Charles Franklin Cleveland

Charles Franklin Cleveland was a United States Army soldier and Medal of Honor recipient whose courage at the Battle of Antietam became the defining moment of his military career. He was born in Hartford, Washington County, New York, on August 14. Surviving historical sources differ on whether the year was 1844 or 1845, so the exact year should be treated cautiously. What is firmly established is that Cleveland was still a very young man when the American Civil War began and that he entered Union military service with the 26th New York Infantry. Before entering the Army, Cleveland was associated with Utica, New York, where records describe him as working in the marble-cutting trade. When war began in 1861, he enlisted at Elmira and was mustered into Company C of the 26th New York Infantry as a Private. Company C had been recruited largely from the Utica area, and Cleveland would remain an enlisted infantryman throughout his verified military service. The 26th New York Infantry, sometimes known as the Second Oneida Regiment or Utica Regiment, was organized at Elmira in 1861. After leaving New York, it served in the defenses around Washington, D.C., and northern Virginia. The regiment was eventually assigned to formations operating with the Army of Virginia and later the Army of the Potomac. By the summer of 1862 the 26th New York was experiencing increasingly severe combat. Its campaign history included operations around Cedar Mountain, the Rappahannock, Thoroughfare Gap and the Second Battle of Bull Run. The fighting at Second Bull Run in August 1862 was especially costly for the regiment and provided a harsh introduction to large-scale battlefield conditions. After the Union defeat at Second Bull Run, Confederate General Robert E. Lee carried the war into Maryland. The 26th New York moved north with Union forces and participated in the Maryland Campaign. It was present at South Mountain and then marched toward what would become the Battle of Antietam. On September 17, 1862, Union and Confederate armies collided near Sharpsburg, Maryland, in the Battle of Antietam. The engagement became the bloodiest single day of the American Civil War. The 26th New York fought as part of the Army of the Potomac's I Corps and was heavily engaged against the Confederate left. For a Civil War infantry regiment, the colors were among its most important possessions. The national and regimental flags were not merely ceremonial. In the smoke, noise and confusion of nineteenth-century battle, soldiers used them to determine the position and movement of their regiment. The colors served as the visible center around which soldiers advanced, reorganized and rallied. This also made the color bearer one of the most exposed men in a regiment. Enemy fire was frequently directed toward the colors, and the men carrying them suffered disproportionately heavy casualties. When a color bearer fell, another soldier often had to make an immediate decision whether to retrieve the flag and continue carrying it. It was under precisely these circumstances that Private Charles Franklin Cleveland performed the deed that eventually earned him the Medal of Honor. During the fighting at Antietam, the color bearer of the 26th New York was shot. Cleveland voluntarily stepped forward, took possession of the colors and carried them into the action. His official Medal of Honor citation records the essential fact in concise language: he voluntarily took and carried the colors after the color bearer had been shot. Although the official citation is brief, the danger of the act was considerable. Picking up the colors meant deliberately assuming a conspicuous position under enemy fire. The flag made Cleveland highly visible while also placing on him responsibility for preserving an important symbol and battlefield rallying point for the regiment. Cleveland himself was wounded during the Battle of Antietam. Historical service research indicates that he was subsequently treated at Patterson Park Hospital in Baltimore for approximately two months. He recovered sufficiently to return to military duty rather than being permanently discharged because of his wound. His return to service meant that Antietam was not the end of his combat experience. Cleveland subsequently returned to the 26th New York and was present during the regiment's later operations. In December 1862, the regiment fought at the Battle of Fredericksburg. The 26th New York suffered heavily there while operating with the Army of the Potomac. The regiment entered the battle with only a few hundred officers and men and experienced some of the most serious casualties of its wartime service. Cleveland remained with Company C through this period. He was also associated with the regiment during the Chancellorsville Campaign in the spring of 1863. At Chancellorsville the 26th New York performed advanced picket duties as Union forces maneuvered against Lee's army. By May 1863, the original term of service of the 26th New York Infantry was ending. The regiment returned north and was mustered out at Utica on May 28, 1863. Cleveland was discharged with his company after approximately two years of Civil War service. His verified military rank remained Private. Unlike some Civil War Medal of Honor recipients who later became noncommissioned officers or commissioned officers, there is no sufficiently strong evidence that Cleveland attained a higher military rank. For that reason, Private remains the correct rank for his final military profile. The act that Cleveland had performed at Antietam was not immediately recognized with the Medal of Honor. More than three decades passed before the United States formally honored him for his battlefield conduct. On June 12, 1895, Charles Franklin Cleveland was awarded the Medal of Honor for his action at Antietam on September 17, 1862. He was alive when the decoration was issued, so this was not a posthumous award. The Medal of Honor itself had been created during the Civil War. Congress authorized the Army Medal of Honor in 1862, establishing what developed into the highest military decoration of the United States. During the Civil War era, actions involving regimental colors featured prominently among Medal of Honor awards because carrying, saving or capturing colors usually required soldiers to expose themselves directly to enemy fire. Cleveland's Medal of Honor fits squarely within that tradition. His award did not recognize a long list of unrelated achievements; it was tied to one precisely documented battlefield act—voluntarily taking up and carrying the colors of his regiment after the designated bearer had been shot. For Cleveland's final verified medal record, the appropriate decoration is therefore: Medal of Honor 1862–1895 Army — no device or clasp. No bronze or silver service star, clasp, bar, oak leaf cluster or other device has been verified for Cleveland's Medal of Honor. Although Cleveland unquestionably served during the American Civil War, a separate Civil War Campaign Medal should not be automatically added to his final rack. That later campaign decoration requires its own recipient-specific entitlement evidence under the project's rules. Military service during a qualifying period establishes potential eligibility but does not by itself prove that a particular veteran personally received or was issued the medal. Because that individual evidence has not been sufficiently established for Cleveland, the campaign medal remains excluded from his final verified rack. After leaving the Army, Cleveland returned to civilian life in Utica. Records from the postwar period again associate him with marble cutting before he began a lengthy career in law enforcement. In 1874 Cleveland joined the Utica police force. His police career eventually became nearly as significant to his civilian identity as his wartime service had been to his military one. He served in a variety of police duties and became a detective. His experience and standing within the department increased over the following decades. He was promoted within the police organization and developed a reputation as one of Utica's long-serving law-enforcement officers. In 1898 Cleveland became Chief of Police of Utica. He continued in that position for approximately the final decade of his life, making his postwar public service a substantial second career rather than merely a brief civilian occupation. Cleveland was also involved in the professional development of law enforcement beyond his own city. He became associated with the organization of police chiefs within New York State and was among the figures connected with the early New York State Association of Chiefs of Police. By the early twentieth century he had become an established figure in the state's policing community. His personal life also became firmly rooted in Utica. He married after the Civil War and raised a family while building his civilian career. His life therefore followed a path shared by many Union veterans: military service during youth, followed by decades of civilian employment and community responsibility. The Medal of Honor award in 1895 brought renewed recognition to an act Cleveland had performed more than thirty years earlier. By then he was no longer the young Private who had carried the colors through Antietam. He was an established civilian public servant whose military heroism belonged to an earlier generation. Charles Franklin Cleveland died on September 29, 1908, in Utica, New York. He was buried in Forest Hill Cemetery in Utica, the community with which much of his military recruitment, civilian employment and later life had been connected. His historical legacy rests principally on September 17, 1862. Amid the violence of Antietam, when his regiment's color bearer went down, Cleveland voluntarily assumed the dangerous responsibility of carrying the colors forward. He was himself wounded during the battle but survived, recovered and returned to military duty. Decades later, the United States formally recognized that conduct with its highest military decoration. His final verified medal history therefore remains deliberately concise: Medal of Honor 1862–1895 Army, with no verified device or clasp and no additional campaign medal added without recipient-specific proof. Charles Franklin Cleveland is remembered as a Private of Company C, 26th New York Infantry, a wounded veteran of Antietam, a Medal of Honor recipient, and later a long-serving law-enforcement officer and Chief of Police in Utica. His life linked two forms of public service—first as a young Union infantryman during the nation's Civil War and later as a police officer serving his New York community for decades.