Benjamin Franklin Reed or B. F. Reed, as he was commonly known, was a captain in the Illinois Volunteers (Co. D, 21 Reg) in the American Civil War. He raised his own company and then led these volunteers for two years in Mississippi (where he met Ulysses Grant), Tennessee, and Georgia. Prior to the war he was a speculator in farmland in central Illinois, near the town of Tuscola, and while away with the army he corresponded with his real estate partner, Charles Welliver. Reed was a courageous soldier but his real distinction was literary. His letters to Welliver show character development from his initial status as a businessman who happened to be in uniform to a toughened soldier with a strong sense of civic responsibility. The letters contain an especially vivid description of the Battle