Thomas D. Collins

At Sixteen, He Captured an Enemy Battle Flag

Thomas D. Collins was born on August 14, 1847, in Neversink Flats, Sullivan County, New York. During the American Civil War, he entered the United States Army and served with Company H of the 143rd New York Infantry. Although still remarkably young, Collins would take part in one of the major campaigns of 1864 and perform an act at the Battle of Resaca that later brought him the Medal of Honor.

The 143rd New York Infantry served with Union forces operating in the Western Theater. By the spring of 1864, the regiment was participating in the Atlanta Campaign, the large Federal offensive led by Major General William T. Sherman against Confederate forces defending northern Georgia and the approaches to Atlanta.

The campaign began with a series of hard marches, maneuvering, and battles through difficult terrain. Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston repeatedly withdrew to prepared defensive positions, forcing Sherman’s armies to find ways around or through them. One of the first major confrontations came at Resaca, Georgia.

The Battle of Resaca was fought on May 13–15, 1864. Union and Confederate troops clashed across fortified lines, wooded ground, ravines, and defensive works as Sherman attempted to force Johnston from his position. Infantry units were repeatedly sent forward under heavy fire, and the struggle became one of the first significant battles of the Atlanta Campaign.

On May 15, Collins was serving as a sergeant with Company H of the 143rd New York Infantry.

During the fighting, he captured a Confederate regimental flag.

His Medal of Honor citation is concise and direct. It records that he “captured a regimental flag of the enemy.” No additional dramatic story is needed to understand the importance of the act. In Civil War combat, regimental colors were among the most important objects on the battlefield. They identified a regiment’s position, helped soldiers maintain formation amid smoke and confusion, and carried enormous symbolic value.

Because of that importance, battle flags were usually guarded closely. Capturing an enemy color generally meant reaching a point of intense combat where opposing formations had come into close contact. It required a soldier to expose himself to serious danger, often while enemy troops were fighting to protect the flag and their position.

Collins accomplished that feat while still a teenager.

Based on his verified birth and action dates, he was only sixteen years old at Resaca. Yet during a major battle in an active campaign, he served as a sergeant and captured an enemy regimental flag. That single documented act became the defining moment of his military service.

The fighting around Resaca continued until Confederate forces withdrew southward, allowing Sherman’s armies to continue their advance through Georgia. The battle did not end the campaign, but it demonstrated the relentless nature of the struggle that would continue through places such as New Hope Church, Kennesaw Mountain, and eventually Atlanta.

Collins remained part of a regiment serving through this demanding period of the war. His Medal of Honor action occurred within a much larger campaign that placed Union soldiers under repeated pressure as they advanced deeper into Confederate territory.

More than three decades passed before his gallantry received the nation’s highest military decoration.

On August 14, 1896—his forty-ninth birthday—Thomas D. Collins was awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions at Resaca on May 15, 1864. The citation preserved the essential fact of his achievement: he had captured an enemy regimental flag in battle.

The long gap between the action and the award was not unusual among Civil War Medal of Honor recipients. Many wartime deeds were formally reviewed years later as military records, testimony, and documentation were examined. Collins therefore joined a group of veterans whose battlefield actions were nationally recognized long after the conflict itself had ended.

The Medal of Honor represented his individual gallantry at Resaca. His broader Civil War service is also represented by the Army Civil War Campaign Medal, which was established decades after the war to recognize qualifying service performed by soldiers of the United States Army and volunteer forces during the conflict.

The two decorations represent different parts of Collins’s military history. The Medal of Honor commemorates one specific act under fire—the capture of an enemy regimental flag. The Civil War campaign recognition represents the wider wartime service that placed him on the battlefield during one of the most important Union offensives of 1864.

Collins survived the Civil War and lived for many decades afterward. The country he returned to changed dramatically over the course of his lifetime, but his connection to the war remained preserved through his regiment, his Medal of Honor, and the official record of his action at Resaca.

He died on May 26, 1935, in Middletown, New York, at the age of eighty-seven. He was buried in Hillside Cemetery in Middletown.

Thomas D. Collins’s legacy rests on a remarkable combination of youth, responsibility, and courage. At an age when most people had barely entered adulthood, he was already serving as a sergeant in a combat regiment during one of the Civil War’s major campaigns.

At Resaca, he moved into the danger of battle and captured an enemy regimental flag. The official citation does not surround the event with elaborate detail. It does not need to.

The act speaks for itself.

More than thirty years later, the Medal of Honor formally recognized what Collins had done in Georgia in 1864. His story remains a striking example of the extraordinary responsibilities carried by young soldiers during the Civil War and of the courage required to seize an enemy standard in the middle of battle.