By Elizabeth Barhydt
The third article in this 10-part series begins where the first two naturally lead.
The series began with Major Sullivan Ballou’s Civil War letter, written with the terrible lucidity of a man who understood what his country was asking and what his family would lose.
The second article turned to the Civil War hospital ship USS Red Rover, the U.S. Navy’s first hospital ship where women served aboard it as nurses decades before the formal creation of the Navy Nurse Corps, Clara Barton; and the Red Cross tradition of going where suffering is greatest.
This week’s article carries on to Private Nicholas Fox, a Connecticut Medal of Honor recipient. The Medal of Honor is the United States’ highest award for military valor in combat. President Abraham Lincoln signed the Navy medal legislation on Dec. 21, 1861, and the Army medal legislation on July 12, 1862.
The medal, then, was born not in a settled republic but in a country struggling to survive its own fracture. It was created during the same war that produced Ballou’s letter, the same war that produced hospital ships on the Mississippi, the same war that produced the battlefield where Fox acted.
Fox was born in Oldcastle, Ireland, in November 1844. His exact date of birth is uncertain, but he was baptized on Nov. 5, 1844, in the Roman Catholic church in Oldcastle. His family emigrated to the United States in 1855 aboard the Rappahannock, arriving in New York City on May 23. By the 1860 census, the family had settled in Connecticut.
The Congressional Medal of Honor Society lists Fox as a private in Company H, 28th Connecticut Infantry, with his Medal of Honor action at Port Hudson, Louisiana, on June 14, 1863. The Society accredits him to Fairfield County, Connecticut.
Fox was 17 when he enlisted on Aug. 28, 1862, according to historian Peter C. Vermilyea’s account for Emerging Civil War, which cites Fox’s compiled military service record. Vermilyea writes that Fox stood 5 feet 8 inches, with sandy hair and gray eyes. The portrait is small but useful: a teenage Irish immigrant from Connecticut, not yet 20, entering the army of his adopted country. Port Hudson was one of the decisive river struggles of the Civil War. Union forces sought control of the Mississippi River, and Confederate control of Port Hudson helped block that objective.
The siege lasted 48 days and ended after the fall of Vicksburg, when Port Hudson surrendered on July 9, 1863, opening the Mississippi River to Union navigation. The 28th Connecticut was part of that campaign. The regiment took part in the assault of June 14, 1863, when Union forces moved against Confederate works through ravines, felled timber, fortified lines, and killing fire. Emerging Civil War quotes Private Noah Hoyt of the 28th Connecticut describing how the men, unable to advance or retreat, threw themselves to the ground. Hoyt wrote that they lay in the “Boiling Sun,” with dust “three inches Deep,” suffering from heat, thirst and bullets.
The official Medal of Honor citation is spare, as such citations often are. It reads:
“The President of the United States of America, in the name of Congress, takes pleasure in presenting the Medal of Honor to Private Nicholas Fox, United States Army, for extraordinary heroism on 14 June 1863, while serving with Company H, 28th Connecticut Infantry, in action at Port Hudson, Louisiana. Private Fox made two trips across an open space, in the face of the enemy’s concentrated fire, and secured water for the sick and wounded.”
The Port Chester account gives the scene its human weight. It said Fox had participated in the assault on the enemy’s works, but the troops were repulsed, “leaving between the lines many wounded who were helpless and exposed to the enemy’s fire and the heat of the sun.” After several men were killed trying to help them, Fox volunteered. He loaded himself with canteens and made two trips “in plain view and under the hot fire of the enemy.”
There is no ornament to add to that without diminishing it. The need was water. The obstacle was enemy fire. The wounded were visible. The distance had to be crossed.
Fox crossed it once. Then he crossed it again.
Vermilyea’s account adds that Fox removed his equipment, arranged seven canteens around his body, reached a spring, filled them and ran the water back to the wounded. Fox later recalled that “shots from the rebel breast-works flew thick and fast around me,” yet he returned safely with water for the suffering men, according to the Emerging Civil War account.
Fox received the Medal of Honor on April 1, 1898. The award came more than three decades after Port Hudson. By then, the young private had become a workingman, husband and father. He and his wife, Catherine Simcox, settled in Port Chester, New York, where they raised their children. Fox worked for R.B. & W. Bolt Works and eventually became a superintendent.
Vermilyea writes that Fox also served in the 22nd New York Cavalry in 1865, became active in local parades, served as commander of his Grand Army of the Republic post, and worked at the same company for 72 years. When Fox died in 1929, veterans of the Civil War, Spanish-American War and World War I formed an honor guard at his funeral. Fox was buried at St. Mary’s Cemetery in Rye Brook, New York.
As the nation approaches its 250th anniversary, the story of Nicholas Fox belongs in this series because it resists abstraction. The Revolution gave the country its founding promises. The Civil War tested whether those promises could survive. Fox’s life crossed both meanings of America: arrival and obligation. He came as a child from Ireland, grew up in Connecticut, entered the Union Army, and met his defining moment not by destroying an enemy, but by answering human need.
Next week, this series will continue with another account of service, tracing how the country’s 250-year story has been carried forward.
