George W. Harris

George W. Harris was born on March 6, 1835, in Pennsylvania. By the beginning of the American Civil War he was living in Centre County, and in 1862 he entered Union military service. His surviving official records identify him simply as George W. Harris; because reliable evidence does not establish what the middle initial stood for, his name should not be expanded beyond that form.

Harris enlisted in the United States Army in August 1862 and was mustered into Company B of the 148th Pennsylvania Infantry as a Private. The regiment was organized in Pennsylvania and became part of the Army of the Potomac, eventually serving with the II Corps. The 148th Pennsylvania developed into an experienced combat regiment and saw extensive fighting in the Eastern Theater during the remaining years of the Civil War.

During 1863, the regiment participated in major operations involving the Army of the Potomac, including the campaigns around Chancellorsville and Gettysburg. As with all regimental histories, participation by the regiment does not automatically prove every individual soldier's presence in every separate engagement, but Harris remained with a formation that experienced repeated hard campaigning and significant combat exposure.

By the spring of 1864, Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant had begun the Overland Campaign against General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. Grant's strategy involved maintaining continuous pressure on Lee rather than withdrawing after individual battles. This produced a succession of extremely costly engagements beginning in the Wilderness and continuing toward Spotsylvania Court House.

The fighting at Spotsylvania became some of the most violent of the entire Civil War. Confederate forces constructed powerful earthworks, including a large projecting defensive position known as the Mule Shoe. Union commanders recognized that the salient might be vulnerable to a concentrated infantry assault and prepared a major attack against it.

Before dawn on May 12, 1864, Union troops launched a massive assault against the Mule Shoe. The Federal attack initially achieved a dramatic breakthrough, overrunning parts of the Confederate works and capturing large numbers of soldiers. Confederate forces quickly organized counterattacks, however, and the battlefield descended into prolonged close-range fighting.

The most infamous section of the combat became known as the Bloody Angle. Soldiers fought for hours across and around the earthworks, often separated by only a few feet. Rifle fire was continuous, artillery was used at dangerously short range, and in many places the fighting became hand-to-hand. Trees were shredded by the enormous volume of fire, and casualties mounted on both sides.

Private George W. Harris was serving with Company B of the 148th Pennsylvania Infantry during this fighting. On May 12, 1864, amid the struggle at Spotsylvania, Harris encountered a Confederate color bearer and seized the enemy flag from him.

Capturing an enemy flag during Civil War combat was an exceptionally dangerous achievement. Regimental colors served as both practical battlefield markers and powerful symbols of unit identity. Soldiers used them to maintain direction and rally formations through smoke, noise, and confusion. Because of their importance, flags were normally protected by dedicated color guards and were positioned near the heart of a regiment.

Harris therefore had to place himself directly in the most dangerous portion of the opposing formation to take the flag. After wresting it from the Confederate color bearer, another Confederate officer attempted to recover the colors. Harris resisted the attempt and shot the officer, retaining possession of the captured flag.

The official Medal of Honor citation later summarized the event in only a few words, but the simplicity of the citation should not obscure the danger of the act. Harris had entered close combat, physically seized an enemy battle flag, and successfully prevented its recapture while fighting at one of the bloodiest points of the Overland Campaign.

The struggle at Spotsylvania continued beyond May 12, but the Union Army did not achieve the decisive breakthrough it had hoped for. Grant nevertheless maintained pressure on Lee and continued moving southward. The campaign eventually carried both armies toward Richmond and Petersburg, where the conflict developed into months of trench warfare and repeated attacks against fortified positions.

Harris remained in Union service after Spotsylvania. The 148th Pennsylvania continued campaigning with the Army of the Potomac during the remainder of 1864, including operations associated with the long struggle around Petersburg. His service therefore continued well beyond the action that brought him national recognition.

Recognition for Harris's conduct at Spotsylvania came during the war itself. On December 6, 1864, he was formally presented with the Medal of Honor by Major General George G. Meade during a review of the II Corps near Petersburg, Virginia. Unlike many Civil War soldiers whose Medal of Honor recognition came decades after their actions, Harris received his decoration only months after the battle.

The Medal of Honor had been established during the Civil War and was still a relatively new American military decoration when Harris received it. The Army Medal of Honor was authorized in 1862 at a time when the United States did not yet have the large hierarchy of personal military decorations that would exist in later generations. As a result, it became the principal national decoration for soldiers whose battlefield conduct was judged deserving of exceptional recognition.

For the project database, Harris's decoration belongs to the Medal of Honor 1862–1895 Army period. Both his heroic action in May 1864 and the presentation of his medal in December 1864 occurred during the original Civil War-era Army Medal of Honor period. No clasp, star, bar, oak leaf cluster, or other additional device has been verified for his Medal of Honor.

The Medal of Honor is currently the only individual military decoration supported strongly enough for inclusion in Harris's verified medal record. His Civil War service clearly placed him within the qualifying generation of Union Army veterans, but military service during a qualifying period does not by itself prove individual entitlement to a later campaign medal.

For that reason, the Army Civil War Campaign Medal is not included in his final verified ribbon rack. Harris lived until 1921, so his survival into the era when the campaign medal existed does not by itself exclude him. However, no sufficiently strong recipient-specific issuance or entitlement evidence has been established showing that George W. Harris personally received or was officially entitled to that medal. Under the project's evidence rules, it therefore remains excluded from the verified medal list.

Harris's military service nearly ended tragically during the closing weeks of the war. On March 31, 1865, while Union forces were conducting operations around Petersburg, he was severely wounded. Historical accounts describe a serious wound to his chest that affected his lungs. The injury occurred only days before the final collapse of Confederate resistance in Virginia.

The timing of the wound meant that Harris was unable to participate fully in the final pursuit of Lee's army toward Appomattox. Union forces broke through the Petersburg defenses in early April, forcing Lee to evacuate Richmond and Petersburg. The Army of Northern Virginia surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865.

Harris survived his wound and underwent medical treatment. His service concluded shortly afterward, and he was honorably discharged on May 11, 1865. He left the Army still holding the rank of Private, which remains both his verified action-time rank and his highest verified military rank.

His military career had lasted for nearly three years. During that period he had entered the Army as an ordinary infantryman, served in a regiment exposed to some of the hardest campaigning of the Eastern Theater, fought at Spotsylvania, captured an enemy battle flag in close combat, received the Medal of Honor, and survived a serious wound near the end of the war.

After leaving military service, Harris returned to Centre County, Pennsylvania. He became associated once again with the Runville and Bellefonte area, where he spent much of his postwar life. In 1871 he married, beginning the civilian phase of a life that had been profoundly shaped by his wartime experiences.

Like many surviving Union veterans, Harris lived through decades in which the memory of the Civil War became an important part of American public life. Veterans' organizations, commemorations, reunions, monuments, and battlefield histories preserved the experiences of the soldiers who had fought between 1861 and 1865. Harris's status as a Medal of Honor recipient ensured that his action at Spotsylvania remained part of that historical record.

His achievement was especially notable because it came from a private soldier rather than a senior commander. Harris did not direct an army, lead a brigade, or hold commissioned rank. His recognition came from an individual act performed at extremely close range during one of the war's most savage infantry engagements.

The captured flag represented more than a piece of military equipment. Civil War soldiers regarded their colors as symbols of the regiment's identity, honor, and battlefield reputation. To seize such a flag directly from an enemy color bearer and then successfully defend it against an immediate attempt to recover it required unusual courage and determination.

Harris lived for more than half a century after the war ended. He died on January 30, 1921, in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, at the age of eighty-five. He was buried in Union Cemetery in Bellefonte, where his grave became part of the cemetery's area honoring military veterans.

His long postwar life stands in sharp contrast to the few violent minutes that defined his military legacy. On May 12, 1864, amid the terrible fighting at Spotsylvania, Private George W. Harris seized an enemy flag, wrested it from its bearer, resisted an officer who attempted to recover it, and retained the colors for the Union.

That act resulted in his presentation of the Medal of Honor on December 6, 1864. With no additional individual military decoration currently supported by adequate recipient-specific evidence, the Medal of Honor remains his single verified award.

George W. Harris's legacy therefore rests on the courage of an ordinary infantry soldier placed in extraordinary circumstances. From his service with Company B of the 148th Pennsylvania Infantry to the savage fighting at Spotsylvania, his later wound near Petersburg, and his survival into the twentieth century, his life reflected both the enormous personal cost of the Civil War and the individual courage displayed by the soldiers who fought it. His Medal of Honor permanently records the moment when, under extreme danger, he captured an enemy battle flag and secured his place among the decorated soldiers of the United States Army.