The SCV Confederate Medal of Honor

By Stephen Davis · Originally published May 2019 · p. 43

On February 23, Col. Hume R. Feild (1834–1921) became the sixty-fourth veteran of the War Between the States to be bestowed the Confederate Medal of Honor. The modern-day Medal came about by a resolution passed in August 1968 at the Seventy-third General Convention of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, held in Nashville. The award was to be bestowed on Confederate soldiers or sailors for whom applicants could provide “incontestable proof of deeds performed above and beyond the call of duty at the peril of one’s life,” in the words of Gregg S. Clemmer, author of Valor in Gray: The Recipients of the Confederate Medal of Honor (1996). The first Confederate Medal of Honor was bestowed in memory of Pvt. Samuel Davis (1842-Nov. 27, 1863), the young Tennessean hanged as a spy by Federal troops at Pulaski, Tenn. In the formal Confederate Medal of Honor citation accompanying the application on behalf of Private Davis, his final words were quoted. Just before the noose was placed around his neck, Davis was asked one last time if he would name his secret informants. “Do you suppose I would betray a friend?” Davis answered. “No, sir, I would die a thousand deaths first!” Recipients of subsequent medals are Maj. John Pelham for his courage in the battle of Fredericksburg and Maj. Gen. Patrick R. Cleburne at Franklin. There are lesser-known awardees, too; Emmeran Bliemel, Chaplain of the10th Tennessee was honored for his sacrifice at Jonesboro, Ga., on Aug. 31, 1864. Ministering to a dying man in the midst of the battle, Father Bliemel was killed by an artillery shell. Hume Feild was nominated by twenty-eight-year-old Justin Smith, a first cousin, six generations removed. The medal application prepared by Smith demonstrates zeal, commitment, and discipline, plus a lot of hard work. Spiral-bound, seventy-six pages in length, the booklet is divided into five sections. The SCV’s nomination form is brief and straightforward, asking for an explanation of the proposed honoree’s distinguished deed or action. Smith surveyed Feild’s war record, from captain of Co. K, 1st Tennessee to colonel commanding the 1st/27th Tennessee Consolidated Infantry

Regiment. In particular, Smith detailed Colonel Feild’s act of valor at the “Dead Angle” in the battle of Kennesaw Mountain, June 27, 1864, during the Atlanta Campaign. As explained by Sam Watkins in his famed memoir Co. “Aytch,” “Colonel H. R. Feild was loading and shooting the same as any private in the ranks when he fell off the skid from which he was shooting right over my shoulder, shot through the head. I laid him down in the trench and he said, ‘Well, Sam, they have got me at last, but I have killed fifteen of them; time about is fair play I reckon.” As Justin explains, Feild recovered from his wound and resumed command of his regiment, leading it through Hood’s Tennessee Campaign and beyond. Surrendering with Johnston’s Army of Tennessee, he received his parole at Greensboro, N.C., almost four years to the day from his enlistment. The Sons of Confederate Veterans requires the applicant to provide published materials, records, and documents substantiating the nominee’s deed. Justin accordingly included a Sam Watkins article in Confederate Veteran on the fight at the Dead Angle, copies of the colonel’s after-action reports in the Official Records, articles about Feild in postwar newspapers, and his biographical sketch in Confederate Military History, among other sources. He even photocopied and bound Feild’s Compiled Military Service Record from the National Archives. One SCV requirement is that the applicant will have arranged with an institution, such as a library or museum, for the permanent display of the Confederate Medal of Honor in the event that the judging committee votes in favor of the award. Justin arranged for Colonel Feild’s medal to be displayed at the Bell Research Center in Cumming, Ga. The BRC is a well-kept secret: an extensive Civil War library and museum, where Justin conducted most of his research. The Center is owned and operated by SCV Camp 1642, named after Col. Hiram Parks Bell. Smith even included color photographs of the BRC, its library holdings, and weapons display case. In July 2018, Smith mailed his application booklet to the Chairman of the SCV’s Confederate Medal of Honor Committee. After he secured its approving vote, he, the Bell Center, and Camp 1642 planned an impressive ceremony for formal reception of the medal. Held in Cumming this past February 23, dozens gathered for invocation, words of welcome from SCV officers, and an address of tribute delivered by Smith (2nd Lt. Commander of the Hiram Parks Bell Camp). I asked Justin how he came to be so motivated to secure his ancestor’s recognition. He answered that “stories of valor like these must be preserved. The soldiers who have been awarded this medal represent men who served but whose stories were never penned nor remembered.” “I encourage everyone,” Justin told me, “to tell their ancestors’ stories, to preserve the legend of Confederate soldiers’ valor in defense of their homes and for their cause.”