Lincoln signs a Medal of Honor into law; the Army has no decoration for valor until today
By the summer of 1862, the Civil War had already produced casualties no one in Washington had predicted, and the Army had no formal way to honor extraordinary courage in its ranks. On July 12, 1862, Congress passed legislation that President Abraham Lincoln signed, authorizing a Medal of Honor for enlisted soldiers who showed gallantry in action; the Department of War later contracted for 2,000 medals to be struck. It created the Army's first-ever decoration for valor. Within a year, six Andrews' Raiders would become the first men to receive it.
Lincoln signed this legislation while directing a war whose outcome was still very much in doubt, choosing to formalize recognition for enlisted men rather than only officers. That decision, honoring privates and noncommissioned officers by name, set the template for how America has decorated battlefield courage ever since: the Medal of Honor remains the nation's highest military award, with over 40 percent of its 3,552 recipients honored for Civil War service.
QWhy did the Army's Medal of Honor language almost exactly match the Navy's?
The Army was not first. The Navy created its Medal of Honor in 1861, a full year before the Army followed suit, using language honoring "petty officers, seamen, landsmen, and marines" for gallantry and "other seaman-like qualities." When Congress drafted the Army version in 1862, it borrowed the structure almost word for word, swapping in "non-commissioned officers and privates" and "soldier-like qualities." Both bills used the same era-specific phrase for the conflict itself: "the present insurrection" or "the present war," language that reads oddly formal today but reflected how Washington officially described the Confederacy at the time.
QWhat did the original 1862 law leave out that Congress had to fix months later?
Officers. The July 1862 legislation authorizing the Army Medal of Honor applied only to enlisted men, noncommissioned officers and privates, meaning no commissioned officer could receive one under the original statute. Congress corrected this on March 3, 1863, the same act that made the medal a permanent decoration rather than a wartime measure, extending eligibility upward through the ranks. The fix came just weeks before the first medals were actually handed out that March, so the earliest Army recipients were, fittingly, enlisted soldiers, including Private Jacob Parrott, exactly the audience the medal was first written for.
QWhat gave the earliest Army Medals of Honor their distinctive reddish color?
The metal itself. The first Army Medals of Honor were struck in copper and then coated with bronze, a combination that gave the medals a visible reddish tint rather than the gold or silver sheen associated with later military decorations. Flip one over and the back carried a spare, formal inscription: "The Congress to," a phrase meant to complete itself with the recipient's name engraved beneath it. That plain copper-and-bronze construction marked the medal as a wartime creation, made quickly and without ceremony, for men Congress had never expected to need decorating in the first place.
