"… The Hibernian School having been created by the Protestant elite of Ireland, the Protestant Ascendancy as it was known, a condition of admission to the School was that children were brought up in the Protestant faith and taught the Protestant catechism. More important from the point of view of learning the English language was their reading the King James Bible. Whatever the merits or arguments regarding the religious study, the strong and powerful language of the King James Bible is unsurpassed English literature. The children of the Hibernian Military School, both girls and boys, would have been the beneficiaries of as sound an education as was possible at that time. Although Benjamin was a Hibernian student for little more than two years, he received two years of elementary education. In 1841, at age eleven, he received a copy of the King James Bible at Sunday school in England, which suggests that he had the benefit of additional education, probably in the regimental school, but he certainly attended Sunday school where he obtained further education. Nothing else explains his scholarship later life, his rise to commissioned rank in the Confederate Army and appointment as Assistant Adjutant General to Confederate Major General J.O. Shelby, who attacked and captured the U.S. Federal gunboat USS Queen City and who lead two major raiding expeditions into Missouri.
The outcome of the American Civil War and Captain Crowther's part in it is not a matter for discussion in this account of the ex-Hib's life. Nevertheless, along with many of his comrades in the Confederate Army, he followed his commander's example, refused to surrender and moved with his family to Mexico rather than accept defeat. Crowther's departure with his family to sanctuary in Mexico is of significance to his story.
To quote his descendent, Lt. Col. (Rtd) James B. Crowther, historian's branded Benjamin Crowther an 'unreconstructed rebel'. Yet his efforts to establish himself as a business agent, his astute observations of Mexico for commercial and economic development, correspondence with the Smithsonian Institute, and unrelenting efforts to establish his citizenship as a British subject have secured him a place in the annals of post-American Civil War history…"
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bases them up.