Henry L. Benning

Henry Lewis Benning (April 2, 1814 – July 10, 1875) was a Confederate general who commanded infantry in the Eastern Theater of the American Civil War. He was also a lawyer, legislator, and associate judge in the Georgia Supreme Court. Following the Confederacy's defeat, he returned to his native Georgia, where he resumed his legal practice.

At the request of the Columbus Rotary Club in 1918, Fort Benning was named in his honor, and remained such until 2023, when it was renamed to Fort Moore in honor of Hal Moore and his wife, Julia. In March 2025, U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth ordered that the military base's name be reverted back to "Fort Benning". However, the name is instead in tribute to Fred G. Benning from Neligh, Nebraska, who was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for his extraordinary heroism in combat during World War I while serving in France. Fred Benning is not related to Henry Benning.

Benning was born on a plantation in Columbia County, Georgia owned by his parents Pleasant Moon and Malinda Meriwether White Benning, the third of eleven children. His grandfather, Richard White of Richmond, Virginia, had served in the Revolutionary War. His father operated the plantation using enslaved labor, specifically 24 slaves in 1820, but moved his family to Harris County, Georgia in 1832.

Benning received a private education appropriate to his class, including at Franklin College (now the University of Georgia), and graduated in 1834. While a student, he was a member of the Phi Kappa Literary Society. He then traveled to Talbot County, Georgia, and read law under the guidance of George W. Towns.

After being admitted to the bar in 1835 (at the age of 21) in Muscogee County, Georgia (whose only town and county seat is Columbus). He made that area his home for the rest of his life. From 1837 to 1839, Benning became the solicitor general for Columbus, then married as discussed below. In the 1840 federal census, Benning owned 20 slaves in Muscogee County. A decade later, Benning owned 60 slaves in that county. By 1860, he had become a judge of the county's superior court.

In 1840, Benning began his political career, but failed to secure a seat in the Georgia General Assembly. However, he remained politically active, and became an ardent secessionist, bitterly opposing abolition and the emancipation of slaves. In a letter to Howell Cobb written in July 1849, he stated that a Southern Confederacy would not be enough because it might itself eventually become divided into northern and southern regions as slavery waned in some of the states, and he called for a Southern "consolidated Republic" that "will put slavery under the control of those most interested in it."

In 1850, Benning became one of the Georgians who gathered with representatives of eight other slaveholding states in Nashville, Tennessee to ponder actions should Congress stop slavery's expansion westward into new territories. However, the Compromise of 1850 stopped that secession movement. In 1851, he was nominated for the U.S. Congress as a Southern rights Democrat but again failed to win election.

In 1853, he was elected an associate justice of the Georgia Supreme Court. The following year, Benning authored Padelford v. Savannah (1854), and claimed that state supreme courts could decided constitutional issues on "coordinate and co-equal" basis with the U.S. Supreme Court This "state's right" position received support in the South