Benjamin Helm, Abraham Lincoln, and Dangers of Polarization

The Chickamauga National Military Park sits just south of Chattanooga, 30 minutes northwest of where I grew up in Dalton, Georgia. As a child, I passed it many times when we drove the back way up to Lookout Mountain. In high school, I played several golf matches at Battlefield Golf Club, which hugs the eastern edge of our country’s first national military park. But I don’t remember ever touring the battlefield until last Monday when I visited with my dad and 10-year-old son, Hudson.

I had forgotten how deadly the battle was for both sides. In summer 1863, the Union Army of the Cumberland advanced quickly through Tennessee into Northwest Georgia. In hopes of stopping their progress, the Confederate Army of Tennessee attacked them on September 18th just west of Chickamauga Creek in hopes of pinning them in a cove between Lookout and Pigeon Mountains. Each side brought more than 60,000 soldiers to the fight.

The resulting three-day battle led to 34,000 casualties—the second most of any battle behind Gettysburg—and a significant Confederate victory that forced a Union retreat north to Chattanooga. It also delayed the eventual Union advance through Georgia until the following year, when General Sherman kicked off his March to the Sea that spelled doom for the Confederacy.

Revisiting Chickamauga’s story is important, but that’s not why I’m writing today. Instead, I’d like to focus on a 32-year-old Confederate officer who was killed on the battle’s final morning, Brigadier General Benjamin H. Helm. Reflecting on his story sobered me to consider the threat of political violence today and its potential to divide families and a nation.

Who was Benjamin Helm?

Born in Kentucky as the son of a governor, Benjamin Helm grew up with public service in mind. He attended West Point, graduating in 1851 in the top fourth of his class at age 20. He served as a cavalry officer for a year before rheumatism forced him to resign. He pivoted to law, attending both the University of Louisville and Harvard University, before practicing law back in Kentucky. Over the next seven years, he served as a state legislator, a state attorney, and as an assistant inspector general in the Kentucky National Guard. Along the way, he married Emilie Todd, half-sister of Abraham Lincoln’s wife, Mary Todd.

When the Civil War began in 1861, Kentucky remained neutral, so men like Helm made individual decisions between the Union and Confederacy. Helm’s brother-in-law, now President Abraham Lincoln, offered him a commission as a paymaster in the Union Army. Helm refused, instead returning to Kentucky to raise up a Confederate cavalry regiment and serve as its colonel. Three of Mary Lincoln’s half-brothers also joined the Confederacy. The Civil War divided even the Lincoln/Todd family.

By the Battle of Chickamauga three years later, Helm had risen to the rank of brigadier general over the 1st Kentucky Brigade. At 9:30 AM on September 20th, he and his men charged into the teeth of the Union line. About 30 minutes into the battle, a Union bullet struck him in the chest, knocking him off his horse. He died the next day at the age of 32.

Lincoln's Response to Helm's Death

The news of Helm’s death crushed Lincoln. Close friend and Supreme Court Justice David Davis visited him not long after he learned of Helm’s death. Davis said he had never seen the President “more moved.” Lincoln told his friend, “I feel as David of old did when he was told of the death of Absalom.”

For those not familiar with the Old Testament story, David’s third son, Absalom, hatched a conspiracy to undercut his father’s rule and overtake the throne. When David saw that Absalom had much of Israel behind him, he fled Jerusalem in mourning, leaving Absalom to set up residence in the king’s palace. A few days later, Absalom and his men pursued David east of the Jordan River in Gilead. David ordered his remaining men to attack Absalom’s army but to “deal gently” with his son.

Twenty thousand men died in battle that day, all from one nation split in half (sounds familiar). Joab, one of David’s generals, ignored the king’s order and killed Absalom, sending his remaining supporters home in disarray and returning David to the rightful throne.

When David heard the news, rather than rejoicing in victory, he fled to a private room and wept, exclaiming, “Would I had died instead of you, O Absalom, my son, my son!”

That Lincoln felt similarly about his brother-in-law Helm’s death says a lot about their relationship, especially since two of Mary’s half-brothers had already been killed fighting for the Confederacy. Helm was a fellow lawyer, an up-and-coming political leader who was twenty-two years younger than Lincoln and had also married into the Todd family. I imagine they bonded at family gatherings discussing their professional and personal lives, with Lincoln perhaps becoming a mentor or father figure to Helm. Despite this, Helm spurned Lincoln’s offer of a non-combat job “to follow his conscience” and “side with his own people,” as his widow would tell Lincoln weeks after his death.

Reflecting on Why Helm's Death Matters Today

A pyramid of black cannonballs marks the location where Helm was shot. We parked at the second stop of the Chickamauga self-driving tour and made the short walk through the woods to find it.

As we searched, I was struck by the grief of what it must have been like to fight an opposing army that included family members and close friends.

It made me think about those in my extended family who see the world differently from me. Would we ever get to a place of disagreement where we would resort to violence or war to defend our side?

Like a couple on their wedding day thinks that divorce is impossible, it’s easy for us to consider widespread political violence in our country as impossible. But just like divorce, the road to violence is rarely a rash decision in the heat of a moment. Instead, it’s often a slow and steady march of small decisions over time that dehumanize the other and glorify an alternative vision of the future.

The Civil War didn’t start overnight—the pressure built over decades, progressing from disagreement, to hatred, to spurts of violence, and finally to war. Hyper-partisan newspapers and geographic distance ensured that Northerners and Southerners grew further apart, seeing each other not as fellow countrymen but as enemies.

In 1856, pro-slavery Rep. Preston Brooks of South Carolina severely beat anti-slavery Sen. Charles Sumner of Massachusetts with his cane on the U.S. Senate floor in retaliation for a speech Sumner made. In the aftermath, Southerners heralded Brooks as a hero (Georgia even named a new county after him), while the violence and Southern celebration of him horrified Northerners. Similarly, in 1859, abolitionist John Brown led a raid on a federal armory at Harper’s Ferry in an attempt to free slaves, killing the mayor and three other residents before federal troops captured him and his men. Many Northerners heralded Brown as a hero (flags were flown at half-mast across the North when he was executed two weeks later), while the violence and Northern celebration of him horrified Southerners.

We’re 170 years removed from the Civil War. We’ve made significant progress since then—race-based slavery is no longer the issue at hand. But we’re kidding ourselves if we think that human nature isn’t capable of the same gut-wrenching conflict today.

In the last couple weeks alone, the January 6th Committee hearings have detailed violence and threats against election workers and elected officials, making clear just how close we were to a constitutional crisis that day. Many on the right have remained silent or sought to minimize the seriousness of those actions, making those on the left even more horrified. At the same time, even before the Dobbs v. Jackson Supreme Court ruling last Friday, the leaked draft lead to threats and vandalism against pro-life pregnancy centers and nearly an attempted murder of Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh at his home. Many on the left have remained silent or sought the minimize the seriousness of those actions, making those on the right even more horrified.

Even as you read the above paragraph, I bet one example resonated with the outrage you feel, while the other stirred up defensiveness to justify why that example is exaggerated or doesn’t represent your side. Partisan news sources, tribal loyalty, social media algorithms, and limited relationships with those who see the world differently create a strong current of loyalty to “our team” and contempt toward the other. Increasingly, we view our political opponents as not just wrong but as evil, as law professor John Inazu wrote last week.

I wonder what our country would look like if we were as outraged at the political violence and extremes of our own side as we are about those with whom we disagree. And, when we come across ideas or social media posts that we oppose, what would it look like if retrained our initial reaction to be one of curiosity rather than of outrage?

When Lincoln and Helm debated the tense political issues of the day at family gatherings, I bet they didn’t imagine that they were less than a decade away from a conflict that would split their families, kill both of them, and leave 750,000 other Americans dead as well.

If we’re not careful, we too could find ourselves amid widespread political violence and tragedy that seems unimaginable today.

This article first appeared on my Substack, Southbound. You can subscribe here.