Beschreibung:

Lot of 4 letters from Benjamin McCulloch to his brother Henry McCulloch written during the Mexican War in 1847 and during his time in Washington in 1856. Accompanied by the biography Life and Services of Gen. Ben McCulloch, by Victor M. Rose (Philadelphia: Pictorial Bureau of the Press, 1888). Born in Tennessee of impressive parentage, one could assume Benjamin (Ben McCulloch lived a privileged early life. His mother was the daughter of a prominent Virginia planter. His father was a Yale alumni who served a major on Brig. Gen. John Coffee's staff during Andrew Jackson's campaign against the Creeks in Alabama. However, the family lost much of their wealth after the Revolutionary War and Benjamin's father squandered what was left of his inheritance, leaving no money for he and his brothers' educations. Instead of his father, influential family friends and neighbors Sam Houston and David Crockett provided opportunities for Ben McCulloch to succeed. The McCullochs moved often between 1812 and 1830, but finally settled in Dyersburg, TN where Ben and his younger brother Henry hunted, rafted, farmed, and developed a close friendship with David Crockett. Ben followed Crockett to Texas on log rafts down the Mississippi. He joined Houston's army on its retreat into East Texas and became a 1st Lieut after successfully commanding one of the Twin Sisters at the battle of San Jacinto. Following a brief rest from his military career as a surveyor, he joined the Texas Rangers under John Coffee Hays and earned a reputation as a fierce Indian fighter. During the Mexican Wars, he raised a command of Col. Jack Hays's First Regiment of the Texas Mounted Vol. and became chief of scouts under Zachary Taylor. During his intermittent career in the Mexican War McCulloch wrote to his brother, Henry, I leave in the morning with about 30 men and as you may return home before I do I wish you would get located and surveyed....Any of my lands you can sell do so for what you think they are worth get the pay in money or negroes down or early this fall as I wish to go after mother (Gonzales, January 8, 1847). McCulloch was a fierce supporter of slavery and felt that the dissemination of the institution was an affront to Southern honor and would destroy the South's political liberties. He took his passions to Washington and served under Judge John Charles Watrous during Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan's administrations. In May of the 1856 Presidential election, debates in Congress reached a boiling point when Senator Preston Brooks beat Senator Charles Sumner with a cane after Sumner's bitter speech, "The Crime Against Kansas." Republicans clamored that the House oust Brooks for the beating. Two months later, McCulloch waited with his friends in the House of Representatives to hear the House's decision. The South has greatly the advantage in the arguments on the subject, the North seem very anxious to place themselves out of the reach of responsibility as regards to anything they may say or do in the House they have shown thus far that they are an arrant set of patroons and cowards, wrote McCulloch (Washington, July 1856). The House decided to fine Brooks 300 dollars for his actions. Brooks resigned, only to be re-elected by his state and return to his position. As a stalwart supporter of the South and slavery, McCulloch saw the upcoming presidential election as an important indicator for the future of the country. He wrote to his brother that he would raise an army and march on Washington before letting a Black Republican be inaugurated on southern soil. If the south are so blind to their own interest and honor as to submit [to Fremont], then I am for the secession of Texas, wrote McCulloch. We came into the Union without own free will and can go out if we think proper to do so (Washington, July 1856 Texas seceded and McCulloch raised an army, but not as a result of the 1856 election. Buchanan defeated Fremont, postponing the upcoming war. A few months after