The Story of the 1st Medal of Honor

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There's a better way to fly private. And we continue with Our American Stories, and we tell stories about everything here on this show, including your story. Send them to OurAmericanStories.com. They're some of our favorites. Our next story comes to us from a man who's simply known as the History Guy. His videos are watched by hundreds of thousands of people of all ages on YouTube. The History Guy is also heard here on Our American Stories. You've heard the History Guy tell the story of the only woman to be awarded the Medal of Honor. Today, the History Guy remembers a desperate attempt to rescue soldiers besieged by Apache Indians, which resulted in the first Medal of Honor by date of action and starts the Apache War.

Here's the History Guy. The Medal of Honor is the highest award for valor to be offered to members of the United States Armed Forces. It is so prestigious that President Harry Truman was famously quoted as saying that he would rather have won the Medal of Honor than been President of the United States. The Medal was created in 1862, but it was possible to nominate people for actions that occurred in the past, and that meant they were actually Medals of Honor awarded for events that occurred before the Medal of Honor was created. And so it is that the earliest event for which a Medal of Honor was awarded occurred before the Medal was created, and actually even before the Civil War for which the Medal of Honor was created. And it all has to do with an event that is almost forgotten and yet still extremely important to American history and still controversial today.

The Medal of Honor that was awarded to Assistant Surgeon Bernard Irwin, the first chronologically by date of action Medal of Honor to be awarded, is history that deserves to be remembered. The peoples known as the Apache are a people indigenous to the southwestern United States. The Apache were generally an independent people who lived in family clusters of extended family.

This was important in terms of their relationships with other peoples in that different family groups operated more or less independently, and so different bands might have different relationships with their neighbors. Food was largely derived from hunting and gathering as well as trade. One part of the culture was that the Apache tended to use the practice of raiding as a way of supplementing their diet. In general the Apache distinguished raiding for economic purposes from raiding for war.

They did not think of economic raiding as an act of war and it usually occurred with small bands with specific purpose. Raiding for war included larger numbers of raiders and was usually done for the purpose of retribution, and as part of that the Apache treatment of prisoners could include brutal torture. Apache conflict with Spanish settlers began nearly as early as the two came into contact in the 16th century. As part of the long conflict the Spanish built a series of fortifications along the frontier to protect from Apache raids.

These were called Piscidios and they eventually became the centerpieces of major modern cities like San Antonio, Texas, Santa Fe, New Mexico and Tucson, Arizona. Conflict with Americans started with the Mexican-American War and after much of northern Mexico was ceded to the United States after the war, the increasing number of American settlers traveling down the Santa Fe Trail caused conflict. It was amid ongoing tensions and raiding from both sides that in January of 1861 a group of Apaches raided a farmstead in southern Arizona owned by a rancher named John Ward. Taking some livestock and capturing Ward's 12 year old stepson Felix. Ward traveled to the nearby army outpost of Fort Guitannon and complained to the fort commander, Lieutenant Colonel Pitcairn Morrison of the US 7th Infantry. Morrison dispatched Company C of the 7th Infantry under 2nd Lieutenant George Bascom, a West Point graduate, to retrieve the missing boy. As they picked up the trail from the raiders it appeared to lead towards the Chiricahua Mountains, leading Bascom to conclude that the Chiricahua Apache, whose chief was named Cochise, had been responsible for the raid.

While Bascom's assumption that the Chiricahua had done the raid was understandable, it was incorrect and that was a mistake that would prove critical. On February 3rd, Bascom and his party camped near an Overland Mail station and Bascom sent a message to Cochise, asking him to come in for a talk. Cochise, along with several members of his family, came to the camp to talk.

At this point neither side was expecting a violent confrontation. Bascom demanded that Cochise return the kidnapped boy. Cochise denied knowing of the kidnapping but offered to find the boy. Assuming that Cochise was being evasive, Bascom tried to take Cochise and his party hostage until the boy and the cattle could be returned, but Cochise managed to escape by pulling out a knife and cutting a hole in the tent in which they were eating and running away.

The rest of his party however was taken hostage. Bascom and the 65 men returned to the Overland Mail station, which they fortified using wagons and grain and flour sacks. Bascom noted with dismay that more Apache seemed to be arriving and he was besieged.

While they had food, water from the spring was more than a half mile away. Cochise managed to capture some Overland Mail employees and offered to trade them for his captured family members, but Bascom refused unless they returned the kidnapped boy. The problem was that Cochise did not have the boy who had been kidnapped by a different group of Apaches. On February 7th, a group of Cochise's Apache attacked a group of Bascom's men who were taking their mules to the spring for water.

One Overland Mail employee was killed and most of the mules were taken. Bascom came to the conclusion that he was surrounded by as many as 500 Apache and was in danger of attack and so he decided to send out two scouts to sneak through the lines and seek help from Fort Buchanan. The messengers arrived at Fort Buchanan on the evening of the 8th and assistant surgeon Bernard John Dowling Irwin offered to take the only troops available, 11 men of Company H of the 7th Infantry, to assist Bascom. On the way, Irwin and his small group encountered some Apache with stolen cattle and managed to capture three Apache Braves and several cattle. When Irwin's party arrived at Bascom's camp on the 10th, the cattle provided much needed beef. Irwin would later be presented the Medal of Honor for his actions, volunteering to lead the party and capturing the Apache and cattle despite having such a small force.

By date of action, it is the earliest Medal of Honor to have been awarded. Eventually 70 more men of the 1st Agoons arrived as well and the group may have been helped in that a Company of the 8th Infantry, marching 15 miles away and apparently unaware of Bascom's predicament, may have been interpreted by the Apaches planning to attack their flank. Somewhere between February 14th and 16th, the Apaches slipped away, killing their prisoners and leaving them for Bascom to find. In a decision that is controversial to this day, the American officers decided to execute their hostages, the three Braves that Irwin had captured and the three that Bascom had taken, although they did release the women and children from Cochise's party. This turned out to be a grave error as the three Apache that Bascom had captured were Cochise's brother and nephews.

The decision to execute those men turned the Apache anger from Mexico to the United States and sparked the Apache Wars, which would last for more than two decades and cost thousands of lives. One of the most controversial aspects of the so-called Bascom affair was how much Lieutenant Bascom had to do with the decision to execute the Apache prisoners. Bascom is usually presented as the villain whose miscalculation started a bloody war, but actually of the four officers that were there, two from the first Dragoons, Assistant Surgeon Irwin and Bascom. Bascom was the junior of the four and records discovered since suggest that he was the only one of the four to raise objections to the execution.

In fact, the order for the execution seems to have come from Assistant Surgeon Irwin. The records from the Bascom affair have largely been lost as Fort Buchanan was abandoned at the start of the Civil War and Bascom's original report was apparently destroyed. George Bascom himself died leading a company of the 7th Infantry in the Battle of Val Verde in February of 1862, part of the far western theater of the US Civil War. Assistant Surgeon Irwin served throughout the Civil War and eventually achieved the rank of colonel before retiring.

He received the Medal of Honor for actions that occurred in February of 1861, 33 years later in 1894, shortly before his retirement. Cochise turned out to be one of the Army's most skilled adversaries, but eventually he did agree to live peacefully on a reservation and he died of natural causes in 1874. One of the most surprising turns in the Bascom affair has to do with the captured boy, Felix Ward. Long thought to have been killed, it turns out that he had been captured by a group of Pima Apache with whom Cochise was unrelated and raised by them.

He later served with the US Army as an Apache Scout using the name Mickey Fee. The Bascom affair was one of many examples where inexperienced officers on the frontier made missteps that resulted in conflict. And that nearly forgotten event on the border between the United States and Mexico in February of 1861, which sparked the bloody Apache Wars, which actually continued clear into the 20th century, is a good example of what can happen when there's a clash of cultures, and possibly the inevitable result of American westward expansion. It is history that deserves to be remembered. And great job as always by Greg Hengler and a special thanks to The History Guy. And if you want more stories of forgotten history, please subscribe to his YouTube channel. The History Guy. History deserves to be remembered.

The story of the first Medal of Honor recipient in American history, here on Our American Stories. When the world gets in the way of your music, try the new Bose QuietComfort Earbuds 2. Next-gen earbuds uniquely tuned to the shape of your ears. They use exclusive Bose technology that personalizes the audio performance to fit you, delivering the world's best noise cancellation and powerfully immersive sound, so you can hear and feel every detail of the music you love. Bose QuietComfort Earbuds 2. Sound shape to you.

To learn more, visit Bose.com. Hey, there's a better way to fly. Instead of being stuck in endless lines and packed onto planes, try simplifying your travel with Surf Air. Save an average of two hours on every trip and avoid crowded airports with a new way to fly private. With Surf Air, you'll fly from smaller airports closer to your home. There are no lines, no waiting, and no stress. SurfAir.com, the best alternative to commercial air travel that makes flying easy. Get a free quote on your next flight at SurfAir.com.

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