Upon his return, Benson was promoted to sergeant. Incredibly, he reached Confederate lines in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia in late 1864, and after a period at home on leave, rejoined his sharpshooter unit in the defenses of Petersburg.
While his comrades headed for Canada and out of the war altogether, Benson walked south, determined to rejoin his unit. The result, a Civil War version of the “Great Escape,” was the only successful breakout from Elmira. Then, after arriving at Elmira, Benson joined eight other prisoners in digging an escape tunnel, using his mathematical skills to guide the team’s work. In the early phases of the bloody Overland Campaign of 1864, his native intelligence and experience as an outdoorsman led to assignment as a scout, but on May 16 he was captured inside the Union lines at Spotsylvania, Va., and sent to the prisoner of war camp at Point Lookout, Md., located at the confluence of the Potomac River and Chesapeake Bay.īerry Benson’s Pattern 1860 Enfield Rifle-Musketīerry Benson, who had no intention of remaining a prisoner, evaded the camp guards and swam to freedom shortly after arriving at Point Lookout, but was recaptured and transferred to the prison camp at Elmira, N.Y. Wounded at Chancellorsville, Benson missed the battle of Gettysburg but was back in the ranks by winter. British Enfield rifles, which were more accurate than the more commonly issued, longer-barreled rifle-muskets. Sharpshooters were trained in marksmanship and skirmishing tactics and were issued imported. Through the winter of 1862-1863, Berry and Blackwood were selected for their brigade’s elite sharpshooter battalion. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia to Second Manassas, Antietam and Fredericksburg. The 1st fought in the 1862 Virginia Peninsula Campaign and then marched north with Gen. After witnessing the conflict’s first shots in April 1861, the Benson brothers marched off to Virginia with the 1st South Carolina Infantry. At the age of 17, he was caught up in the political and emotional firestorm that led to the Civil War, and enlisted along with his younger brother, Blackwood, in a South Carolina militia unit besieging Fort Sumter. And quite a story it was.īorn across the river from Augusta at Hamburg, S.C., in 1843, young Berry Benson proved exceptionally competent in spelling and mathematics at school and was an avid hunter and fisherman. Years later, while researching the Civil War and its small arms, I came across the story of Berry Benson and his Enfield rifle. And then I left for Vietnam and my own war. At the time I didn’t know that soldier was Berry Benson or, indeed, even who Berry Benson was. Walker, supported the base of a tall column topped by a figure of a lone infantryman at rest, a rifle in his hands. Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, along with lesser-known Georgians Thomas R. Statues of four Confederate generals, including the expected icons Robert E. It was an impressive sight, and even though I was a Yankee from New Jersey, I was drawn to it. I first saw the monument in downtown Augusta, Ga., in 1966, as a young second lieutenant at nearby Fort Gordon. At the war's end in 1865, he walked home with his two-band, London-made Enfield. Benson was captured and escaped from two notorious Union prisons before returning to his unit. “The Gray Wall” by Don Troiani (1985) Private Collection/Bridgeman ImagesĬivil War sharpshooter Berry Benson fought in several major battles with Gen.
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