George Washington Healey

George Washington Healey was an American cavalryman and Medal of Honor recipient whose Civil War service combined years of campaigning, serious injury, imprisonment, and a remarkable act of courage during the Atlanta Campaign. Born on February 22, 1842, in Dubuque, Iowa, Healey grew up in one of the young communities developing along the Mississippi River. When the American Civil War began in 1861, he was nineteen years old. He entered Union military service from Dubuque and became a member of Company E, 5th Iowa Cavalry, the organization with which the most important events of his military career would be connected. The 5th Iowa Cavalry was assembled from companies raised in several states and territories, with Company E organized at Dubuque. The regiment entered service during the opening months of the war and was initially employed in Missouri and Tennessee. Its soldiers performed the varied duties expected of Civil War cavalry: scouting, patrolling, guarding communications, conducting raids, screening larger troop movements, pursuing enemy forces, and fighting both mounted and dismounted. Healey began his service as a Private. Over the course of the war he later attained the rank of Corporal, which stands as his highest verified military rank. For the Medal of Honor action itself, however, the official record identifies him as Private George Washington Healey. Maintaining that distinction is important because his later rank should not be substituted for the rank he actually held when he performed the heroic action. During the early years of the war, the 5th Iowa Cavalry operated extensively in Tennessee and surrounding areas. Its assignments placed the regiment in a region where Union forces were attempting to secure important railroads, rivers, roads, and supply routes while Confederate cavalry and irregular forces constantly threatened those communications. Healey’s war service was not without serious personal cost. During fighting in Tennessee in 1863, he suffered a severe head wound. The injury permanently damaged his sight, leaving him without vision in his left eye. Despite this lasting disability, he remained in military service and continued campaigning with his regiment. By 1864, the strategic focus of the Union war effort in the Western Theater had shifted toward Atlanta. Major General William T. Sherman commanded the armies moving through Georgia against Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston and, later, General John Bell Hood. Atlanta was one of the Confederacy’s most important railroad and industrial centers, and Union commanders repeatedly attempted to cut the railroads supplying the city. Cavalry raids became an essential part of this strategy. Mounted troops could move more rapidly than infantry, strike railroads and supply lines behind enemy positions, destroy transportation infrastructure, and force Confederate forces to divert troops away from the main battlefront. During July 1864, the 5th Iowa Cavalry became involved in a major mounted operation under Brigadier General Edward M. McCook. McCook’s force was ordered to move around Atlanta and disrupt the railroads supporting the Confederate army. The raid was ambitious, but it also placed the Union cavalry deep in hostile territory where Confederate cavalry could concentrate against it. The 5th Iowa Cavalry participated in operations against the Atlanta and West Point Railroad during the final days of July. The regiment fought around Lovejoy Station and the Newnan area while McCook’s column attempted to move through increasingly dangerous Confederate opposition. It was in this setting that George Healey performed the action that eventually earned him the Medal of Honor. On July 29, 1864, near Newnan, Georgia, Healey found himself in an extremely dangerous situation. The official Medal of Honor citation states that he was nearly surrounded by the enemy. Rather than attempting only to escape, Healey captured a Confederate soldier. Another Union soldier subsequently joined him. Together the two men encountered four additional Confederate soldiers. Healey and his companion succeeded in compelling all four to surrender as well. The five Confederate prisoners were disarmed, and Healey and his comrade brought them successfully into Union lines. The official citation is concise, but it reveals the unusual character of Healey’s action. He had begun in a position of severe tactical vulnerability, nearly surrounded by Confederate troops, yet he reversed the situation and became the captor rather than the captive. With assistance from another Union soldier, he ultimately brought five armed enemy soldiers under control and delivered them safely to Federal lines. His conduct required a combination of courage, initiative, judgment, and personal confidence. Cavalry operations often produced fragmented fighting in woods, roads, farms, and open countryside, where soldiers could become separated from their main formations. In those conditions, individual decisions could become decisive. Healey’s Medal of Honor action was precisely such an episode. The larger raid, however, turned increasingly difficult for McCook’s command. Confederate cavalry under Major General Joseph Wheeler converged on the Union force around Newnan. McCook’s troopers attempted to break through the surrounding Confederate formations, and portions of the command escaped, but the expedition suffered severe losses. Healey initially survived the fighting around Newnan, but his danger was far from over. Several days later, after becoming separated from Union forces while trying to escape through the Georgia countryside, he was captured by Confederate troops. He was eventually taken to Camp Sumter, better known as Andersonville Prison. Andersonville became one of the most infamous prisoner-of-war camps of the American Civil War. Thousands of Union prisoners were confined inside an overcrowded stockade with inadequate shelter, poor sanitation, insufficient food, contaminated water, and widespread disease. Mortality among the prisoners was extremely high. Healey survived his captivity. His own later recollections described the suffering he witnessed there and the psychological impact of imprisonment. For a man who had already endured a serious battlefield wound and continued fighting despite the loss of vision in one eye, Andersonville represented another severe test of endurance. He was fortunate to survive and eventually return to Union control. His Civil War experience therefore included not only combat and cavalry campaigning but also serious injury and confinement as a prisoner of war. Healey returned to service and remained associated with the 5th Iowa Cavalry as the war approached its end. The regiment continued campaigning through Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia. During late 1864 it participated in operations connected with the Nashville Campaign, and in 1865 it joined Major General James H. Wilson’s great cavalry raid through Alabama and Georgia. Wilson’s mounted forces struck deep into the collapsing Confederacy, attacking military production centers and transportation systems. The campaign included operations against Selma, Montgomery, Columbus, and Macon. By the spring of 1865, Confederate resistance was rapidly disintegrating. The 5th Iowa Cavalry remained in the South through the final period of the war and afterward performed duty in Georgia and Tennessee. The regiment was finally mustered out in August 1865. Healey returned to civilian life after approximately four years of wartime experience. He had entered the conflict as a nineteen-year-old young man from Dubuque and emerged as a veteran who had survived cavalry campaigns, a major head wound, permanent loss of eyesight in one eye, dangerous fighting behind Confederate lines, capture, and imprisonment at Andersonville. In 1868, Healey married May Moser. He established himself professionally in Dubuque and became associated with the commercial firm Doolittle & Chamberlain. Beginning in clerical and sales work, he eventually became a partner in the business and participated in its growth. His postwar career illustrates the transition made by many Union veterans from military service into the expanding commercial economy of the late nineteenth century. For more than three decades after the Civil War, Healey’s act near Newnan remained without the nation’s highest formal recognition. That changed on January 13, 1899. On that date, George Washington Healey was formally awarded the Medal of Honor for his conduct on July 29, 1864. The delay between the action and the award is important when identifying his decoration correctly. Healey performed his heroic act during the Civil War, but his Medal of Honor was not issued in 1864. It was issued thirty-four years later, in 1899. For that reason, his correct database classification is Medal of Honor 1896–1903 Army — 1899. This distinction follows the actual award period rather than merely the date of the battlefield action. The Medal of Honor had existed since the Civil War—the Army version was authorized by Congress in 1862—but many Civil War veterans received their decorations decades later after their actions were reviewed and formally recognized. Healey’s official citation preserved the essential facts of his extraordinary action: while nearly surrounded by the enemy, he captured one Confederate soldier; with the assistance of a comrade who later joined him, he captured four more; the five prisoners were disarmed and successfully brought into Union lines. The medal was awarded during his lifetime. Healey therefore had the opportunity to receive and possess the decoration personally, unlike recipients whose awards were issued posthumously. His Medal of Honor has no verified bar, clasp, star, oak leaf cluster, or other device. His verified ribbon rack therefore contains one plain Medal of Honor entry with no additional attachment. Healey’s surviving Medal of Honor history is particularly interesting because examples of his medal are preserved by the State Historical Society of Iowa. His connection with the award therefore remains part not only of national Medal of Honor history but also of Iowa’s preserved Civil War heritage. The Army Civil War Campaign Medal has not been added to Healey’s verified medal record. He lived until 1913 and therefore survived beyond the establishment of that campaign medal. Nevertheless, survival into the appropriate period and documented Civil War service do not by themselves establish that an individual was personally issued or entitled to a particular medal. Without recipient-specific issuance documentation for Healey, the Civil War Campaign Medal remains HOLD / DO NOT ADD under the project’s evidence standard. His imprisonment at Andersonville also does not justify adding the modern Prisoner of War Medal. Although Healey was unquestionably a Civil War prisoner of war, the statutory eligibility requirements for the U.S. Prisoner of War Medal do not extend backward to his 1864 captivity under the applicable modern criteria. His prisoner-of-war experience therefore remains an important part of his biography, but not an additional medal in his verified ribbon rack. In later life, Healey continued to reside in the community where his life had begun. He belonged to the generation of Civil War veterans who lived into the twentieth century, carrying personal memories of battles, wounds, prison camps, and national reunification long after the armies themselves had disappeared. George Washington Healey died in Dubuque, Iowa, on May 9, 1913, at the age of seventy-one. He was buried in Linwood Cemetery in Dubuque, returning in death to the same Iowa community from which he had entered military service more than fifty years earlier. His legacy is anchored in the action near Newnan on July 29, 1864. Private George Washington Healey, nearly surrounded by Confederate soldiers during a dangerous cavalry operation behind enemy lines, refused to surrender the initiative. He captured one enemy soldier, helped capture four more, disarmed all five, and brought them safely into Union lines. That deed eventually earned him the Medal of Honor on January 13, 1899. His highest verified rank was Corporal, while his rank during the heroic action was Private. His final verified medal record remains Medal of Honor 1896–1903 Army — 1899, with no verified device or clasp and no additional campaign medal added without recipient-specific entitlement evidence.