President Biden presented the Medal of Honor to Theresa Chandler, great-granddaughter of Private George D. Wilson, in the East Room of the White House in Washington, on Wednesday. The medal honors two U.S. Army privates who were part of a daring Union Army group that stole a Confederate train during the Civil War. U.S. Army Privates Philip G. Shadrach and George D. Wilson were captured by the Confederacy and executed by hanging. At left is Gerald Taylor, great-grandson of Private Philip G. Shadrach.
Susan Walsh/AP
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Susan Walsh/AP
WASHINGTON — President Biden on Wednesday awarded the Medal of Honor for extraordinary valor to two Union soldiers who stole a locomotive deep in Confederate territory during the Civil War and drove it north 87 miles while they destroyed railroad tracks and telegraph lines.
Privates Philip G. Shadrach and George D. Wilson of the United States Army were captured by Confederate forces and executed by hanging. Biden recognized their bravery 162 years later with the country’s highest military decoration, calling the campaign they took part in “one of the most dangerous missions of the entire Civil War.”
“Every soldier who participated in that mission was awarded the Medal of Honor, except for two. Two soldiers died in action and never received that recognition,” Biden said. “Today, we right that wrong.”
The posthumous recognition comes as the legacy of the Civil War, which claimed the lives of more than 600,000 Union and Confederate soldiers from 1861 to 1865, continues to shape American politics in a fraught election year in which issues of race, constitutional rights and presidential power have come to the fore.
Biden has said the January 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol by Donald Trump supporters is the greatest threat to democracy since the Civil War. Meanwhile, Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, mocked a recent Pennsylvania rally about the Battle of Gettysburg and Confederate General Robert E. Lee.
The president said Wednesday that Shadrach and Wilson “fought and even died to protect the union and the sacred values on which the union is based: liberty, justice, equality, unity.”
“Phillip and George were willing to spill blood to make these ideals a reality,” Biden said.
Theresa Chandler, Wilson’s great-granddaughter, recounted to The Associated Press the scene of the Union soldier being hanged on the gallows and speaking his last words.
She said Wilson essentially said he was there to serve his country and had no ill will toward the people of the South, but he hoped slavery would be abolished and the country would be reunited.
“When I read that, I cringed,” Chandler said. “We could feel that as a family and we are enjoying our freedom today, what he was trying to promote at that time.”
Brian Taylor, Shadrach’s fifth-generation grandson, said it was a chance for his ancestor to be remembered as “a brave soldier who did what he thought was right.”
“I feel like he’s a little adventurous, a little wild,” Taylor said.
Shadrach and Wilson are noted for their participation in the event known as the Great Locomotive Chase.
A Kentucky-born civilian spy and scout named James J. Andrews assembled a group of volunteers, including Shadrach and Wilson, to sabotage railroad and telegraph lines used by the Confederates in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
On April 12, 1862, 22 men from what would become known as the Andrews’ Raiders met in Marietta, Georgia and hijacked a train called The General. The group ripped up the tracks and cut telegraph wires as they took the train north.
The Confederates pursued them, first on foot and then by train. The Confederates eventually captured the group. Andrews and seven others were executed, while the others either escaped or remained prisoners of war.
The first Medal of Honor was awarded to Private Jacob Parrott, who participated in a locomotive robbery and was beaten while in Confederate custody.
The government later honored 18 other participants in the raid, but Shadrach and Wilson were excluded. They were later eligible for medals under the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2008.
Shadrach, born September 15, 1840, in Pennsylvania, was 21 years old when he volunteered for the mission. He was orphaned as a child and left home in 1861 to enlist in an Ohio infantry regiment after the Civil War broke out.
Wilson was born in 1830 in Belmont County, Ohio. He worked as a shoemaker before the war and joined the Ohio-based volunteer infantry in 1861.
The Walt Disney Company made a 1956 film about a plane hijacking titled The Great Locomotive Chasestarring Fess Parker and Jeffrey Hunter. The 1926 silent film “The General,” starring Buster Keaton, was also based on this historical event.
