Humphreys

Creek. In 1866 he was appointed chief of the
Corps of Engineers with the rank of brigadier-
general, United States Army, and in that capac-
ity he served until his retirement in 1879; he also
served as consulting engineer for several civil
projects. After his retirement he wrote From
Gettysburg to the Rapidan (1883) and The Vir-
ginia Campaign of '64 and '65 (1885), which
have been generally accepted as among the most
reliable works on these campaigns.

As a scientist, Humphreys was a member of
the American Philosophical Society, the Ameri-
can Academy of Arts and Sciences, an incor-
porator of the National Academy of Sciences,
and an honorary or corresponding member of
societies in Austria, France, and Italy. Harvard
University conferred on him the degree of LL.D.
His associate, Gen. Henry L. Abbot, said of him
(National Academy of Sciences, Biographical
Memoirs, pp. 210-14) that, as a soldier, "to cour-
age of the brightest order, both moral and phys-
ical, he united the energy, decision and intellec-
tual power which characterized him in civil ad-
ministration. „ . . In official relations . . . [he]
was dignified, self-possessed and courteous. His
decisions were based on full consideration of the
subject, and once rendered were final. . , . In
his social relations . . * [he] exerted a personal
magnetism which can hardly be expressed in
words." In 1839 he married his cousin, Rebecca
Hollingsworth, by whom he had two sons and
two daughters.

[H. H. Humphreys, Maj. Gen, Andrew Atkinson
Humphreys (1896) and Andrew Atkinson Humphreys
(1924); memoirs by H. L. Abbot in Nat. Acad. Sci.
Biog. Memoirs, vol. II (1886), Fifteenth Ann. Reunion
Asso. Grads. U. S. Mil. Acad. (1884),and Science;Apr.
18, 1884; H. L. Carson, in Proc. Am. Phil. Soc.t vol.
XXII (1885); Proc. Am. Acad. Arts and Sci.f n.s.,
vol. XI (1884); J. W. De Peyster, in Mag. of Am.
Hist., Oct. 1886; Frederick Humphreys, The Hum-
phreys Family in America (1883) ; G. W. Cullum, Biog.
Reg. (3rd ed, 1891); War of the Rebellion: Official
Records (Army) ; Army and Navy Jour.t Dec. 29, 1883,
Jan. 5, 1884; Evening Star (Washington, D. C), Dec.
28,1883.! Gj.p.

HUMPHREYS,BENJAMINGRUBB (Aug.
24 or 26, i8o8-Dec, 20, 1882), Confederate sol-
dier, governor of Mississippi, was born in Clai-
borne County, Mississippi Territory, His father,
George Wilson Humphreys, son of Col. Ralph
and Agnes (Wilson) Humphreys, was a planter
and attained some prominence in the civil and
unitary life of this frontier region. His mother
TOS Sarah, daughter of Major David Smith.
Besajaain was apparently the ninth of her sbc-
f»m cMMres, of whom only six survived child-
hood Tbe toy attended school at Russellville,
Kj^ and Morristown, N. J,, and in 1825 entered
fee MiHtey Academy at West Point, from

Humphreys

which, however, with a number of other frolic-
some cadets, he was dismissed, following a stu-
dent riot on Christmas Eve, 1826. Returning
home in the spring of 1827, he served as over-
seer on his father's plantation, studied law, and
in 1832 married Mary, daughter of Dugald Mc-
Laughlin, who, before her death three years later,
bore him two children. In December 1839 he
married Mildred Hickman, daughter of James
H. Maury; she became the mother of twelve,
among whom the mortality was excessive. In
1838 and 1839 he was a representative of Clai-
borne County in the legislature and from 1840
to 1844 he was a state senator. In 1846 he re-
moved to Sunflower County, where the outbreak
of the Civil War found him living the life of a
planter.

Humphreys, an ante-bellum Whig, had op-
posed secession, but when war came he raised a
company, which was later assigned to the 2ist
Mississippi; he was commissioned captain on
May 18, 1861. On Sept. n he became colonel of
the regiment and he led it through the major bat-
tles of the Army of Northern Virginia, except
Second Manassas, until Gettysburg, when, after
Brig.-Gen. William Barksdale was mortally
wounded, he was given command of the brigade.
Barksdale's brigade and the 2ist Mississippi
gained notable distinction at Fredericksburg (see
Humphreys' "Recollections of Fredericksburg"
in Southern Historical Society Papers, XIV,
1886, pp. 415-28). From September 1863 until
the following spring, the brigade served under
Longstreet in Georgia and Tennessee, and was in
Virginia at the end of the war, although Hum-
phreys, wounded at Berryville in September
1864, was then in command of a military district
that included his native section. He was fre-
quently commended in official reports and was
without doubt a gallant and capable officer.

Humphreys was the first elected governor of
Mississippi after the war. The convention of
August 1865, called by the provisional gov-
ernor, William L. Sharkey [tf.f.], nominated for
the governorship, "in a sort of unofficial way/'
Judge Ephraim S. Fisher, an old-line Whig who
had had no part in the war (Garner, post, p. 93).
Humphreys had taken the amnesty oath and ap-
plied for a special pardon, but had no assurance
at the time of the election (Oct. 2, 1865) that it
would be granted (Ibid., p. 95). His victory by
a plurality of more than 3,000 over Fisher and
of more than 8,000 over William S. Patton (Row-
land, Official and Statistical Register, p. 245)
seems to have been due chiefly to his military
record. The question of admitting negro testi-
mony to the courts, which he favored (Rowland,

372