His younger cousin and future brother-in-law Tom Polk Edmondson joined too, also as a private. As the company and its regiment were being organized, Benjamin was made adjutant of the regiment and a second lieutenant. From that point he was no longer in Company C, but became a member of the general officer staff of the regiment. Adjutant was primarily an administrative position that entailed assisting the officers and maintaining the organization. His appointment as adjutant suggests that he was at least decently well educated; and the letters and notes that appear in his service file suggest the same thing.
The 11th Georgia Infantry was a volunteer unit, but not everybody was a volunteer. Some -- maybe just the officers -- had appointments in the Regular Army. The difference between being a regular rather than a volunteer was, of course, a pay check. Late in 1861 Benjamin applied for an appointment as a regular officer, which he received. His service record includes notes he wrote about his application as well as letters of recommendation from his superior officers, who describe him as "gallant," "efficient," "prompt and energetic," and "a young man of much promise." It's also from these recommendations that we learn about his experience with Butterfield.
His regiment saw action at the Battle of Yorktown and at Williamsburg and in other engagements of the Peninsula Campaign around Richmond. It was probably during this campaign that Benjamin was wounded, since his medical report is dated June 24th, a few weeks later.
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| Battle of Seven Pines, or Fair Oaks. Courtesy of The Library of Congress. |
At the end of June 1862 Benjamin resigned from the Army with a medical discharge. The brigade surgeon reported that Benjamin was unfit for service because of a wound in the hip and also because he was suffering from chronic diarrhea. (This was one of the worst scourges of the Civil War, and claimed more lives than battlefield injuries.)
After he resigned, Benjamin probably returned to Spring Place to recuperate. Because of his resignation, Benjamin missed the most horrific battles of the war. But his resignation did not end his military service. After making a recovery, he re-enlisted in late 1862.
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| Map of the Peninsula Campaign Courtesy of The Civil War Trust |
*For some odd reason I have 42 pages of old, very poor, photocopies of Benjamin Hardin Newton's official Confederate service record. On the first page is written, "Please return to Earl Arnett" but obviously that didn't happen. It's a little hard to piece together all the various bits of this record. But this is what I have come up with, based on what's there, as well as corroborating material at the Library of Congress Soldiers and Sailors site.
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