Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

The United States of America Congressional Medal of Honor awarded to Private G. F. Thompson, 27th Maine Volunteer Regiment, who took part in the defence of Washington D.C. during the Civil War, October 1862 to July 1863, and was one of 864 men of the Regiment who received the Medal of Honor in 1863, before having the award cancelled by Congress in 1917

United States of America, Congressional Medal of Honor, Army, 1st (1862-96) issue, by Paquet, bronze, the reverse engraved ‘The Congress to George F. Thompson Co. K. 27th. Me. Vol. with eagle and crossed cannons suspension, and top United States Shield riband bar, with ‘American flag’ riband, extremely fine £3600-4000

George F. Thompson was born in Shapleigh, Maine, and served during the American Civil War with the 27th Maine Volunteer Infantry Regiment, a nine-month service Volunteer Regiment raised primarily from York County, Maine, under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Mark F. Wentworth, for service in the Union Army. Mustered on 30 September 1862, they left for Washington, D.C., on 20 October 1862, serving as pickets in the defences of the capital through their entire term, serving at Arlington Heights, Virginia, from 23 October to 12 December 1862, and then at Hunting Creek until March, 1863. They then moved to Chantilly, Virginia, on 24 March, and remained on duty there until 23 June. On 25 June 1863, with their terms of service about to expire, they were sent back to Arlington Heights for preparations to their mustering out and subsequent return to Maine. However, on the request of President Abraham Lincoln, the Secretary of War Edwin Stanton sent a letter on 28 June 1863 to the commanding officer of the 25th Maine Volunteer Regiment, asking for them to remain beyond their contracted service due to the invasion of Pennsylvania by Robert E. Lee and his Confederate Army. Declined by the 25th Maine, the 27th Maine Volunteers were then asked, and 312 men volunteered to remain beyond their service time in the defences of Washington during what became the Gettysburg Campaign. When Colonel Wentworth delivered the message to Secretary Stanton, he was informed that “Medals of Honor would be given to that portion of the regiment that volunteered to remain”. With the battle soon over, the Volunteers left Washington for the north on 4 July, reuniting with the rest of the regiment in Portland for their mustering out on 17 July 1863. Following the end of the war, when the promise to award medals to the volunteers who stayed behind was fulfilled, there was a lack of an agreeable list of those who had specifically stayed behind in Washington (and Thompson’s name does not appear on the latest reconstructed roll of such volunteers), and so, as a result, all 864 men of the Regiment received the Medal of Honor.

In 1917 the United States Congress officially cancelled all 864 awards, including that to Colonel Wentworth, as the actions of the Regiment did not meet the criteria for the award. Total casualties for the Regiment during the Defence of Washington were 1 Officer and 21 men died, all of whom died of disease.