Bucklin logo items to show your interest in American history.

The Medal of Honor is the highest award for valor in action against an enemy force which can be bestowed upon an individual serving in the Armed Services of the United States. Generally presented to its recipient by the President of the United States of America in the name of Congress, it is often called the Congressional Medal of Honor.
(Following are the official citation, and, then, a summary of Bucklyn's actions.)

Joseph Bucklin Society's summary of what happened on
3 May 1863, at Chancellorsville, VA.

Battery E had 60 men, and twelve cannons.   An entire Mississippi infantry brigade stormed the Battery E position, Bucklyn ordered his cannon fire canister anti-personnel shells.  Thirty of the sixty men in Battery E were killed and most of the others wounded from the Confederate direct fire into his position. Twice Bucklyn had horses shot from under him, as he moved rapidly among the twelve cannons to direct their fire.  After he started to mount the third horse, the horse was hit with a Confederate artillery shell, and a piece of shrapnel went into Bucklyn's left lung, filling the lung with blood and making him unable to breath effectively. Yet still Bucklyn fought Battery E both bravely and effectively.  As the Confederate infantry brigade closed on his position, and with no Union infantry supporting him, he successfully maintained maximum firepower from his battery. He moved of cannon positions even though most of the horses were dead, and successfully at the last had ten of his twelve cannons removed from the firing position to a point of safety behind Union lines. The remaining two cannons were fought by him to the last possible moment, as described in the commendation for the Congressional Medal of Honor described at the top of this page. 

Stephen Usler, of Warwick, RI, is writing a biography of John Knight Bucklyn, and has said the following regarding the treatment of Bucklin's wounds at Chancellorsville:

Bucklyn "was taken to a hospital in Georgetown. It was the same hospital described by Louisa May Alcott in her "Hospital Sketches, written while she was a nurse, although she and Bucklyn were not there at the same time. Bucklyn's description of the place and her description corroborate that the conditions were pretty bad.

A soldier of Bucklyn's unit, named Slocum, fed Bucklyn milk with a spoon and a surgeon dressed his wounds. Bucklyn determined that he was not going to stay at the hospital in Georgetown. Slocum put Bucklyn in a boxcar, on a stretcher on top of some coffins of Union soldiers being shipped home. There was a deserter hiding out in the boxcar and he threw Bucklyn off the stretcher and used it to sleep on himself while Bucklyn spent the journey on the floor of the boxcar.

There was nobody helping him. He ended up in a train station in New York all by himself and described having to beat off pickpockets. About six or eight weeks later, he was back at the front with his battery."

When he returned to the unit, he was in command during the battles of Cedar Creek and the Shenandoah Valley. During that bloody battle, in recognition of extreme bravery and effectiveness in battle, he was promoted in the field to the rank of captain.

The appreciation his men had for Bucklyn as their commander was illustrated in 1886, when a monument was erected on the Gettysburg battlefield, to mark where Battery E had fought. (The unit was stationed at Cemetery Ridge, and specifically later, at the Peach Orchard, scenes of perhaps the most intense fighting of the Civil War.)  After the service of dedication, several of the soldiers asked for permission, and were granted permission, to chisel at the bottom: "Lt. J. K. Bucklyn Commanding".

We have on file a copy of John K. Bucklyn's entire speech to the Soldiers and Sailors Historical Society, in which he described the battle and what he did.  It is one of those items that reposes in our pile of papers for which we do not have funds to put into electronic format for you to read. We wish someone would volunteer to transcribe his handwriting into a typed document, so we can make it readable and searchable for today's researchers, and place on our website in full. Click on the thumbnail to enlarge it to see what you would be transcribing into an electronic format (such as Word or WordPerfect). If you don't want to donate your time, you could donate about $60 to have one of our researchers do the necessary work.  (Use the link in the left margin of this page to make that donation.)

We have more available materials, such as the commendations of Civil War superior officers, for Bucklyn's service after he returned to battle after recovery from his lung injury.

We also have an electronic copy of the 600 page history of Battery E during the Civil War.  It has numerous references to Capt. Bucklyn (a whole group of pages about him starting at page 401), and describes the military history of the entire Battery during the bloody battles in which they participated. If you are a Civil War buff, you will want to read this. The book is, we believe, in the public domain, and we maintain a copy of the History of Battery E, First Rhode Island Infantry, here for your to read.

And, of course, we also have much biographical material on Capt. Bucklyn.

Through the centuries, the Congressional Medal of Honor for the Army has had several designs. Shown at the top of this page is the design of the medal as awarded in the Civil War to U.S. Army members.

Today's present medal of honor for Army members is shown to the left. It is the medal with which present day military personnel expect to see around the neck of a soldier awarded this honor. Obviously, today's medal is much grander in design and appearance than was used in the Civil War.