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Penn Notables

Awards and Honors Congressional Medals of Honor, Recipients from the Civil War

This exhibit was prepared in January 2011 by Joseph-James Ahern and Scott W. Hawley (B.A., 1992; B.S. in Econ., 1992)

The Congressional Medal of Honor was established at the start of the Civil War to recognize the gallant actions of sailors and soldiers on the battlefield. That conflict alone produced 1,522 recipients of the Medal of Honor (to date there are 3,449 recipients). Four alumni from the University of Pennsylvania were awarded the Medal of Honor during the Civil War. All four were officers who received their medals at the end of the nineteenth century when officers were made eligible for the decoration. This exhibit provides brief biographical sketches of the recipients.