Benjamin F. Cheatham
Confederate Army general and owner of a gold mine
Benjamin Franklin Cheatham (October 20, 1820 – September 4, 1886) was a Confederate general during the American Civil War. He served in the Army of Tennessee, inflicting many casualties on Gen. Sherman at Kennesaw Mountain, Georgia, but took the blame for General Schofield's escape at Spring Hill – a major factor in the Confederate defeat at Franklin, Tennessee in 1864. Later in life, he became a gold miner in California and a plantation owner in his home state of Tennessee.
Early life and education
Cheatham was born in Nashville, Tennessee, on a plantation called Westover, which in its prime consisted of three thousand acres (12 km2). He was born into two of the most prominent families of the middle Tennessee elite of the slave society. His mother was descended from General James Robertson, the founder of Nashville and "father" of Middle Tennessee, who came from Virginia. The Cheathams had been in middle Tennessee for two generations and become established as plantation owners, lawyers, doctors and mayors of the city.
Antebellum years
At the start of the Mexican–American War, Cheatham joined the 1st Tennessee Infantry Regiment as a captain and finished the war having been promoted to colonel of the 3rd Tennessee. He moved to California in 1849 for the Gold Rush, but returned to Tennessee in 1853.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Benjamin F. Cheatham” is confederate Army general and owner of a gold mine. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Benjamin, Cheatham and Confederate, not as a finished interpretation.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q326749. VIAF identifies the subject as 37715651. The Library of Congress control number is n88199615. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1820, 1886, 1864 and 1849.
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This entry incorporates text from “Benjamin F. Cheatham” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.