Christian Fleetwood's Medal of Honor
date: label: Date made
content: 1862
name: label: recipient
content: Fleetwood, Christian A.
notes: label: Description
content: This Medal of Honor was awarded to Sergeant Major Christian Fleetwood, 4th U.S. Colored Troops, for heroism on the field of battle at Chaffin’s Farm on September 29, 1864. Fleetwood seized his regiment's colors after two color bearers had been shot down, and bore them nobly through the fight. Fleetwood was 23 years old. He was one of 26 African Americans to receive the Medal of Honor for actions during the Civil War.
label: Description
content: Fleetwood was born in Baltimore, Maryland. A free African American, he traveled to Liberia as a young man and attended Ashmun Institute (later Lincoln University) in Oxford, Pennsylvania. Having been a newspaper editor prior to the Civil War, he afterwards worked for the Freedman's Bureau, the War Department, and the Supreme Court, organized a battalion of the District of Columbia National Guard and a Black High School Cadet Corps, and led his Presbyterian Church choir. In 1895, he authored "The Negro as a Soldier," a brief but important early effort to underscore the long history Black Americans' military service dating back to the Revolution.
topic: label: Subject
content: Medal of Honor
label: related event
content: Civil War
label: related event
content: Civil War and Reconstruction
setName: label: See more items in
content: Military and Society: Armed Forces History, Military
label: See more items in
content: Military
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content: ThinkFinity
label: Exhibition
content: Price of Freedom
label: Exhibition Location
content: National Museum of American History
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Edith Fleetwood
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: AF.046054.1
label: accession number
content: 178781
label: catalog number
content: 46054
objectType: label: Object Name
content: medal
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: bronze (overall material)
label: Physical Description
content: silk (overall material)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 4 1/4 in x 2 1/16 in x 1/4 in; 10.795 cm x 5.23875 cm x .635 cm