In the summer of 1913, an old man in a faded gray uniform stalked across the Gettysburg battlefield, his slouch hat pulled low. Captain Benjamin Hawthorn had returned to the scene of his most harrowing ordeal. Fifty years earlier, he had been a Confederate captain in the 38th Virginia, charging across this same open ground directly behind Brigadier General Lewis Armistead during Pickett’s Charge. Hawthorn was part of Armistead’s staff for the infamous assault on July 3, 1863.
The Confederates advanced across more than a mile of open farmland toward a heavily entrenched Union line. They were met with a devastating volley from Federal artillery and rifle fire, a “sheet of lead” that cut down wave after wave of attackers. As Hawthorn approached the sturdy stone wall, which was the Union defensive line, a . 58 caliber bullet struck him in the arm.
The impact spun him around and knocked him to the ground, momentarily stunning him. Severely wounded and with the battle raging around him, he somehow managed to pick himself up and retreat across the scorched field to the Confederate positions on Seminary Ridge. Armistead himself crossed the wall and briefly penetrated the Union line before he was struck down. He would later die of his wounds at a field hospital.
Armistead’s famous battle, in which he was mortally wounded and eventually captured, marks the high-water mark of the Confederacy. The charge ended in a bloody failure, with the surviving Southern forces forced to retreat. Unlike Armistead, Hawthorn survived his wounds. He would return to the 38th Virginia and would ultimately surrender with his regiment at Appomattox Court House, effectively ending his Civil War service.
After the war, Hawthorn began a remarkable new chapter. He moved to Oregon, where he became a professor of psychology at the University of Oregon. He was known among his students as a man with a long, pointed beard, a gray hat, and gloves. They remembered him as expressive and engaging, but also noted his deeply intense, nearly emotionless eyes.
One student described them as “dreamy,” as if Hawthorn were “peering into the future. ”
The Confederate veteran also became involved with the Grand Army of the Republic, a Union veterans’ organization. He even represented the GAR in legal cases. Despite his wartime service under the Confederate banner, he maintained friendly relations with his former enemies.
At the 1913 Gettysburg reunion, he was known for hollering the Rebel yell across the field at Union soldiers on guard, but he held no resentment toward them, acknowledging they were fighting men just like himself. Hawthorn lived a long life, outliving some of his children and ultimately his wife. He died many years later, leaving behind a legacy defined by his survival, his academic career, and his continued connection to the past.
The field near the wall where he was wounded remains a site of memory, drawing visitors who walk the same ground he once crossed under fire.