Benjamin S. Skinner
(Perquimans County)
Featured Character – 1864 Confederate Decline
Benjamin S. Skinner
Courtesy of Beth Taylor
Benjamin S. Skinner of Perquimans County volunteered in 1861 and was appointed to Company F, 27th North Carolina Regiment. He was wounded at Sharpsburg on September 17, 1862, returned to service, and was promoted to captain in 1863. Skinner survived the heavy fighting in the spring of 1864, being present for the Virginia campaigns at Wilderness, Spotsylvania Courthouse, Cold Harbor, and Petersburg. Skinner wrote of the stench of unburied dead on the battlefield, the condition of the men after a month of not changing clothes, and the rations of a quarter pound of meat and four crackers per day that the soldiers had to endure. Before he was killed at the Battle of Reams's Station south of Petersburg, on August 25, 1864, he wrote,
“The greater our sufferings now the more glorious will be our ultimate triumph.”