Benjamin F. Hasson

Best known for Escape from the Confederacy, Benjamin F. Hasson wrote from direct experience. In the book, first published in 1900, he identifies himself as a former lieutenant in the Ringgold Battalion of the 22nd Pennsylvania Volunteer Cavalry and recounts his capture and escape while being transported toward Andersonville during the Civil War.

The memoir was written years after the war, but it keeps a close, personal feel. Hasson explains that friends and former comrades had encouraged him to preserve the story, and he presents it as one soldier’s record of hardships that many others also endured. That gives the book both the pace of an adventure narrative and the tone of a remembrance.

Reliable biographical details about his wider life are limited in the sources I found. A memorial record for Lt. Benjamin Franklin Hasson lists him as living from 1837 to 1912, which fits the time period of the memoir and helps place him in postwar Pennsylvania memory.