George Washington Brush

He Rowed Into Cannon Fire to Save a Stranded Army

George Washington Brush was born on October 4, 1842, in West Hills, Suffolk County, New York. He grew up on his family’s farm and attended school in the Huntington area before leaving home as a teenager. At about seventeen, he moved to Brooklyn, where he found employment in a dry-goods store. His early civilian life appeared headed toward an ordinary commercial career, but the outbreak of the American Civil War changed his direction completely.

When the Union began raising large numbers of volunteers, Brush entered military service. On August 13, 1861, he enlisted as a Private in Company A of the 48th New York Infantry. He was still a young man, but his enlistment began a military career that would take him from the enlisted ranks to company command and eventually earn him the Medal of Honor.

The 48th New York was soon sent south as part of Union operations along the Atlantic coast. Brush experienced active campaigning during the early part of the war, including operations connected with the capture of Fort Walker and Fort Beauregard in South Carolina. These actions formed part of the Union effort to establish military and naval positions along the Confederate coastline.

His early service gave him valuable battlefield and organizational experience. As the war continued, the Federal government began expanding the enlistment of African American soldiers, creating regiments that became known collectively as the United States Colored Troops. These units were composed of Black enlisted soldiers while commissioned officers were generally white.

Brush volunteered for this new form of service. On June 6, 1863, he became a Second Lieutenant in the regiment that would ultimately be designated the 34th United States Colored Infantry. His decision placed him among the officers responsible for training, leading, and fighting alongside African American soldiers during a period when Black military service still faced considerable prejudice and political opposition.

The 34th U.S. Colored Infantry operated primarily in the coastal regions of South Carolina and Florida. Its duties included garrison service, expeditions, reconnaissance, and combat operations directed against Confederate positions, transportation networks, and military infrastructure.

Brush served with Company B and gradually assumed increasing responsibility. His later promotion to Captain would become his highest verified military rank, but at the time of the action that earned him the Medal of Honor, he was serving as a Second Lieutenant.

In May 1864, Union commanders planned an expedition into the Ashepoo River region of South Carolina. One of the objectives was to strike a railroad connection supporting Confederate movement between Savannah and Charleston. Railroads had become essential to Civil War logistics, allowing armies to move troops, ammunition, food, and other supplies much more efficiently than could be accomplished by road alone.

The expedition included soldiers of the 34th U.S. Colored Infantry as well as cavalry personnel. Hundreds of men and a number of horses were transported aboard the steamer Boston, a converted side-wheel vessel being used to move troops through the coastal waterways.

On May 24, 1864, the expedition encountered disaster.

While moving through the Ashepoo River area in darkness and fog, the Boston became stranded. The vessel could not simply continue on its way, leaving hundreds of Union soldiers exposed in hostile territory.

The grounding quickly became a military emergency. Confederate forces were in the area, and the immobilized steamer presented a vulnerable target. A vessel that could not maneuver could be subjected to artillery and rifle fire while the men aboard had limited means of escape.

A smaller Union gunboat became involved in the effort to protect the stranded transport. Men were needed to strengthen the defense and keep Confederate forces at a distance while the situation developed. Brush volunteered to take soldiers from the Boston to the supporting vessel in a small boat.

The danger soon became much greater.

Confederate artillery opened fire on the stranded Boston. Instead of facing merely a navigation problem, the Union soldiers now found themselves aboard an immobilized transport being attacked by a Confederate battery.

Brush could have remained under whatever protection the larger vessel offered. Instead, he voluntarily took command of a boat crew and began helping evacuate the men.

The small boat provided almost no meaningful protection against artillery or rifle fire. Every trip between the stranded vessel and safety exposed Brush and the crew to enemy fire. They could see the Confederate threat, but their task required them to keep returning toward the very vessel that was being targeted.

Brush continued the rescue.

Men were taken aboard the small craft and carried away from the Boston. Once one group had been moved, the boat returned for more. The process required repeated exposure rather than a single moment of danger.

That distinction is important to understanding his Medal of Honor action. Brush’s heroism did not consist of one sudden dash followed by safety. He voluntarily commanded a rescue operation that required him to return again and again while Confederate guns were firing on the area.

The stranded soldiers included men who had been preparing for an offensive military expedition only hours earlier. Now their immediate problem was survival. The loss of the Boston could have produced a far greater disaster if large numbers of troops had been trapped aboard or captured.

Brush and his boat crew continued carrying Union soldiers away from the steamer despite the fire from the Confederate battery. His official Medal of Honor citation later emphasized that he voluntarily commanded the crew, went to the rescue of a large number of soldiers aboard the stranded Boston, and successfully conveyed them to shore while remaining exposed to heavy enemy fire throughout the operation.

The citation captures the essential character of his action: voluntary leadership, repeated exposure to danger, and the successful rescue of men who were trapped aboard an immobilized vessel.

The Ashepoo River episode was unusual compared with many Civil War Medal of Honor actions. Brush did not earn the decoration by capturing an enemy flag, leading a conventional infantry charge, or defending an artillery position. His achievement was a combat rescue conducted by boat while Confederate artillery threatened both rescuers and the men being evacuated.

It also demonstrated the complicated nature of warfare in the coastal South. Soldiers could move from infantry operations to river transportation, amphibious landings, raids, and emergency evacuations within the same expedition. Success depended not only on conventional battlefield tactics but also on improvisation when transportation or geography created unexpected problems.

Brush survived the operation and continued serving with the 34th U.S. Colored Infantry. His wartime career did not end with the Ashepoo rescue. He continued advancing in responsibility and ultimately reached the rank of Captain.

By the closing period of the Civil War, Brush had progressed from the Private who enlisted in the 48th New York in 1861 to an experienced officer commanding African American troops. That progression represented a substantial transformation in only a few years.

His service with the United States Colored Troops also connected him to one of the most important developments of the Civil War. Approximately 180,000 African American soldiers eventually served in the Union Army, contributing directly to the destruction of the Confederacy and the preservation of the Union. Officers such as Brush operated within units whose battlefield performance helped challenge deeply rooted racist assumptions about Black soldiers.

When the war ended, Brush returned to civilian life in New York. Unlike many veterans whose postwar careers remained closely tied to the military, he pursued several different professions and eventually became prominent in medicine and public affairs.

He first entered dentistry. His professional ambitions later expanded, and he studied medicine at Long Island College Hospital Medical School. He completed his medical education in 1876 and developed a successful medical practice in Brooklyn.

Brush therefore spent much of his postwar life not as a professional soldier but as a physician. His Civil War experience remained an important part of his identity, but medicine became the foundation of his later career.

He also became involved in civic and political affairs. His reputation and professional standing eventually led him into elected office in New York.

In 1895, Brush served in the New York State Assembly. He subsequently entered the New York State Senate, where he served during the later 1890s.

His medical background influenced his legislative interests. As chairman of the Senate Health Committee, Brush became involved in public-health policy at a time when tuberculosis represented one of the most serious health threats in the United States.

He supported efforts that contributed to the establishment of a state institution devoted to the treatment of tuberculosis at Saranac Lake. His involvement demonstrated how his career had evolved from battlefield leadership into medicine and eventually into public-health legislation.

While Brush was building this postwar career, the heroic episode on the Ashepoo River remained officially unrewarded for more than three decades.

The Medal of Honor had been created during the Civil War. Congress authorized the Army Medal of Honor in 1862 as a means of providing national recognition for exceptional military conduct.

During and after the war, however, recognition was not always immediate. Some acts of heroism were documented and approved years or even decades later as records, recommendations, and eyewitness testimony were reviewed.

Brush belonged to this later group of Civil War recipients.

His heroic action occurred on May 24, 1864.

Formal recognition came on January 21, 1897.

Nearly thirty-three years therefore separated the rescue on the Ashepoo River from the presentation of the Medal of Honor.

By the time Brush received the decoration, he was no longer the young Second Lieutenant who had commanded a small boat under Confederate fire. He was an established physician and public official with decades of civilian achievement behind him.

For the historical database, his verified decoration is represented as Medal of Honor 1896–1903 Army — 1897.

The year 1897 identifies the formal presentation of the decoration, while the action for which it was earned remained the Ashepoo River rescue of May 24, 1864.

Brush received one Medal of Honor. No additional star, clasp, bar, oak leaf cluster, or other device is associated with his verified decoration.

His Medal of Honor therefore commemorated one specific episode of voluntary courage: commanding a boat crew that repeatedly approached a stranded Union transport and carried trapped soldiers to safety while exposed to heavy Confederate fire.

The decoration also preserved an important distinction between his rank at the time of the heroic action and the highest rank of his military career. Brush performed the rescue as a Second Lieutenant. He later advanced to Captain.

His postwar life continued for another three decades after receiving the Medal of Honor. Brush remained active in professional, civic, and veterans’ circles and maintained connections with organizations devoted to preserving the history and service of Union officers and American veterans.

His life had by then encompassed several markedly different careers. He had been a farm boy from Long Island, a Brooklyn dry-goods employee, an enlisted Civil War soldier, an officer commanding African American troops, a Medal of Honor recipient, a dentist, a physician, and a state legislator.

Yet none of those later accomplishments erased the defining military moment of his life.

On May 24, 1864, an expedition that had begun as an attempt to disrupt Confederate transportation suddenly became a rescue operation. The steamer Boston was stranded, Confederate guns were firing, and hundreds of Union soldiers were placed in danger.

Second Lieutenant George Washington Brush voluntarily took control of a small boat and went back toward the threatened vessel.

He did not make the journey once.

He and his crew continued working under fire, taking men from the stranded transport and carrying them toward safety while the enemy battery remained active.

More than three decades later, the United States formally recognized that courage.

George Washington Brush died on November 18, 1927, in Brooklyn, New York, at the age of eighty-five. He was buried at Huntington Rural Cemetery in his native Suffolk County, returning in death to the Long Island community where his life had begun.

His final verified decoration remains Medal of Honor 1896–1903 Army — 1897 — no device or clasp.

His legacy reaches beyond the medal itself. He served from the enlisted ranks to company command, helped lead African American soldiers during a decisive period in the struggle for Union and emancipation, repeatedly exposed himself to Confederate fire to rescue trapped comrades, rebuilt his life through medicine after the war, and later applied his professional experience to public service.

The most cinematic moment of his story, however, remains the scene on the Ashepoo River: a stranded steamer under Confederate fire, soldiers trapped aboard, and a young Union officer voluntarily rowing back into danger because men still needed to be rescued.