Medal of Honor Monday: Union Army Pvt. George Maynard

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By Katie Lange,U.S. Department of Defense

The American Civil War accounts for 1,522 Medal of Honor recipients — nearly half of the total who have earned the award since its creation in 1861. One of those recipients was Union Army Pvt. George Maynard, who refused to leave a man behind during a lopsided fight.

Maynard was born in a suburb of Boston in 1836 and attended public school until he was 15, when he became a jeweler’s apprentice. He continued in that profession until he was 25 and joined the 13th Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry at the onset of the Civil War.

The 13th was sent south to patrol the Upper Potomac River along the Maryland-Virginia border, and they fought in many early battles, including the Second Battle of Bull Run, Chantilly and Antietam, the bloodiest battle of the war.

On Dec. 12, 1862, Maynard’s regiment crossed the Rappahannock River in preparation for the Battle of Fredericksburg, which is known to be one of the most one-sided battles of the war in favor of the Confederates. According to the American Battlefield Trust, the most decisive fighting took place in an area known as Slaughter Pen Farm, where Union soldiers managed to puncture the Confederate lines before being pushed back by a counterassault.

Maynard’s regiment was among the first units to advance on the southern fighters there, but his division’s main line of advance eventually pushed past their position, so his company fell back to regroup. That’s when Maynard realized that a fellow soldier, Charles Armstrong, hadn’t returned with them.