Amzi Davis Harmon

Before daylight on April 2, 1865, Corporal Amzi Davis Harmon formed in line of battle with Company K of the 211th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, directly fronting Confederate Fort Mahone. The fortified earthwork, anchoring the southeastern defenses of Petersburg, had resisted Union forces across ten months of siege operations. Designated to spearhead the attack of the 2nd Brigade in Brigadier General John F. Hartranft's 3rd Division, IX Corps, the regiment charged through the pre-dawn darkness across the broken ground separating the lines. Advancing through severed timber and the defensive abatis, the Pennsylvania soldiers mounted the parapet under heavy artillery and musket fire. Reaching the battery works, Harmon pushed into the Confederate positions, engaged the defenders in hand-to-hand combat, and stripped away the regimental colors of the 45th North Carolina Infantry Regiment. Securing the captured banner, he brought it across the contested entrenchments while the regiment repelled repeated counterattacks throughout the morning. The assault cost the 211th Pennsylvania four officers and 17 enlisted men killed, four officers and 89 enlisted men wounded, and 21 men missing, but the breakthrough shattered General Robert E. Lee's defensive perimeter and compelled the evacuation of Petersburg and Richmond.

Harmon was born in Wilkinsburg, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, on April 18, 1845, the son of Samuel and Mary Logan Harman. He was working in Westmoreland County when President Abraham Lincoln issued the July 1864 call for 500,000 volunteers, prompting the nineteen-year-old to enlist for a one-year term at Greensburg on September 1, 1864. He mustered into Company K of the 211th Pennsylvania Infantry at Camp Reynolds near Pittsburgh on September 16, receiving the rank of corporal upon the organization of the company. Throughout his enlistment, Harmon possessed no service serial number; the United States War Department did not establish individual military serial numbers until the promulgation of War Department General Orders No. 195 in February 1918, relying instead on company muster rolls and descriptive books to verify identity.

Ordered to Virginia four days after organization, Harmon joined the Army of the James along the Bermuda Hundred lines, participating in demonstrations supporting operations against Fort Harrison. Transferred to the Army of the Potomac in late November 1864, the regiment entered the IX Corps siege works south of the Appomattox River. Harmon served in the field during the Weldon Railroad expedition in December and the movement against Hatcher's Run in February 1865. When Confederate forces breached the Union lines at Fort Stedman on March 25, 1865, Harmon's regiment advanced in line from a reserve position under General Hartranft's direct command, recapturing the rear works and sealing the salient. Eight days after the fighting at Fort Stedman, Harmon captured the 45th North Carolina flag at Fort Mahone.

General Hartranft cited Harmon's individual gallantry in his engagement report and forwarded the captured battle flag to the War Department. Recognition followed swiftly; the War Department awarded Harmon the Medal of Honor on May 20, 1865, making it the highest gallantry decoration conferred upon him. The full official citation, preserved in the historical registers of the War Department and maintained by the Congressional Medal of Honor Society and the Department of the Army, reads:

"Capture of flag."

Harmon completed the pursuit of the Army of Northern Virginia, standing in the ranks when Confederate troops surrendered at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865. Marches brought the regiment through Richmond to Alexandria, leading to Harmon's participation in the Grand Review of the Armies down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., on May 23. He received his honorable discharge from military service at Alexandria on June 2, 1865.

Returning to Westmoreland County, Harmon established a career as a farmer and merchant in Derry Station. He married Lucetta E. Kiehl in 1869, sharing a home in Derry Station until her death in 1897. In 1901, he married Marion Williamson of Manchester, England, with whom he had a daughter, Marion, born the following year. Harmon joined the Union veteran migration to central Florida, establishing residence in the veteran community of St. Cloud in Osceola County. In November 1921, the federal government selected Harmon to serve as an official honorary pallbearer at Arlington National Cemetery for the national state funeral and burial of America's World War I Unknown Soldier. Harmon died in St. Cloud on October 9, 1927, at eighty-two years of age, and was buried with military honors in Mount Peace Cemetery.