Benjamin Anderson

Benjamin M. Anderson (c. 1836 – February 21, 1865) was a partisan soldier for the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War. He had gained military experience while serving under William Walker's filibustering campaign in Nicaragua. During the Civil War, he served under Thomas Hines during Hines' espionage efforts behind Northern lines. While jailed for his war activities in a Cincinnati, Ohio jail, he committed suicide by a self-inflicted gunshot to the head on February 19, 1865.

Biography It is believed that Anderson was born in about 1836, to James and Mary Anderson of Louisville, Kentucky. In early 1856, he became a captain for Colonel Jack Allen's Kentucky Rifles – a group under William Walker. At the Siege of Granada, Nicaragua (November 24 – December 11, 1856), he was seriously wounded.

He briefly returned to the Confederate Army as a staff officer, but eventually got tired of it. He took an Oath of Allegiance to the Union cause to Union Brigadier General Jeremiah T. Boyle. However, he was now a social outcast to those with Southern sympathies, and he was followed continuously by Union detectives. There is some belief that he joined the Copperheads or Confederate "Sons of Liberty" afterward. He was involved in Thomas Hines' plans to free Confederate prisoners in Chicago's Camp Douglas, but he may have been a double agent.

He is buried in Cave Hill Cemetery in the Anderson family plots.