William Bensinger

He Stole a Train Behind Enemy Lines and Survived

William Bensinger was born on January 14, 1840, in Waynesburg, Ohio. When the American Civil War began, he entered the United States Army and served as a Private in Company G of the 21st Ohio Infantry. His military career would eventually carry him from enlisted service to the rank of Captain, but the event that placed him permanently in American military history occurred while he was still a private.

In the spring of 1862, Union forces were operating in Tennessee and northern Alabama while seeking ways to disrupt Confederate transportation and communications. Railroads were essential to moving troops, ammunition, food, and other supplies across the South. A civilian scout named James J. Andrews proposed an operation that would send a small group deep into Confederate territory to seize a train and damage the railroad connecting Atlanta with Chattanooga.

Bensinger volunteered for the mission. He became one of the Union soldiers later remembered collectively as Andrews’ Raiders. The operation required the men to move through enemy territory in civilian clothing, posing as ordinary travelers or men sympathetic to the Confederacy while making their way south toward Georgia.

On April 12, 1862, the raiders boarded a northbound train and waited until it stopped at Big Shanty, Georgia. While passengers and crew were away from the train, Andrews and his men seized the locomotive General along with several cars and began racing north toward Chattanooga. Their objective was not simply to steal a locomotive. They intended to damage railroad track, sever telegraph communications, and destroy bridges along the route, interfering with Confederate military movement and supply.

The seizure triggered what became known as the Great Locomotive Chase. Confederate pursuers quickly realized what had happened and began following the raiders. As the General moved north, the Union party attempted to obstruct pursuit and damage the railroad, but weather, unexpected rail traffic, and determined Confederate pursuit repeatedly interfered with the plan.

Eventually, the raiders were forced to abandon the locomotive before reaching Chattanooga. They scattered and attempted to escape through hostile territory, but Bensinger was among those captured. The mission had failed to achieve its full strategic objective, and the consequences for the captured men were severe.

Confederate authorities treated the raid as an extremely serious offense. Several members of the expedition, including Andrews, were executed. Bensinger remained a prisoner rather than becoming one of the men who escaped confinement. His captivity continued until he was eventually released in a prisoner exchange in 1863.

Only days after returning to Union control, Bensinger traveled to Washington, D.C., with several fellow raiders. There, on March 25, 1863, Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton presented the newly established Medal of Honor to six participants in the raid. Jacob Parrott was recognized as the first recipient, and Bensinger became one of the very first soldiers in American history to receive the decoration.

Bensinger received the Medal of Honor for his role in the extraordinary mission into Georgia. His citation recognized his participation among the men who penetrated deep into Confederate territory, captured the train at Big Shanty, and attempted to destroy railroad bridges and track between Atlanta and Chattanooga. The award was presented to him during his lifetime, less than a year after the raid.

The Medal of Honor itself was still new. Congress had only recently established the decoration during the Civil War, and the Andrews’ Raiders became closely connected with its earliest history. Bensinger’s award therefore represented more than recognition of one dangerous operation. His name became associated with the first group of Army soldiers ever presented with the nation’s highest military decoration.

His military career did not end with the Great Locomotive Chase or his release from captivity. Bensinger later returned to military service and rose well beyond the private’s rank he had held during the raid. He eventually became a Captain and served with Company C of the 13th United States Colored Infantry. His advancement from Private to Captain marked a substantial progression during the same war in which he had once entered enemy territory as an enlisted volunteer.

The experience of captivity also remained an important part of Bensinger’s Civil War story. He had joined a mission in which discovery carried consequences far different from those of an ordinary battlefield engagement. Several of his comrades did not survive Confederate imprisonment, while others escaped or were eventually exchanged. Bensinger survived both the failed raid and his period as a prisoner and was able to return to military service.

After the war, he lived for more than half a century. His status as one of the earliest Medal of Honor recipients connected him permanently with the memory of the Andrews Raid, and the Great Locomotive Chase gradually became one of the most widely remembered special operations of the Civil War.

The design of the Medal of Honor changed during Bensinger’s lifetime. Decades after receiving his original decoration in 1863, he was presented with the redesigned version of the Medal of Honor in 1916. This was not a second Medal of Honor award; it was a later physical version of the same honor he had earned for the 1862 raid.

Bensinger spent his later years in Ohio and became closely associated with the community of McComb. He remained one of the surviving links to an operation that had taken place during the opening years of the Civil War, when a small group of volunteers attempted to cripple an important Confederate railroad from deep behind enemy lines.

William Bensinger died on December 19, 1918, in McComb, Ohio, at the age of seventy-eight. He was buried in McComb Union Cemetery.

His Medal of Honor and personal artifacts became important reminders of both his individual service and the larger story of Andrews’ Raiders. The surviving medals associated with him preserve an unusual connection between the earliest period of the Medal of Honor and its later redesign, while his wartime story preserves the human consequences of the Great Locomotive Chase.

Bensinger’s legacy rests on an extraordinary sequence of events: a private volunteering for a dangerous mission behind enemy lines, the seizure of a Confederate locomotive at Big Shanty, a desperate attempt to damage Southern transportation and communications, capture and imprisonment, eventual exchange, and recognition as one of the first Medal of Honor recipients in United States history. He entered the raid as an enlisted soldier and survived to continue serving, eventually reaching the rank of Captain.