Calvary Morris Young

What does it take for an ordinary cavalry sergeant to seize a Confederate general in the chaos of one of the largest cavalry battles fought during the American Civil War? For Sergeant Calvary Morris Young, the answer came on October 25, 1864. In the confusion of battle in Kansas, Young performed the act of gallantry that would place his name among the recipients of the United States Medal of Honor, the nation's highest military decoration for valor.

Calvary Morris Young was born on March 12, 1840, in Washington County, Ohio. During the American Civil War he served in the Union Army as a sergeant with Company L, 3rd Iowa Cavalry. His military service was accredited to Hopeville, Clark County, Iowa. The 3rd Iowa Cavalry served through a demanding war of mounted campaigning, but Young's defining moment came during Confederate Major General Sterling Price's 1864 campaign through Missouri and Kansas.

By October 1864, Price's army was retreating after a series of setbacks, with Union cavalry pressing closely behind. On October 25, 1864, the pursuit erupted into the Battle of Mine Creek, also known as the Battle of the Osage. Confederate troops were attempting to move across Mine Creek with a large wagon train when Union cavalry attacked. Although the Federal horsemen faced a numerically larger force, the Confederate position collapsed under the charge. Hundreds of Confederate soldiers were captured, along with two brigadier generals, John S. Marmaduke and William Lewis Cabell. The battle became a crushing Union victory and helped break the effectiveness of Price's retreating army.

It was during this violent cavalry action that Sergeant Young earned his place in American military history. His achievement was extraordinary not simply because he captured an enemy soldier, but because the prisoner was Brigadier General William Lewis Cabell, an experienced Confederate commander. Cabell's capture on October 25, 1864, at Mine Creek is independently confirmed in historical accounts of the battle and of Cabell's military career.

Young's official Medal of Honor citation is remarkable for its brevity:

"Gallantry in capturing Brig. Gen. William Lewis Cabell, (C.S.A.)."

Those few words conceal the danger and confusion of the action in which the capture occurred. In a mounted battle involving thousands of men, artillery fire, cavalry charges, fleeing troops, congested wagon crossings, and close-quarter fighting, Young succeeded in taking a Confederate general prisoner. The Congressional Medal of Honor Society records the action at Osage, Kansas, on October 25, 1864, while serving with Company L, 3rd Iowa Cavalry. His Medal of Honor was presented on April 4, 1865, only days before the wider Civil War entered its final phase.

There is something especially striking about Young's story. His Medal of Honor citation does not attempt to dramatize what happened. There is no lengthy description of danger, no elaborate account of the struggle, and no list of superlatives. It simply records the essential fact. A Union cavalry sergeant captured an enemy brigadier general. That economy of language makes the achievement stand out even more.

Young survived the Civil War and lived for more than four decades after the action that earned him the Medal of Honor. He died on July 11, 1909, in Ludlow, Kentucky, at the age of 69. He was buried at Highland Cemetery in Fort Mitchell, Kentucky, where his grave preserves the memory of his service and Medal of Honor distinction.

Today, Sergeant Calvary Morris Young is remembered as a Civil War Medal of Honor recipient of the 3rd Iowa Cavalry and as one of the Union cavalrymen whose actions helped turn the Battle of Mine Creek into a decisive defeat for Sterling Price's Confederate army. His story is built around a single dramatic encounter, but its significance reaches far beyond the capture of one officer. In the closing months of the Civil War, amid a battle that helped extinguish a major Confederate threat in the West, Sergeant Young demonstrated the gallantry that earned him a permanent place in the history of the Medal of Honor and the United States Army.