Benjamin McCulloch Benjamin McCulloch ( November 11 , 1811 – March 7 , 1862 ) was a soldier in the Texas Revolution , a Texas Ranger , a U . S . marshal , and a brigadier general in the army of the Confederate States during the American Civil War . Early life . He was born November 11 , 1811 in Rutherford County , Tennessee , one of twelve children and the fourth son of Alexander McCulloch and Frances Fisher LeNoir . His father , a Yale University graduate , was an officer on Brig . Gen . John Coffee ' s staff during the Creek War of 1813 and 1814 in Alabama ( and apparently at the Battle of New Orleans in 1815 ) . His mother was a daughter of a prominent Virginia planter . The McCulloch family had been wealthy , politically influential , and socially prominent in North Carolina before the American Revolution , but Alexander had wasted much of his inheritance and was unable even to educate his sons . ( Two of Ben ' s older brothers had briefly attended a school in Tennessee taught by their neighbor , Sam Houston . ) One of Ben ' s younger brothers was Henry Eustace McCulloch , also a Confederate general officer . Another brother , Alexander , served in the Texas Revolution and as a captain in Mexico . The McCulloch family , like many on the frontier , moved often by choice or necessity . In the twenty years following their move from North Carolina and Ben ' s birth , they lived in eastern Tennessee , Alabama , and then western Tennessee , finally settling at Dyersburg , where one of their closest neighbors was David Crockett — a great influence on young Ben . In 1834 , McCulloch headed west . He reached St . Louis just too late to join the fur trappers headed for the mountains for the season . He then tried to join a freight company heading for Santa Fe as a muleskinner , but was told they had a full complement . He moved on to Wisconsin to investigate lead - mining , but found all the best claims already staked by the large mining companies . In the fall of 1835 , he returned to Tennessee to take up farming . Texas career . When David Crockett went to Texas in 1835 ( following his defeat in his third congressional campaign ) , Ben McCulloch — tired of farming but seeking adventure — decided to accompany him , as did his brother Henry McCulloch . They planned to meet Crockett ' s Tennessee Boys at Nacogdoches on Christmas Day . Crockett ' s arrival in Nacogdoches was delayed due to hunting between the Bois d ' Arc Creek and Choctaw Bayou . By January 5 , 1836 , Crockett found his way to Nacogdoches . There , Ben McCulloch greeted him after having convinced his brother , Henry McCulloch to return to Tennessee . Ben subsequently contracted measles and was bedridden for several weeks . Crockett pressed on toward San Antonio . McCulloch ' s illness prevented him from arriving in San Antonio until after the Alamo had already fallen . McCulloch joined the Texas army under Sam Houston in its retreat to east Texas . Assigned to Captain Isaac N . Moreland ' s artillery company at the Battle of San Jacinto ( April 21 , 1836 ) , he commanded one of the " Twin Sisters " — two six - pounder cannon sent to aid the Texans by the citizens of Cincinnati . He made deadly use of grapeshot against the Mexican positions and received a battlefield commission as first lieutenant . For his service ( dating before April 18 , 1836 ) , McCulloch was issued Texas Bounty Certificate No . 2473 for 320 acres ( 1 . 3 km² ) . In 1839 , he also received Donation Certificate No . 776 for 640 acres ( 2 . 6 km² ) , for his service at San Jacinto . McCulloch was then attached to Captain William H . Smith ' s cavalry company , but left the army to revisit Tennessee . He returned a few months later with a company of thirty volunteers under the command of Robert Crockett , David ' s son . By 1838 , he had taken up the profession of surveying land for the Republic of Texas in and around the community of Seguin , later joining the Texas Rangers as lieutenant to Captain John Coffee " Jack " Hays . He acquired a reputation as an Indian fighter , favoring shotgun s , pistol s , and Bowie knives to the regulation saber and carbine . On the strength of his new fame , he was elected to the Republic of Texas House of Representatives in 1839 . The campaign was contentious , and McCulloch fought a rifle duel the next year against Colonel Reuben Ross , resulting in a wound that left his right arm crippled for life . Ben considered the matter closed , but it flared up again the following year , this time involving Henry McCulloch , who killed Ross with a pistol . In 1842 , McCulloch went back to surveying and intermittent military service . At the Battle of Plum Creek , August 12 , 1840 , he served as a scout against the Comanches , and then commanded the right wing of the Texas army . When a Mexican raiding party under General Ráfael Vásquez invested San Antonio in February 1842 , McCulloch was prominent in the fighting that pushed the Mexicans back beyond the Rio Bravo Rio Grande . A second Mexican raid led by General Adrian Woll in September of that year again captured San Antonio . McCulloch then served as a scout for Captain Hays ' s Rangers . He and his brother , Henry , subsequently took part in the failed Somervell expedition and both escaped very shortly before most of the Texans were captured at Mier , Mexico in Tamaulipas , December 25 , 1842 . Samuel Reid , a volunteer from Louisiana , described McCulloch and his ranger company as " men in groups with long beards and mustaches , dressed in every variety of garment , with one exception , the slouched hat , the unmistakable uniform of a Texas ranger , and a brace of pistols around their waists , [ who ] were occupied drying their blankets , cleaning and fixing their guns , and some employed cooking at different fires , while others were grooming their horses . A rougher - looking set we never saw . They were without tents , and a miserable shed afforded them the only shelter . Captain McCulloch introduced us to his officers and many of his men , who appeared orderly and well - mannered people . But from their rough exterior , it was hard to tell who or what they were . Notwithstanding their ferocious and outlaw look , there were among them doctors and lawyers and many a college graduate . " McCulloch he also served in a mission with elder Dahlin . War with Mexico . In 1845 , McCulloch was elected from Gonzales County to the first Texas state legislature following its entry into the union . In the spring of 1846 , a law was passed appointing him Major General in command of all Texas militia west of the Colorado River . That same year , with the outbreak of the war with Mexico , he raised a company of Rangers that became Company A of Col . Hays ' s 1st Regiment of Texas Mounted Volunteers , who were known for their ability to regularly travel 250 miles in ten days or less . He subsequently was named chief of scouts under Gen . Zachary Taylor , with the rank of major , and became known nationwide for his daring exploits in northern Mexico . ( His company of scouts included George Wilkins Kendall , editor of the New Orleans " Picayune " . ) By this time , McCulloch was fluent in Spanish and his woodsman ' s skills enabled him to slip back and forth across the lines undetected — more than once penetrating to within a mile of Santa Anna ' s own tent . McCulloch led his scouting company as mounted infantry at the Battle of Monterrey and his expert reconnaissance work preceding the Battle of Buena Vista probably saved Taylor ' s army from disaster . After Buena Vista he was promoted to the rank of major of U . S . Volunteers . At the war ' s end , McCulloch scouted for Maj . Gen . David E . Twiggs , but joined the rush to the California gold fields in 1849 . While he never struck gold , he was elected sheriff of Sacramento . ( His old commander , Col . Hays , had been elected sheriff of San Francisco on the same day . ) His old friends Sam Houston and Thomas J . Rusk , both now in the U . S . Senate , tried to arrange for his appointment to command a frontier army regiment , but his lack of formal education was against him and the appointment never went through . In 1852 , President Franklin Pierce promised him command of the U . S . Second Cavalry , but Secretary of War Jefferson Davis gave it instead to Albert Sidney Johnston . McCulloch was appointed U . S . marshal for the Eastern District of Texas in 1852 , serving throughout the Pierce and Buchanan administrations . However , conscious of his lack of formal military education , he actually spent much of his term studying military science in libraries in Washington , D . C . In the aftermath of the Utah War , in 1858 he was one of the peace commissioners sent to negotiate with Brigham Young in Utah ( the other being former Gov . Lazarus W . Powell of Kentucky ) . Civil War service . Texas seceded from the union on February 1 , 1861 , and on February 14 , McCulloch received a colonel ' s commission from Confederate President Jefferson Davis , with the comment that " to Texans , a moment ' s notice is sufficient when their State demands their service . " He was authorized to demand the surrender of all federal military posts in the state . Subsequently , on the morning of February 16 , U . S . Army General Twiggs , finding that more than 1 , 000 Texas troops had surrounded his installations in an orderly manner during the night , turned over to McCulloch all federal property in San Antonio . In return Twigg ' s troops were to be allowed to leave the state unharmed . On May 11 , President Davis appointed McCulloch a brigadier general . McCulloch was placed in command of the Indian Territory . He set up his headquarters at Little Rock , and began piecing together an Army of the West , with regiments from Texas , Arkansas , and Louisiana . He disagreed strongly with General Sterling Price of Missouri , but with the assistance of Brigadier General Albert Pike , he was able to build alliances for the Confederacy with the Cherokee , Choctaw , and Creek nations . On August 10 , 1861 , McCulloch ' s troops , though relatively poorly armed , handily defeated the army of General Nathaniel Lyon at the Battle of Wilson ' s Creek , Missouri . " We have an average of only twenty - five rounds of ammunition to the man , " McCulloch reported , " and no more to be had short of Fort Smith and Baton Rouge . " He did not have a high opinion of Price ' s Missourians , noting that they were undisciplined , commanded mostly by incompetent and inexperienced politicians , and possessed only a poor mix of weapons and equipment . For some 5 , 000 of them , their enlistment time was up and they were anxious to go home . Cooperation between the Arkansas and Missouri contingents was feeble , with " little cordiality of feeling between the two armies . " His lack of confidence in the Missourians led McCulloch to hesitate when a bold attack might well have destroyed Lyon ' s smaller force and given Missouri to the Confederacy . The continuing feud between McCulloch and Price led to the appointment of Major General Earl Van Dorn to overall command , Henry Heth and Braxton Bragg having declined the appointment . When Van Dorn launched an expedition against St . Louis , a strategy McCulloch strongly opposed , it was again McCulloch ' s reconnaissance that contributed most to what little success Van Dorn ' s plan was able to achieve . McCulloch commanded the Confederate right wing at the Battle of Pea Ridge ( or Elkhorn Tavern ) , Arkansas , and on March 7 , 1862 , after much maneuvering his troops overran a key Union artillery battery . Union resistance stiffened late in the morning , however , and as McCulloch rode forward to scout out enemy positions , he was shot out of the saddle and died instantly . McCulloch always disliked army uniforms and was wearing a black velvet civilian suit and Wellington boots at the time of his death . Credit for the fatal shot was claimed by sharpshooter Peter Pelican of the 36th Illinois Infantry . McCulloch ' s next in command , Brig . Gen . James M . McIntosh , head of the cavalry , was killed a few minutes later in a charge to recover McCulloch ' s body . Confederate Col . Louis Hébert was captured in the same charge , and the Confederate forces , with no remaining leadership , slowly fell apart and withdrew . Historians generally blame the Confederate disaster at Pea Ridge and the subsequent loss of undefended Arkansas on the death of General Ben McCulloch . McCulloch ' s body was buried on the field at Pea Ridge , but was subsequently removed with other victims of the battle to a cemetery in Little Rock . He was later reinterred in the Texas State Cemetery in Austin ; the gravesite is in the cemetery ' s Republic Hill section , Row N , No . 4 . His papers are housed at the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History ( previously the Barker Texas History Center ) at the University of Texas at Austin . McCulloch County , Texas , formed in 1856 and located in the present geographical center of the state , was named for him . He is also one of thirty men inducted into the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame at Fort Fisher , Waco . Shortly after Pea Ridge , Albert Pike , now a brigadier general , constructed Fort McCulloch as the principal Confederate fortification in the southern section of the Indian Territory , naming it after his late commander . It was built on a bluff on the south bank of the Blue River and is now located in Bryan County , Oklahoma . It was placed on the U . S . National Register of Historic Places in 1971 . Camp Ben McCulloch ( " see " External Links below ) was established near Austin in 1896 as a reunion site for the United Confederate Veterans and is the last such site still owned by the UCV ' s descendant group , the Sons and Daughters of the Confederacy . It is now a public recreation facility of some 200 acres ( 0 . 8 km² ) , operated by the County of Hays , and is a popular location for Central Texas family reunions , picnics , and musical festivals . Several other members of McCulloch ' s family followed him to Texas , including his mother . She died in Ellis County in 1866 at the home of another of her sons , John C . McCulloch , who had been a captain in the Confederate army . Her remains were exhumed in 1938 by the State of Texas and reinterred beside those of Gen . Ben McCulloch , and a joint monument was erected . Other siblings lived in Gonzales and in Walker County . In popular culture . Steve Earle wrote a song about McCulloch on his album Train a Comin ' . He is one of the main Antagonists in Harry Turtledove ' s short story " Lee at the Alamo " . He is also a character in Janice Woods Windle ' s True Women which later got made into a TV movie . There is a mention of McCulloch ' s Rangers in Cormac McCarthy ' s Blood Meridian on page 95 , where the men from the Glanton gang is said to be from McCulloch ' s Rangers : " ( . . . ) Tate from Kentucky who had fought with McCulloch ' s Rangers as had Tobin and others among them ( . . . ) " .