Thomas Anderson

He Seized a Confederate Flag at Appomattox

Thomas Anderson was born on July 12, 1841, at Scenery Hill in Washington County, Pennsylvania. He came of age as the United States moved toward civil war, and while still a young man he entered Union military service through Wheeling in what became West Virginia. He served in Company I of the 1st West Virginia Cavalry, a regiment formed during the opening months of the conflict and destined for years of demanding mounted service.

The 1st West Virginia Cavalry operated across some of the most heavily contested regions of the eastern theater. During Anderson’s years of service, the regiment moved through western Virginia, the Shenandoah Valley, northern Virginia and Pennsylvania and served under several Union commands. Its duties ranged from scouting and screening movements to raids, mounted combat and participation in major campaigns. By the later stages of the war, Anderson held the rank of corporal, carrying responsibility within a regiment that had become an experienced cavalry formation.

The regiment’s wartime record included service with the Army of the Potomac and later with Union cavalry forces operating in the Shenandoah Valley. It was also present during the Gettysburg Campaign and continued active field service through the hard campaigning of 1864. By early 1865, the 1st West Virginia Cavalry was assigned to the 3rd Brigade of Major General George Armstrong Custer’s 3rd Cavalry Division. This placed Anderson and his comrades among the mounted troops driving relentlessly after General Robert E. Lee’s retreating Army of Northern Virginia during the final Appomattox Campaign.

By April 1865, Confederate forces were moving west in an increasingly desperate effort to escape Union pursuit and obtain supplies. Lee hoped to reach Appomattox Station, where trains loaded with badly needed provisions were waiting. Union cavalry, however, moved rapidly ahead of the Confederate army. On April 8, Custer’s mounted troops reached the area and seized several of the supply trains before turning against Confederate reserve artillery positioned nearby.

The fighting at Appomattox Station unfolded during the evening as Union cavalry repeatedly pressed the Confederate position. The battlefield was difficult terrain for mounted troops and artillery, yet the Federal cavalry continued its attacks. The Confederate reserve artillery force possessed scores of guns, but after repeated charges its position broke down. Union forces captured artillery, prisoners and the supplies that Lee’s exhausted army desperately needed. The loss helped close one of the final possible routes of escape for the Army of Northern Virginia.

It was during this battle on April 8, 1865, that Corporal Thomas Anderson performed the act for which he would receive the Medal of Honor. Serving with Company I of the 1st West Virginia Cavalry, Anderson captured a Confederate flag during the fighting at Appomattox Station. The surviving official citation is remarkably brief—simply recording the capture of a Confederate flag—and does not identify the Confederate unit whose colors he seized. His achievement therefore stands without later embellishment: in the confusion and danger of one of the war’s final engagements, Anderson took an enemy flag while serving in the attacking Union cavalry.

The timing made the action especially significant. The Battle of Appomattox Station occurred only hours before the final confrontation at Appomattox Court House. With Union cavalry blocking the western approaches and Federal infantry arriving in strength, Lee’s army found itself increasingly trapped. On the morning of April 9, Confederate forces made one final attempt to break through before Lee concluded that further resistance was futile. The surrender that followed effectively brought the Army of Northern Virginia’s major military operations to an end.

Anderson’s bravery was recognized almost immediately. On May 3, 1865, less than a month after the action, he was presented the Medal of Honor for capturing the Confederate flag. The decoration was still a relatively new military honor, having been created during the Civil War, and Anderson joined the soldiers whose battlefield actions helped establish its early history. His award was not posthumous; he lived to carry the distinction for nearly half a century after the war.

His Civil War service is also associated with the Army Civil War Campaign Medal. The War Department established this campaign medal in 1907, more than four decades after the fighting ended, to recognize surviving veterans who had rendered qualifying service in the United States Army or Volunteer forces during the Civil War. Anderson was still living when the medal was created, and his service with the 1st West Virginia Cavalry fell within the qualifying period commemorated by the decoration. The medal represented not one isolated act of valor, but the broader wartime service of Union veterans who had endured the campaigns of 1861–1865.

After the Civil War, Anderson returned to Pennsylvania and resumed civilian life. He remained connected to the veteran community and became a member of William F. Templeton Post No. 120 of the Grand Army of the Republic. The organization brought Union veterans together in the decades after the war, preserving their shared experiences and maintaining the bonds formed through military service.

Anderson lived long enough to see the Civil War pass from living conflict into national memory. The young cavalryman who had entered service through Wheeling survived the war, received the nation’s highest military decoration, and spent decades afterward among the generation of veterans who had fought to preserve the Union.

Thomas Anderson died on September 8, 1912, in Washington County, Pennsylvania, at the age of seventy-one. He was buried at Dunkard Cemetery in Lone Pine, Pennsylvania. His legacy rests most clearly on the events of April 8, 1865: as the Confederacy’s military position collapsed around Appomattox, a corporal of the 1st West Virginia Cavalry captured an enemy flag in battle. That brief but dangerous act earned him the Medal of Honor and secured his place among the decorated Union cavalrymen of the American Civil War.