Horace Ellis

He Charged Through Fire and Took the Enemy Flag

Horace Ellis was born on May 23, 1843, in Mercer County, Pennsylvania. He later became associated with Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, the community from which he entered military service during the American Civil War. His surviving military record identifies him simply as Horace Ellis, with no verified middle name or initial. Although his life was remarkably short, his years of military service placed him within one of the Union Army’s most famous fighting organizations and ultimately earned him the Medal of Honor.

Ellis entered the United States Army in 1861 and served with Company A of the 7th Wisconsin Infantry. The regiment became closely associated with the celebrated Iron Brigade of the Army of the Potomac, a formation that earned a formidable reputation through some of the hardest fighting of the Civil War. Service in the 7th Wisconsin exposed its soldiers to repeated campaigns, long marches, heavy casualties and the constant demands of frontline infantry duty.

Ellis began his service in the enlisted ranks. His military career unfolded during a period when the Union Army was rapidly expanding and inexperienced volunteers were being transformed into veteran soldiers. The 7th Wisconsin eventually became recognized as one of the veteran regiments of the Eastern Theater, and Ellis remained connected with the regiment through the long course of the war.

By 1864, the conflict had entered one of its most destructive phases. Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant’s campaigns in Virginia had pushed the Union and Confederate armies toward Petersburg, where control of roads and railroads became critical. Petersburg served as an essential transportation center for Richmond, and Confederate forces depended heavily on rail connections to bring supplies into the defensive lines protecting both cities.

One of the most important of those transportation routes was the Weldon Railroad, which connected Petersburg with points farther south. Union forces understood that controlling or destroying this railroad would weaken the Confederate supply system. In August 1864, elements of the Union V Corps moved against the line, leading to several days of intense fighting that became associated with the Battle of Globe Tavern and the struggle for the Weldon Railroad.

Horace Ellis was serving as a Private in Company A, 7th Wisconsin Infantry, during these operations. On August 21, 1864, Confederate forces launched another determined attack against Union positions near the railroad. The fighting became violent and confused as infantry formations collided, lines shifted and soldiers fought at close range for control of the ground.

It was during this battle that Ellis performed the action for which he would be remembered.

In the middle of the fighting, Ellis captured the battle flag of the 16th Mississippi Infantry, a Confederate regiment engaged against the Union forces. During Civil War combat, regimental colors were far more than ceremonial objects. They served as visible rallying points around which soldiers formed and maneuvered amid smoke, noise and battlefield confusion. Losing a flag could symbolize the disruption or defeat of a unit, while capturing an enemy color required a soldier to move into one of the most fiercely defended areas of the battlefield.

Ellis succeeded in taking the Confederate flag during the action at Weldon Railroad. The official Medal of Honor record preserves the accomplishment in direct language: the capture of the flag of the 16th Mississippi. That single act became the defining moment of his military career.

The significance of the action extended beyond the flag itself. The fighting around the Weldon Railroad was part of the Union effort to tighten pressure around Petersburg and sever Confederate supply routes. By holding the railroad, Union forces forced supplies to be unloaded farther south and transported by more difficult routes. The struggle therefore contributed to the larger strategy that gradually weakened the Confederate position around Petersburg and Richmond.

Ellis’s bravery was recognized quickly compared with many Civil War Medal of Honor recipients who waited decades for formal recognition. On December 1, 1864, only a little more than three months after the action, he was presented with the Medal of Honor. He was alive when the award was made, so his decoration was not posthumous.

The Medal of Honor was still a relatively new American military decoration at the time. Congress had authorized the Army Medal of Honor in 1862, during the Civil War, to recognize exceptional conduct by soldiers. The United States had not yet developed the extensive system of valor decorations that would exist in later wars, making the Medal of Honor the central national recognition for extraordinary battlefield heroism.

Ellis received the decoration specifically for his action on August 21, 1864. His verified medal record contains one Medal of Honor and no additional verified clasp, bar, star or other device. His broader Civil War service does not by itself establish recipient-specific entitlement to a separate Civil War Campaign Medal, so no additional campaign medal is included in his final verified medal record.

An important rank distinction must also be preserved in his history. At the time of the Medal of Honor action, Ellis was officially recorded as a Private. He later advanced within the enlisted ranks and is recorded as having reached Sergeant. Therefore, Sergeant represents his highest recorded rank, while Private remains the correct rank to use when describing the action for which he received the Medal of Honor.

Ellis continued serving after his Medal of Honor action. The war did not end until the following year, and the 7th Wisconsin remained involved in the final campaigns against the Army of Northern Virginia. The regiment continued operating as part of the Union forces pressing the Confederate defenses around Petersburg and eventually participated in the military operations that brought the war in Virginia to its conclusion.

By the summer of 1865, with the Confederacy defeated and the major Union armies beginning to demobilize, Ellis’s wartime service came to an end. He left military life after approximately four years of service, having entered as a young volunteer and returned as a veteran who had received the nation’s highest military decoration.

His postwar life, however, was tragically brief. Unlike many Civil War veterans who lived for decades after the conflict and built long civilian careers, Ellis survived the war by only about two years. He died on June 27, 1867, at Eagle Point, Wisconsin. He was only twenty-four years old.

Horace Ellis was buried at O’Neil Creek Cemetery in Eagle Point, Wisconsin. His early death meant that he never had the opportunity to develop the long postwar public career that became part of the legacy of many other Medal of Honor recipients. Instead, the surviving historical record remains centered overwhelmingly on his military service and the moment of courage that occurred at Weldon Railroad.

His legacy is therefore concentrated in one dramatic battlefield achievement. During one of the hardest phases of the Petersburg Campaign, a young infantryman from the 7th Wisconsin entered the chaos of combat and captured the flag of the 16th Mississippi Infantry. That action earned him the Medal of Honor while the Civil War was still being fought.

Horace Ellis lived only twenty-four years, but his name survived because of what happened on August 21, 1864. He entered the Army as a young Wisconsin volunteer, served with a regiment associated with the legendary Iron Brigade, endured years of Civil War service, captured an enemy battle flag under fire, received the Medal of Honor before the war ended, later reached the rank of Sergeant, and died only two years after returning to civilian life. His brief life left a lasting record of courage preserved in the history of the United States Army and the Medal of Honor.