John Gregory Bishop Adams

He Carried Two Flags Through the Fire at Fredericksburg

John Gregory Bishop Adams was born on 6 October 1841 in Groveland, Massachusetts, the son of Isaac and Margaret Bishop Adams. When the American Civil War began in April 1861, he was a young shoemaker, but the attack on Fort Sumter quickly drew him toward military service. After an initial attempt to join a local company that was already full, he enlisted with the 1st Battalion of Rifles and soon became part of the newly forming 19th Massachusetts Infantry.

At Lynnfield, Adams was promoted to Sixth Corporal. His regiment entered active service in 1861, and he experienced combat for the first time at Ball’s Bluff in October. By March 1862 he had advanced to First Sergeant. During the Peninsula Campaign he received a commission as Second Lieutenant and was assigned to Company I, 19th Massachusetts Infantry. His regiment fought through a demanding series of operations that included Yorktown, Fair Oaks, Seven Pines, Savage’s Station, White Oak Swamp, Glendale, and Malvern Hill.

Adams continued with the regiment into the Maryland Campaign. At the Battle of Antietam in September 1862, he served as a Second Lieutenant and assumed increasing responsibility within his company as the battle progressed. Only a few months later, however, he would perform the action that permanently defined his military career.

On 13 December 1862, the 19th Massachusetts Infantry took part in the Union assault at Fredericksburg, Virginia. The regiment advanced toward Marye’s Heights under devastating Confederate artillery and rifle fire. As the men moved forward, casualties rapidly mounted among the officers and color bearers carrying the regiment’s national and state flags.

One color bearer after another was struck down. Lieutenant Edgar Newcomb took one of the flags before being shot through both legs. As he fell, he handed the colors to Adams. Moments later, the bearer of the other flag was also hit. Adams seized that second color as well.

Now carrying a flag in each hand, Second Lieutenant Adams continued across the exposed battlefield. Rather than allow the colors to disappear amid the confusion and casualties, he carried both forward to a position where the surviving members of the regiment could reform around them. The flags became a visible rallying point for men struggling to maintain cohesion under intense enemy fire.

The act later formed the basis of Adams’s Medal of Honor citation. It specifically recognized that he took the two colors from a corporal and a lieutenant as they fell mortally wounded and advanced with a color in each hand to the point where the regiment was reformed around them.

Adams survived Fredericksburg and continued his military service. His conduct helped bring promotion to First Lieutenant, and he ultimately attained the rank of Captain. He remained with the 19th Massachusetts through some of the hardest fighting of the war.

At Gettysburg in July 1863, Adams was badly wounded while serving with his regiment during one of the conflict’s most decisive battles. He recovered and returned to duty. The following year brought another difficult chapter in his service when he was captured during the 1864 campaign in Virginia.

Adams subsequently endured imprisonment in several Confederate prisons. He was held at Libby Prison in Richmond and later transferred south to Macon, Georgia. He was also confined at Charleston, South Carolina, where Union officers were placed in an exposed position on Morris Island during a period of Union bombardment. The episode became one of the most controversial examples of prisoners being deliberately placed in danger during the war.

Adams was later transferred to Columbia, South Carolina. During his captivity he and a fellow prisoner escaped and attempted to make their way toward Union lines. Their freedom was temporary, however, and both men were eventually recaptured. Adams spent approximately nine months as a prisoner before being exchanged in early 1865.

After returning north, he resumed military life and eventually completed his wartime service as a Captain. By the end of the Civil War, Adams had experienced infantry combat, command responsibility, serious wounds, capture, imprisonment, an escape attempt, and eventual return from captivity.

Following the war, he settled into civilian life in Massachusetts. He worked for approximately ten years as a foreman in a shoe factory in Lynn before moving into public service. His later positions included employment as an inspector at the Boston Custom House, service as Postmaster of Lynn, and work as Deputy Warden of the Massachusetts State Reformatory at Concord.

Adams also became deeply involved in veterans’ organizations. He was the first member of General Frederick W. Lander Post No. 5 of the Grand Army of the Republic in Lynn and remained active in the organization for many years. His standing among fellow veterans eventually led to his election as Commander-in-Chief of the Grand Army of the Republic in 1893.

His public career also included service as Sergeant at Arms of the Massachusetts legislature, a position to which he was elected in 1885. The role placed him in charge of important administrative and ceremonial responsibilities at the State House and reflected the respect he had earned long after leaving military service.

More than three decades after the Battle of Fredericksburg, Adams’s actions with the regimental colors received formal national recognition. On 16 December 1896, he was presented with the Medal of Honor for his conduct on 13 December 1862.

The long interval between the battlefield action and the award is important. Adams had already lived through the remainder of the Civil War, imprisonment, recovery, and decades of civilian and veterans’ service before the United States formally recognized the moment when he carried two fallen colors through the fire at Fredericksburg. No additional clasp, bar, star, or other device accompanied his Medal of Honor.

In 1899, Adams published Reminiscences of the Nineteenth Massachusetts Regiment, preserving his memories of the war, including combat, prison life, escape, and the men with whom he had served. The memoir helped ensure that the experiences of the regiment were not lost as the Civil War generation grew older.

John Gregory Bishop Adams died on 19 October 1900 in Lynn, Massachusetts. He was buried in Pine Grove Cemetery in Lynn.

His military legacy is centered on one of the most symbolic responsibilities in Civil War combat: preserving the regimental colors. At Fredericksburg, as color bearers and officers fell around him, Adams took possession of both flags and carried them across an exposed battlefield until his regiment could rally around them. That act of courage and leadership, performed as a Second Lieutenant and recognized decades later with the Medal of Honor, secured his place in the history of the 19th Massachusetts Infantry and the American Civil War.