John Ezra Buffington

He Was First Over the Enemy Parapet at Petersburg

John Ezra Buffington was born on July 3, 1841, in Carroll County, Maryland. When the American Civil War divided the country, he entered the United States Army and served with Company C of the 6th Maryland Infantry. Over the course of the war he advanced from the enlisted ranks and eventually reached first lieutenant, but the action that secured his place in military history came while he was serving as a sergeant during the final assault on the Confederate defenses at Petersburg, Virginia.

Buffington entered service in 1862. The 6th Maryland Infantry became part of the Army of the Potomac and participated in the long series of campaigns that carried Union forces through Virginia. By 1864 and early 1865, the regiment was involved in operations around Petersburg, where Union and Confederate armies had faced each other for months in an extensive system of trenches, forts, and earthworks.

Petersburg was strategically vital because several railroads supplying Richmond and General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia passed through the area. Union forces gradually extended their lines around the city, cutting transportation routes and increasing pressure on the Confederate defenses.

By the spring of 1865, those defenses were beginning to fail.

On April 2, 1865, Union forces launched a massive attack intended to break through the Confederate line. The VI Corps advanced against heavily fortified positions as part of the assault that would finally make Petersburg impossible for Lee to hold.

Buffington was serving as a sergeant with Company C of the 6th Maryland Infantry.

The soldiers moved forward toward earthworks that had protected Confederate troops for months. Reaching the defensive line meant crossing exposed ground under fire and then climbing the parapet itself, where attackers could be struck before they ever entered the position.

Buffington continued forward.

During the assault, he became the first enlisted man of the Third Division to mount the parapet of the enemy’s line.

That achievement became the central act of his Medal of Honor recognition.

His official citation does not credit him with capturing a flag or single-handedly taking a Confederate position. Instead, it records something equally significant: he was the first enlisted soldier of his division to reach and mount the enemy parapet during the breakthrough.

In an assault against fortified works, being first over the defenses meant accepting extraordinary danger. The soldier at the front had little protection and no guarantee that the men behind him would reach the position before defenders reacted.

Buffington nevertheless reached the works and climbed onto the parapet.

The Union breakthrough on April 2 proved decisive. Confederate defensive lines around Petersburg were penetrated, and Lee could no longer maintain his position. That night, Confederate forces began evacuating Petersburg and Richmond.

The retreat westward had begun.

Within a week, the Army of Northern Virginia would surrender at Appomattox Court House.

Buffington therefore performed his Medal of Honor action during one of the most consequential days of the Civil War. His advance over the Confederate parapet was part of the larger breakthrough that helped bring the Petersburg Campaign to an end and accelerated the final collapse of Lee’s army.

He survived the war and continued to advance in rank, eventually reaching first lieutenant, the highest verified rank of his Army service.

Recognition for his conduct at Petersburg did not come immediately.

More than four decades after the battle, on March 6, 1908, John Ezra Buffington was awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions of April 2, 1865. A public ceremony later that month in Taneytown, Maryland, honored the veteran whose courage had been demonstrated when he was still a sergeant advancing against Confederate fortifications.

The long delay between battlefield action and national recognition was not unusual among Civil War Medal of Honor recipients. Many wartime deeds were formally reviewed years or even decades after the conflict, as military records and testimony were examined.

Buffington’s Medal of Honor preserved one precise achievement from the final Petersburg assault: he was the first enlisted man of his division to mount the enemy parapet.

His wider wartime service is also represented by the Army Civil War Campaign Medal. Established decades after the conflict, the medal recognized qualifying Army and volunteer service during the Civil War. While the Medal of Honor commemorated Buffington’s individual courage during the breakthrough at Petersburg, the campaign medal represented the broader military service that carried him through the conflict.

Buffington lived well into the twentieth century, surviving long enough to see the Civil War pass from living national crisis into established history. The battlefields on which he had served became places of remembrance, and the veterans who had fought there became increasingly important witnesses to the nation’s wartime past.

He died on November 22, 1924, in Washington, D.C., and was buried in Trinity Lutheran Cemetery in Taneytown, Maryland.

John Ezra Buffington’s legacy is tied to a moment when hesitation could have meant death and forward movement demanded extraordinary courage.

The Confederate parapet stood ahead.

The assault was underway.

Buffington kept moving.

When the Union troops reached the enemy line at Petersburg, he became the first enlisted man of his division to climb onto the defenses. More than forty years later, the Medal of Honor formally recognized what he had done on April 2, 1865.

His courage placed him at the front of the breakthrough that helped end the siege of Petersburg—and brought the Civil War closer to its final conclusion.