John M. Kindig

He Took the Enemy Colors at Spotsylvania

John M. Kindig was born in East Liberty, Pennsylvania, in what is now part of Pittsburgh. Little is securely documented about his early life, but by the American Civil War he had entered Union service and became a soldier in Company A of the 63rd Pennsylvania Infantry. His wartime career would eventually carry him into some of the hardest fighting experienced by the Army of the Potomac.

The 63rd Pennsylvania was an infantry regiment drawn largely from western Pennsylvania. During its Civil War service, the regiment operated in the Eastern Theater and became part of the Army of the Potomac, enduring the demanding campaigns that repeatedly brought Union and Confederate forces into direct confrontation across Virginia.

By the spring of 1864, Kindig had reached the rank of corporal. That May, the Union Army began Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant’s Overland Campaign, a relentless series of operations designed to maintain pressure against General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. After the terrible fighting in the Wilderness, the opposing armies moved toward Spotsylvania Court House.

There they collided again.

The Battle of Spotsylvania Court House became one of the most violent engagements of the campaign. Confederate troops occupied powerful defensive works, while Union forces repeatedly attempted to break their lines. On May 12, 1864, Union troops launched a major assault against the Confederate defenses, producing fierce close-range fighting around the salient that became famous as the Mule Shoe.

It was during the fighting at Spotsylvania that Corporal John M. Kindig performed the action that would define his military legacy.

Kindig captured the regimental flag of the 28th North Carolina Infantry.

In Civil War combat, a regimental flag was far more than decoration. Colors helped soldiers identify their unit through smoke, noise, and confusion. They provided a visible rallying point during advances and retreats, and they embodied the identity and honor of the regiment carrying them. Because of that importance, color bearers were exposed to extraordinary danger, and enemy flags were highly prized battlefield captures.

Kindig’s achievement was recorded officially among the captures made during the fighting. The surviving military record identifies him specifically as Corporal John M. Kindig of Company A, 63rd Pennsylvania Infantry, and credits him with taking the flag of the 28th North Carolina Infantry at Spotsylvania on May 12, 1864.

The official Medal of Honor citation is remarkably brief: it simply records the capture of the Confederate flag. That economy of language should not obscure the circumstances surrounding the action. Kindig was serving as an infantry corporal during one of the most intense days of the Spotsylvania battle, when Union and Confederate soldiers were fighting at extremely close range for control of fortified positions.

His act placed him among a number of Union soldiers whose capture of enemy colors during the Civil War was recognized as an exceptional battlefield accomplishment. Flags were normally positioned where troops could see and follow them, meaning that taking one required reaching the heart of an opposing formation or defensive position.

Recognition came before the war had ended.

On December 1, 1864, Kindig was formally issued the Medal of Honor for his conduct at Spotsylvania. Five days later, on December 6, he received the decoration during a review of the Second Army Corps headquarters near Petersburg, Virginia. Major General George G. Meade presented the medal.

The presentation occurred while Union and Confederate armies were still locked in the Petersburg campaign. Kindig therefore received national recognition for his courage while the war itself remained unresolved.

His Medal of Honor represented one of the earliest generations of the decoration. The Army Medal of Honor had been authorized during the Civil War and became the principal national award for extraordinary military conduct by Union soldiers. Kindig’s decoration directly connected his name with the capture of the 28th North Carolina Infantry’s colors at Spotsylvania.

At some point in his service, Kindig advanced beyond the corporal’s rank he held during the Medal of Honor action. His highest verified military rank was sergeant. The distinction is important: he was a corporal when he captured the Confederate flag, but his later service record identifies Sergeant as the highest rank he attained.

The Civil War ended less than a year after the Spotsylvania fighting. Kindig survived the conflict and returned to civilian life in Pennsylvania. His years after the war were comparatively brief, and surviving authoritative records preserve far more about his battlefield achievement than about his postwar life.

John M. Kindig died in 1869, only a few years after the end of the Civil War. Historical sources disagree on the precise day and month of his death, so the year alone is the safest verified statement. He was buried at Allegheny Cemetery in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Veterans Administration records also preserve the alternate spelling “Kendig” in connection with his burial, while confirming that his Medal of Honor was awarded under the name Kindig.

His military legacy remains tied to one moment in the chaos of May 12, 1864.

At Spotsylvania, while serving as a corporal in the 63rd Pennsylvania Infantry, John M. Kindig captured the colors of the 28th North Carolina Infantry. Months later, the United States formally recognized that act with the Medal of Honor.

The citation needed only a few words to describe what he had done. More than a century later, those words still preserve the essential fact of his courage: amid one of the Civil War’s fiercest battles, Kindig came away carrying the enemy’s flag.