James Bennett Bell

James Bennett Bell was born on August 9, 1835, in Ohio. He later became closely associated with Troy in Miami County, Ohio, the place from which his United States Army service was credited. When the American Civil War divided the nation, Bell entered Union military service and became a member of Company H, 11th Ohio Infantry.

The 11th Ohio Infantry was one of the volunteer regiments raised in Ohio during the opening months of the war. After its organization for three years of Federal service, the regiment was sent into the Kanawha Valley of western Virginia. Its soldiers were eventually exposed to an unusually broad range of campaigning, from the mountains of western Virginia to Maryland and later to the major battles of Tennessee and Georgia.

Bell served as an infantryman and eventually held the rank of Sergeant. A Civil War sergeant occupied an important position between the commissioned officers and the enlisted soldiers. Sergeants helped maintain discipline, preserve formations, communicate orders, supervise soldiers in camp and on the march, and provide leadership during battle.

The 11th Ohio's wartime experience became increasingly demanding. The regiment served in operations in western Virginia before moving east for the Maryland Campaign of 1862. Its battle history included South Mountain and Antietam, after which the unit eventually returned to western Virginia.

In early 1863, the regiment was transferred westward to Tennessee. This movement brought the 11th Ohio into a new theater of the war and placed its soldiers within the Army of the Cumberland.

During the summer of 1863, Union forces under Major General William S. Rosecrans carried out the Tullahoma Campaign, maneuvering Confederate forces out of much of Middle Tennessee. The campaign was followed by a major advance toward Chattanooga, one of the most strategically important transportation centers in the Confederacy.

Chattanooga controlled vital railroad connections and routes through the mountains linking the eastern and western portions of the Confederacy. Possession of the city offered Union forces an important gateway toward Georgia and the Confederate interior.

The campaign culminated in the Battle of Chickamauga in September 1863. Confederate forces won a significant tactical victory there, forcing much of the Union Army back toward Chattanooga.

The Union army then found itself under severe pressure in Chattanooga. Confederate forces occupied the surrounding high ground, including Missionary Ridge and Lookout Mountain, and threatened Union supply routes into the city.

Conditions became increasingly difficult until Federal forces succeeded in reopening a dependable supply line. Reinforcements also arrived, and overall command in the region passed to Major General Ulysses S. Grant.

By November 1863, Grant was prepared to break the Confederate hold around Chattanooga.

The resulting Battles for Chattanooga developed over several days. Union troops moved against Confederate positions at Orchard Knob, Lookout Mountain, and Missionary Ridge.

The most important moment in James Bennett Bell's military career came on November 25, 1863, during the assault on Missionary Ridge.

Missionary Ridge rose east of Chattanooga and formed the principal Confederate defensive position overlooking the city. Confederate troops had constructed rifle pits and defensive works at different levels of the ridge, including formidable positions along the summit.

The original Federal plan did not necessarily envision a full uncontrolled assault all the way to the crest by every unit. Union troops were initially directed against Confederate positions at the base of the ridge.

Once those lower defenses were reached, however, soldiers found themselves exposed to fire coming down from the higher Confederate positions. Remaining at the base of the ridge offered little protection.

Across parts of the Union line, soldiers began moving upward.

What followed became one of the most dramatic infantry assaults of the Civil War.

Federal soldiers climbed the steep slopes of Missionary Ridge while Confederate infantry and artillery fired from above. The terrain itself made the advance exhausting, and the men had to negotiate fences, uneven ground, defensive positions, and the steep incline while under fire.

Sergeant James Bennett Bell advanced with the 11th Ohio Infantry.

During the assault, Bell was severely wounded.

Despite his injury, he continued climbing toward the Confederate position rather than leaving the battlefield.

Bell carried his colors forward during the advance. Regimental colors had enormous practical and symbolic importance in Civil War combat. In the smoke, noise, and confusion of battle, soldiers often used the flag to determine where their regiment was located and where they were expected to rally.

Because of this importance, a regiment's colors were also among the most conspicuous objects on a battlefield. Men carrying or accompanying them were exposed to exceptional danger, and color guards frequently suffered heavy casualties.

Bell continued toward the top of Missionary Ridge despite the intensity of the Confederate fire and the wounds he had already received.

He became the first soldier of his regiment to reach the summit.

After reaching the Confederate defenses, Bell planted his colors inside the enemy's works.

His determination did not end with reaching the summit.

Bell remained on the battlefield even after repeated wounds. By the time the fighting had ended for him, he had been wounded five times.

The fact that he refused to leave the field until receiving five wounds became one of the defining elements of the official account of his heroism.

Bell's action occurred during a remarkable Union breakthrough.

Thousands of Federal soldiers reached the upper Confederate defenses, and the position along Missionary Ridge began to collapse. Confederate troops withdrew from the ridge as Union forces seized their works.

The victory transformed the military situation around Chattanooga.

The Confederate threat to the city was broken, and Chattanooga became a secure Union base for later operations into the Deep South. The victory also strengthened the reputation of Grant and the Army of the Cumberland and helped establish the conditions for the Atlanta Campaign of 1864.

Within that enormous battlefield achievement, Bell's conduct stood out at the regimental level.

He had advanced up Missionary Ridge under intense fire, continued after being severely wounded, reached the summit ahead of the rest of his regiment, planted his colors inside the Confederate position, and refused to leave the field until he had suffered five wounds.

Bell survived those wounds.

The 11th Ohio Infantry continued its wartime service after Chattanooga. In early 1864, the regiment participated in operations toward Dalton, Georgia, including fighting around Tunnel Hill, Buzzard's Roost Gap, and Rocky Face Ridge.

The Union armies then began the Atlanta Campaign in May 1864. The 11th Ohio took part in the opening operations and fought at Resaca before portions of the regiment approached the end of their original three-year terms.

The non-veteran members of the regiment were eventually ordered back to Ohio and mustered out in June 1864. Veterans and reenlisted soldiers continued in reorganized service.

For Bell, the defining achievement of his military career remained Missionary Ridge.

Decades passed before the United States formally honored that action with the nation's highest military decoration.

The Medal of Honor had been created during the Civil War. Congress authorized the Army Medal of Honor in 1862 to recognize soldiers who distinguished themselves through extraordinary military conduct.

During the Civil War period, the United States did not possess the extensive hierarchy of valor decorations that would develop in later generations. The Medal of Honor therefore became the country's principal military recognition for extraordinary courage.

Bell's action occurred on November 25, 1863, but the official recognition came more than four decades later.

On October 9, 1907, James Bennett Bell was presented with the Medal of Honor for his heroism at Missionary Ridge.

His official citation concentrated on the extraordinary persistence he had demonstrated under fire: although severely wounded, he was the first man of his regiment to reach the summit, planted his colors inside the enemy's works, and remained on the field until he had been wounded five times.

The delay between the action and the presentation was substantial. Bell had performed his heroic deed as a Civil War sergeant in 1863 and lived long enough to receive formal recognition forty-four years later.

Because his Medal of Honor was presented in 1907, its historically appropriate representation for the project database is Medal of Honor 1904–1944 Army — 1907.

This period is important in the history of the decoration because the Army Medal of Honor had undergone a major redesign in 1904. The redesigned form was associated with General George L. Gillespie Jr. and marked a significant change from the earlier nineteenth-century Army Medal of Honor design.

Bell's 1907 presentation therefore belonged to this later design era rather than to the physical Medal of Honor style that existed when his battlefield action took place in 1863.

No additional clasp, star, bar, oak leaf cluster, or other device has been verified with James Bennett Bell's Medal of Honor. His verified decoration consists of one Medal of Honor without additional devices.

Sergeant also remains his highest verified military rank.

Bell's story is particularly notable because his Medal of Honor action was inseparable from the colors he carried. Throughout nineteenth-century warfare, the flag represented far more than decoration. It was a battlefield guide, a rallying point, a symbol of unit identity, and a physical representation of regimental honor.

For Bell to carry those colors up Missionary Ridge after being wounded, reach the summit first, and plant them inside the Confederate defenses made his conduct both tactically visible and symbolically powerful.

His wounds also demonstrate the intensity of the fighting.

Bell was not recognized merely for reaching a geographic objective. His citation emphasized that he continued despite severe injury and remained in action until he had suffered five wounds.

That persistence transformed his advance into the act for which he would ultimately receive the Medal of Honor.

After the Civil War, Bell returned to civilian life. The surviving authoritative military record provides considerably greater detail about his wartime heroism than about many aspects of his later civilian employment, so uncertain elements of his postwar life should not be expanded beyond reliable evidence.

He married and raised a family, living through the decades in which Civil War veterans increasingly gathered for reunions, preserved regimental histories, and participated in commemorations of the battles they had fought.

Bell lived long enough to witness the transformation of Missionary Ridge from a living battlefield memory into one of the major historic sites associated with the Civil War.

The Medal of Honor presentation in 1907 provided official national recognition near the end of his life.

At the time, Bell was more than seventy years old. The young Union sergeant who had climbed Missionary Ridge under Confederate fire had become an elderly Civil War veteran, but the award permanently connected his name with the assault of November 25, 1863.

James Bennett Bell died on June 30, 1910, in Elkhart, Indiana. He was seventy-four years old.

He was buried in Gettysburg Cemetery in Gettysburg, Ohio.

His grave identifies him with Company H of the 11th Ohio Infantry and preserves his status as a Medal of Honor recipient.

James Bennett Bell's military legacy remains centered on the assault at Missionary Ridge.

On November 25, 1863, while serving as a Sergeant in Company H of the 11th Ohio Infantry, he advanced with his regiment against the Confederate defenses overlooking Chattanooga. Although severely wounded, he continued climbing the ridge.

Bell reached the summit before any other soldier of his regiment and planted his colors inside the enemy's works.

Even then, he did not leave the battlefield.

Only after suffering a total of five wounds did his role in the fighting finally end.

More than four decades later, the United States formally recognized that extraordinary determination and courage by presenting James Bennett Bell with the Medal of Honor.

Medal of Honor 1904–1944 Army — 1907 remains James Bennett Bell's verified military decoration and the defining official recognition of his courage, endurance, and leadership during the Union assault on Missionary Ridge.