Today is a holiday in the United States (I know some of my readers are not in the USA, just wanted to acknowledge that). Today, US citizens take time to remember family, friends, or members of our community who gave their lives in defense of our nation and our allies around the world weather we agreed with the war they fought in or not.
That was a hard earned lesson after the Vietnam war for all ends of the political spectrum. Our men and women who served in the war had very little to do with the reasons for it. To punish, mock, demean, or diminish their sacrifice and willingness to put themselves in harms way, and their lives into the hands of leaders who we elected, doesn’t just reflect poorly on us as a society, but actively makes us less.
Less good, less just, and less worthy of the mantle of the leader of the free world (not that everyone agrees the US holds that mantle, but I do).
Usually on this day I like to highlight someone whose heroism in the face of almost certain death illustrates bravery to the highest order. That means I like to find someone on the list of US Medal of Honor recipients, and tell their story. So here goes.
Private Jacob Parrot. War Served - US Civil War
Private Parrot was arguably the first person to receive the Medal of Honor in its current form. He earned his medal during Andrews Raid, April 12, 1862. To quote from the New Georgia Encyclopedia;
The raid thus aimed to knock out the Western and Atlantic Railroad, which supplied Confederate forces at Chattanooga, just as Mitchel’s army advanced. . .
On April 7 Andrews chose twenty-two volunteers from three Ohio infantry regiments, plus one civilian. In plain clothes they slipped through the lines to Chattanooga and entrained to Marietta; two men were caught on the way. Two more overslept on the morning of April 12, when Andrews’s party boarded the northbound train.
They traveled eight miles to Big Shanty (present-day Kennesaw), chosen for the train jacking because it had no telegraph. While crew and passengers ate breakfast, the raiders uncoupled most of the cars. At about 6 a.m. they steamed out of Big Shanty aboard the locomotive General, a tender, and three empty boxcars.
Pursuit began immediately, when three railroad men ran after the locomotive, eventually commandeering a platform car. Two of them, Anthony Murphy and William Fuller, persisted in their chase for the next seven hours and more than eighty-seven miles.
First suspecting the train thieves to be Confederate deserters, the pursuers acquired a locomotive at Etowah Station. Aware they were being chased, Andrews’s men cut the telegraph lines and pried up rails. Murphy and Fuller switched locomotives—they used three that day—picked up more men, and kept up the chase.
The train thieves tried to burn the bridge at the Oostanaula River near Resaca, but the pursuers were too close behind, so close that at Tilton the General could take on only a little water and wood. At about 1 p.m. it ran out of steam two miles north of Ringgold, with the Southerners, aboard the Texas, fast upon them.
The Confederates rounded up all the raiders. Only eight of the twenty (Andrews among them) were tried as spies and executed in Atlanta. The rest either escaped or were exchanged.
While not militarily critical to the final outcome of the war, the events of Andrews Raid fascinated Union state civilians and military personal. And though it had a somewhat tragic outcome for Andrews and some of the men who went with him, it was a brave attempt to end the Civil War early. Before more blood could be spilt.