09/20/2025
After Mary Lincoln’s brother-in-law Benjamin Helm was killed in action at the Battle of Chickamauga, his widow Emilie (Mary’s sister) came with her daughter to stay at the White House. Abraham Lincoln had been a close friend of Ben, and he was very fond of his sister-in-law Emilie, who he called “little sister.” When Emilie arrived at the White House, in her mourning dress, she and the President wept together, grieving the death of her husband. When Lincoln became aware Emilie’s presence in the White House was causing he and Mary to be maligned by his political enemies and by Washington society, he fired back angrily, “Mrs. Lincoln and I will allow anyone we choose to visit the White House.” Why were the Lincolns being criticized for taking Emilie in? Because her dead husband, Benjamin Hardin Helm, had been a Confederate general.
Although Abraham Lincoln’s relationships with most of his in-laws was testy, he enjoyed the company of Ben and Emilie, and the Lincolns and the Helms had become good friends. A graduate of both West Point and Harvard Law School, Ben had served a term in Congress and was a successful attorney before the war. When the Civil War broke out, Lincoln offered Ben a commission in the Union army and the post of army paymaster, but he declined, choosing instead to enlist in the Confederate cavalry. He helped raise the 1st Kentucky Cavalry and by 1863 was commanding the famous Kentucky “Orphan Brigade.”
Benjamin Helm was not alone among Mary Lincoln’s siblings in choosing to side with the Confederacy. Four of her brothers and two of her brothers-in-law wore the gray. Two of her Confederate brothers were killed in the war, as was her brother-in-law Benjamin.
Because of her Southern connections, throughout the Lincoln presidency Washington gossipers called Mary Lincoln a spy and a secret rebel. And when Emilie Helm, an unrepentant rebel, came to the White House, the gossip only grew louder. In one widely reported incident, after Tad Lincoln remarked that his father was the President, Emilie’s daughter Katherine responded (to her mother’s delight) that Mr. Davis was the President, not Mr. Lincoln. Although Lincoln refused to back down on the matter, eventually Emilie was uncomfortable enough that she chose to leave Washington and return to Kentucky.
Lincoln later lost all patience with Emilie after she used her White House connection to bring cotton across Union lines to sell in the north, and after she wrote him soliciting supplies for Confederate prisoners. In frustration he sent a message to the commanding general in Kentucky, advising that should Emilie behave disloyally, he should treat her no differently than he would treat any other person. After the war Emilie supported herself by giving piano lessons, until Robert Todd Lincoln had her appointed postmistress of Elizabethtown, Kentucky in 1881.
A third of the Orphan Brigade was killed or wounded at the Battle of Chickamauga. While leading his men that day, Benjamin Hardin Helm was shot in the chest by a Federal sharpshooter who was also from Kentucky. He died on September 20, 1863, one hundred sixty-two years ago today.
“I never saw Mr. Lincoln more moved,” said Senator David Davis of Illinois, “than when he heard of the death of his young brother-in-law Ben Hardin Helm, only thirty-two years old, at Chickamauga. I called to see him about four o'clock on the 22nd of September; I found him in the greatest grief.”
