John N. Opel

He Took the Enemy Flag in the Wilderness

John N. Opel was born on July 30, 1843, in Hoflas, Bavaria, in what is now Germany. He later came to the United States and made his home in Indiana. When the American Civil War engulfed the nation, Opel entered Union service and became a private in Company G of the 7th Indiana Infantry.

The 7th Indiana Infantry developed a hard-fighting reputation through repeated service with the Army of the Potomac. Its soldiers campaigned through some of the most demanding operations in Virginia and Maryland, enduring long marches, exposed positions, and repeated contact with Confederate forces. By 1864, the regiment was a veteran organization serving in the Eastern Theater as Union armies prepared for a new and relentless campaign against General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia.

In the spring of 1864, Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant began the Overland Campaign. Unlike earlier Union offensives that often withdrew after major battles, Grant intended to maintain constant pressure on Lee and continue moving south toward Richmond regardless of individual battlefield outcomes.

The campaign opened in a dense region of Virginia known simply as the Wilderness.

On May 5, 1864, Union and Confederate forces collided among thick woods, tangled undergrowth, narrow roads, and limited fields of vision. The terrain made command and control extremely difficult. Units could become separated within minutes, smoke hung between the trees, and soldiers often found themselves fighting at dangerously close range.

Private John N. Opel entered that battle with Company G of the 7th Indiana Infantry.

During the fighting, Opel captured the flag of the 50th Virginia Infantry.

His official Medal of Honor citation records the act directly: he captured the flag of the 50th Virginia Infantry, Confederate States Army.

In Civil War combat, a regimental flag was far more than a ceremonial symbol. Colors helped soldiers identify their formation through smoke and confusion. Men rallied around them when lines became disorganized, and commanders used them as visible markers for a regiment’s position on the battlefield.

Because of their importance, regimental flags were normally protected closely. Color bearers occupied an especially dangerous position, and enemy soldiers understood the symbolic and tactical value of taking an opposing unit’s colors.

For Opel to capture the flag of the 50th Virginia Infantry meant reaching one of the most important symbols at the center of an enemy formation during the confusion of one of the war’s fiercest battles.

The Battle of the Wilderness continued into May 6. Neither army achieved an uncomplicated tactical victory, but the campaign revealed a major change in Union strategy. Grant did not retreat north after the battle. Instead, the Army of the Potomac moved toward Spotsylvania Court House, beginning weeks of nearly continuous fighting.

For Private Opel, however, May 5, 1864, had already become the defining moment of his military service.

He continued serving as a private in the 7th Indiana Infantry. There is no verified evidence that he rose to a higher military rank, and the extraordinary act for which he became nationally recognized was performed as an enlisted infantryman in the ranks.

Recognition followed before the war had ended.

On December 1, 1864, the Medal of Honor was issued to John N. Opel for his conduct at the Wilderness. Several days later, on December 6, he was formally presented with the decoration by Major General George G. Meade.

The presentation came only seven months after the battle.

That relatively short interval distinguished Opel from many Civil War recipients whose actions were not recognized until decades after the conflict. He received the Medal of Honor while the Union and Confederate armies were still fighting and before the final campaigns of 1865 brought the war to a close.

The Medal of Honor was still a comparatively new decoration. Created during the Civil War, it became the highest national military award available to American servicemen. Numerous Civil War Medals of Honor recognized the capture or preservation of enemy and national colors because those acts often occurred in the most dangerous parts of a battlefield.

Opel’s decoration preserved one specific achievement from the chaos of the Wilderness: the capture of the 50th Virginia Infantry’s flag.

His broader Union Army service also fell within the qualifying period later represented by the Army Civil War Campaign Medal. The campaign decoration was created decades after the war to recognize qualifying service during the conflict. Opel lived well beyond its establishment and into the period associated with the later Army ribbon design.

The two decorations represent different dimensions of his military record. The Civil War Campaign Medal reflects his qualifying Union Army service, while the Medal of Honor recognizes the extraordinary battlefield act that made his name part of the official history of the Wilderness Campaign.

Far less is securely documented about Opel’s civilian life after the war than about his military service. Like thousands of other Union veterans, he lived for many decades after the conflict as the generation that had fought the Civil War gradually passed into history.

Opel eventually lived in Missouri. He survived into the twentieth century and witnessed enormous changes in the country he had served as a young immigrant soldier.

John N. Opel died on February 21, 1925, in Cora, Missouri. He was eighty-one years old. He was buried at Mount Zion Cemetery near Milan, Missouri.

More than sixty years had passed since the moment that defined his military legacy.

On May 5, 1864, in the tangled woods of Virginia, Private John N. Opel fought with the 7th Indiana Infantry and captured the colors of the 50th Virginia Infantry.

That single act placed him among the Medal of Honor recipients of the American Civil War and ensured that his courage in the Wilderness would be remembered long after the battlefield had fallen silent.