John Benton Callis


John Benton Callis was an American businessman from Lancaster, Wisconsin who served as an officer in the Union Army during the American Civil War and as a postbellum U.S. Representative from Alabama.

Background

Born in Fayetteville, North Carolina, Callis moved to Tennessee in 1834 with his parents, who settled in Carroll County, and thence, in 1840, to Lancaster, Wisconsin. He attended the common schools. He studied medicine for three years, but then abandoned its further study. He went to Minnesota in 1849; moved to California in 1851 and engaged in mining and the mercantile business. He went to Central America in 1853. He returned to Lancaster in the fall of that year and again engaged in mercantile pursuits.

In the Civil War

He helped form the Lancaster unit that became Co. K of the Seventh Regiment, Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry. When the unit was Federalized, he entered the Union Army as a lieutenant, and was promoted to captain, August 30, 1861. The Seventh Wisconsin was part of the famed "Iron Brigade of the West." Due to the high casualty rate among its officers, Callis led the regiment at the Battle of South Mountain, Antietam and several other engagements. He was promoted to Major on January 5, 1863. He was shot in the chest on the first day at Gettysburg and lay on the battlefield until the Confederate withdrawal three days later. After a lengthy recovery, he rejoined the Army and was appointed by President Abraham Lincoln military superintendent of the War Department at Washington, D.C., in 1864. He was promoted to lieutenant colonel February 11, 1865.

In Alabama

Following the war, he settled in Huntsville, Alabama, in 1865. He resigned his commission in the Regular Army on February 4, 1868. Upon the readmission of the State of Alabama to representation Callis was elected as a Republican to the Fortieth Congress and served from July 21, 1868, to March 3, 1869. He was not a candidate for renomination in 1868.

Return to Wisconsin

He returned to Lancaster and engaged in the real-estate business.
He was elected to a single one-year term in the Wisconsin State Assembly in 1874 as part of the short-lived Liberal Reform Party.
He retired from active pursuits, and died in Lancaster on September 24, 1898. He was interred in Hillside Cemetery.
Callis was the uncle of Marine Corps Commandant George Barnett.