The image of a Civil War cavalryman usually conjures a blue- or gray-clad rider, sabre raised, charging across a battlefield on a foam-flecked horse. Figures like Jeb Stuart and George Armstrong Custer embodied that dashing, reckless ideal. But some of the most distinctive characters in the cavalry were found not in the saddle, but on the wagon seat. These were the teamsters, the men who drove the horse and mule teams, occupying the lowest rung of the military ladder.

The army was a flexible hierarchy, however, and talented, driven men could rise quickly, even from that lowly beginning. One such man appears in a surviving photograph: B. B. Hopkins, a wagon driver for Company G of the 5th Illinois Cavalry.

Described as a daring and reckless young man, this stout, dark-featured, bearded twenty-three-year-old bore a striking resemblance to a familiar face on playing cards. Throughout the regiment, he was popularly known as “Jack of Clubs. ” He had come to America from Britain less than a decade earlier. Born Benjamin Basing Hopkins in the Shoreditch district of London, he was the second of eight children, raised by a father who was a confectioner from Kent and a mother of French Huguenot descent.

In 1852, at the age of fourteen, Hopkins left London with his childless uncle Ebenezer and aunt Ann aboard the ship Saint Petersburg, bound for New Orleans. After two months at sea, they reached Louisiana and continued their journey with other immigrants up the Mississippi and Illinois rivers, finally settling in Griggsville, Pike County, Illinois. A local resident recalled that Hopkins was “one of the toughest boys I ever saw in my life,” plump and merry like all the English boys who arrived. He immediately went to work for local farmers.

“He was just like a mule, could do anything about the place,” one employer stated. It was likely during this time that he gained the wagon-driving skills that would shape his future. Hopkins left Griggsville in 1858 and wandered the Great Plains as a government-employed teamster, cutting wood and breaking hemp for extra money. A Pike County historian noted that his experiences included all the hardship and danger associated with such a life.

He encountered Indians frequently on his travels, but usually found them friendly and was careful not to provoke their hostility. He returned to Griggsville on the eve of the Civil War, and in the summer of 1861, he answered President Abraham Lincoln’s call for 300,000 volunteers. On September 5, he enlisted as a private in the newly formed 5th Illinois Cavalry. The regiment was a diverse and heterogeneous group.

About one in ten volunteers was foreign-born. The battalion was composed of men who harbored hostility toward Black people, staunch Democrats, and evangelical Christians with firm convictions in support of the Union, according to the Pike County historian. Yet these same men later served alongside Black volunteers and came to respect them as soldiers and as men. Private Hopkins began at the lowest possible rank.

He drove the company wagon and performed other routine duties, including cooking and caring for the mules at posts in Missouri and Arkansas. But he proved adept at every task assigned to him. His abilities caught the attention of his superiors, who appointed him sergeant on Independence Day, 1862. Another promotion soon jumped him to the highest position in Company G.

In late 1862, the company’s original captain resigned due to disability. The choice of a new captain fell to Colonel Hall Wilson, the British-born commander of the regiment. In Wilson’s view, none of the lieutenants eligible to succeed the captain were worthy. One had lost the colonel’s confidence after showing questionable judgment in a recent campaign.

The other, in Wilson’s estimation, was an ignorant drunkard. Wilson therefore recommended “Jack of Clubs” for the prestigious position. “Hopkins is a man of great energy and industry, and will fill the place with efficiency,” the colonel wrote. Hopkins received his commission as captain in the spring of 1863.

His promotion came at a crucial time, as Company G and the rest of the 5th Cavalry soon headed to Mississippi to take part in the campaign to capture Vicksburg. By the time the regiment arrived, Union forces under Major General Ulysses Grant had besieged the Confederate garrison controlling the Mississippi River stronghold. Grant needed cavalry to protect the rear of his army from any possible attack and to prevent reinforcements from aiding the besieged Confederates. Hopkins and the 5th Cavalry performed their mission admirably.

They engaged enemy cavalry at various points, including a sharp fight near the village of Mechanicsburg on June 3, 1863. The regiment went into battle with their repeating rifles, routed the enemy, and captured forty-nine Confederates at a cost of only four wounded. Hopkins survived. Elated by their success, the men celebrated what would become one of their most memorable victories.

The 5th Cavalry engaged the enemy in a series of reconnaissances and campaigns during the final weeks of the siege. After the Confederate surrender on July 4, the regiment conducted additional reconnaissance to break up roving bands of enemy guerrillas and maintain military authority. It was demanding, unglamorous work, much like that of the teamsters. During one of those reconnaissance missions near Natchez in December 1863, Hopkins and a detachment from his company rode their horses through a cold, icy night in search of the enemy.

Hopkins later recalled, “While we were a short distance from Natchez crossing a small bridge or corduroy, a road paved with logs, my horse stumbled and fell partly through the gap, throwing me forward on the pommel of my saddle. ” Suddenly, he suffered a painful hernia. The horse thrashing about as it tried to regain its footing did him considerable harm. “I felt that the horse would injure me badly if I attempted to dismount,” he added.

One of his feet was so firmly caught in the stirrup that he clung to the horse for fear of suffering an even worse injury. Hopkins regained control of his horse and continued the reconnaissance mission. But upon returning to camp, the surgeon diagnosed a hernia. Unwilling to give up, Hopkins wore a supportive truss and kept it for the rest of his life.

The painful injury limited his ability to ride, prompting him to submit his resignation from the army in the summer of 1864. He returned to Griggsville and married the daughter of his former employer. They started a family that grew to include eight children, six of whom lived to adulthood. He was a passionate agriculturalist and prospered as a farmer and breeder of purebred Shorthorn cattle and Cotswold sheep.

According to the Pike County historian, he owned a splendid farm, with good buildings, carefully cultivated fields, and modern equipment. Orchards and meadows added value and an attractive appearance to the place. Hopkins lived to the age of eighty-seven, dying in 1925.

The people of Pike County remembered him as an honorable, honest, and upright man.