John F. Chase

He Dragged the Gun Away After Its Horses Were Killed

John F. Chase was born on April 23, 1843, in Chelsea, Maine. During the American Civil War, he entered the United States Army and served first with Company B of the 3rd Maine Infantry before joining the 5th Maine Light Artillery. He was still a private when he performed the act of battlefield courage that later earned him the Medal of Honor.

By the spring of 1863, Chase was serving with the 5th Maine Battery during the Chancellorsville Campaign in Virginia. The Battle of Chancellorsville became one of the most intense engagements of the war, with Union and Confederate forces fighting through wooded terrain under heavy artillery and musket fire.

On May 3, 1863, Chase’s battery came under severe attack.

The artillery position suffered heavily. Officers and members of the gun crews were killed or wounded as Confederate fire struck the battery. Despite the losses around him, Chase remained at his post and continued helping operate the cannon.

As the fighting intensified, the battery’s ability to withdraw became increasingly difficult. The horses needed to move one of the guns were killed, leaving the artillery piece exposed and in danger of falling into Confederate hands.

Chase and another soldier refused to abandon it.

With the usual means of moving the weapon gone, the two men took on the task themselves. They helped drag the gun from the battlefield, saving it from capture while enemy pressure continued around them.

That act became the foundation of Chase’s Medal of Honor recognition.

His heroism at Chancellorsville was not based on a captured flag or a dramatic charge against enemy defenses. It came from remaining with his gun after the battery had suffered devastating casualties and then helping remove the weapon when the horses that normally pulled it had been killed.

The action demonstrated both courage and determination. Artillery crews depended on teamwork, horses, ammunition, and disciplined movement. When those systems broke down under combat conditions, a gun could easily be abandoned or captured. Chase continued working despite the collapse around him and helped ensure that the piece did not remain in enemy hands.

His war, however, was far from over.

Only two months later, Chase fought at Gettysburg.

There, his life changed permanently.

During the battle, an exploding shell struck him with devastating force. He suffered numerous wounds and lost his right arm and left eye. The injuries were so severe that his military service could not continue in the same way.

Chase survived.

The wounds left permanent physical consequences, but they did not erase the record of what he had already done at Chancellorsville. After recovering sufficiently, he was discharged from the Army for disability on November 25, 1863.

His survival itself was remarkable. Civil War battlefield medicine faced enormous limitations, and soldiers suffering severe artillery wounds frequently died from blood loss, infection, or complications. Chase lived with the consequences of his injuries for more than fifty years after the war.

Despite losing his right arm, he adapted to life after military service. Surviving examples of his writing show that he learned to write with his left hand, providing a striking personal record of his determination after the injuries that had ended his wartime career.

Recognition for his conduct at Chancellorsville came decades later.

On February 7, 1888, John F. Chase was awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions of May 3, 1863. The award formally recognized the courage he had shown while continuing to serve his artillery piece after devastating losses and helping drag the gun away when its horses had been killed.

The Medal of Honor commemorated one specific battlefield act, but Chase’s broader Civil War service extended beyond that single moment. He had served in Union units, fought in major campaigns, survived Chancellorsville, and suffered catastrophic wounds at Gettysburg.

His wartime service is also represented by the Army Civil War Campaign Medal, established later to recognize qualifying United States Army service during the conflict. While the Medal of Honor marked his individual gallantry at Chancellorsville, the campaign medal represented the larger military service in which that act occurred.

Chase lived well into the twentieth century. The battlefields where he had fought became places of national remembrance, while photographs and written material connected with him preserved the image of a veteran who had survived some of the war’s most violent fighting.

He died on November 28, 1914, in St. Petersburg, Florida, and was buried in St. Bartholomew Cemetery.

John F. Chase’s military legacy is defined by both courage and endurance.

At Chancellorsville, he remained with his artillery after the battery had been shattered by casualties. When the horses were killed and the gun could no longer be moved in the normal way, he helped drag it away rather than leave it to the enemy.

At Gettysburg, he suffered wounds that permanently altered his life.

He survived both.

Years later, the Medal of Honor formally recognized the courage he had shown when, under fire and surrounded by destruction, he refused to abandon his gun.