Lore of the Corps
Henry H. Bingham:
A Forgotten JAG Corps Medal of Honor Recipient
By Dr. Nicholas K. Roland, Ph.D.
Article published on: December 1, 2025 in the Army Lawyer 2025 issue 4
Read Time:
< 11 mins
Henry H. Bingham. (Source: National Archives)
The Army Judge Advocate General’s (JAG) Corps has many examples of heroism in combat in its 250-year history. Our most highly decorated members served during the First World War, when, due to a shortage of line officers, then-Colonel Blanton Winship and then-Major J. Leslie Kincaid commanded infantry units in combat while serving as the judge advocate (JA) for First Army and the 27th Infantry Division, respectively. Winship received the Distinguished Service Cross for his actions, while Kincaid received the Distinguished Service Cross, Belgian Order of the Crown, and the British Distinguished Service Order.1 Many other members of the JAG Corps have received awards for valor, either while serving in the Corps or in another assignment. For instance, for their actions in combat in Vietnam prior to joining the JAG Corps, Major General Michael J. Nardotti Jr. received the Silver Star, and Sergeant Major John M. Nolan received the Bronze Star Medal with Valor device.2
Given this record, one might wonder if any member of the JAG Corps has ever received the Medal of Honor. In the Corps’s 1975 bicentennial history, one individual is acknowledged as the JAG Corps’s “only known recipient” of the award: Wells Blodgett.3 Blodgett received the Medal of Honor for capturing a group of enemy pickets while serving as an infantry officer in Missouri in 1862.4 He later went on to serve as a JA under 1862 legislation that established additional positions for full-time Army lawyers below the office of Judge Advocate General.5
Yet this history overlooks another Civil War-era JA Medal of Honor recipient: Henry H. Bingham.6 Born on 4 December 1841, Bingham was a native of Philadelphia who was attending Jefferson College in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, when the Civil War began in 1861.7 The following summer, the governor authorized the recruiting of twenty-one new regiments.8 Having just graduated from college, Bingham played a key role in organizing what would become Company G, 140th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry Regiment, in August 1862.9 Comprised largely of students, faculty, and alumni of the college, the company elected Bingham as its first lieutenant.10 With the regiment’s organization completed and entry into U.S. service in September, Bingham was promoted to captain and commander of Company G.11
The 140th Pennsylvania joined the II Corps of the Army of the Potomac in December 1862, shortly after the Battle of Fredericksburg.12 The unit saw its first major combat the following spring at the Battle of Chancellorsville, from 1–3 May 1863.13 By this point, Bingham had been detailed as a JA on the staff of fellow Pennsylvanian Major General Winfield Scott Hancock, commanding the First Division of the II Corps.14 Bingham and Hancock would maintain a close personal and professional relationship from that point forward.
The Friend-to-Friend Masonic Memorial at Gettysburg depicts CPT Bingham assisting Brigadier General Armistead. (Source: U.S. National Park Service)
Like most lawyers and JAs in the nineteenth century, Bingham did not have a law degree. However, he had begun studying the law after completing his undergraduate education.15 His scant legal background seems to have been sufficient for the task ahead. Though he officially remained an officer in the 140th Pennsylvania until 1864, Bingham would serve as a staff officer for the rest of the war.16
While he was an acting JA, Bingham’s duties also included those common to all Civil War staff officers, such as delivering orders and carrying out a wide variety of duties required by the commander. Bingham filed a report in the aftermath of the Chancellorsville campaign that detailed his actions in carrying messages to the division picket line, delivering ammunition, and communicating with Hancock and subordinate commanders during the fighting.17 Hancock mentioned Bingham in his official report of the campaign as one of several staff officers who “performed their duties faithfully and well, behaving with great gallantry.”18
In the weeks after the Union defeat at Chancellorsville, Confederate General Robert E. Lee began to move north, initiating the Gettysburg campaign. Hancock assumed command of the II Corps and brought Bingham along as a member of his staff. At the Battle of Gettysburg, 1–3 July 1863, Hancock’s actions gained him the nickname “Hancock the Superb,” while Henry H. Bingham would begin a journey of his own into Civil War lore.
After hard fighting on 2 July, the II Corps found itself anchoring the center of the Union line at Gettysburg along Cemetery Ridge. The Confederate assault on the afternoon of 3 July, known to history as Pickett’s Charge, aimed directly at the corps’s position. The attack was mostly repulsed without a breakthrough, but a small group of Confederate infantry penetrated the Union defenses along a section of stone wall that later became known as The Angle.
Leading these attackers was Brigadier General Lewis A. Armistead, the scion of a prominent military family from Virginia and Maryland and a prewar Army comrade of Hancock’s. Armistead was shot twice in the vicinity of an artillery position and captured by counterattacking Union troops, while Hancock was wounded by Confederate fire about 200 yards to the south.19 Armistead then encountered none other than Captain Henry H. Bingham, himself slightly wounded in the head, who spoke briefly with the Confederate leader and secured his personal belongings at his request. According to Bingham, Armistead also conveyed some kind of an apology to Hancock.20
“Battle of Gettysburg” painting of Pickett’s Charge by Peter F. Rothermel, 1870. (Source: State Museum of Pennsylvania)
This meeting was later dramatized in Michael Shaara’s novel The Killer Angels21and in the 1993 film Gettysburg,22 whose director replaced Bingham with Colonel Joshua L. Chamberlain’s brother, Thomas. These and other fictional accounts exaggerated Armistead and Hancock’s friendship, as well as Armistead’s alleged recanting of his secessionism, and also highlighted Armistead and Bingham’s status as fellow Masons.23To reinforce the latter aspect of the story, a monument erected in 1993 stands inside the entrance to the Gettysburg National Cemetery. Entitled the “Friend-to-Friend Masonic Memorial,” it depicts Bingham assisting Armistead, his wounded Masonic brother.24Despite the factual issues with many depictions of the Armistead-Bingham encounter, JA Bingham was part of a famous incident in the most famous battle in American history.25
Bingham and other staff officers were cited by Hancock after Gettysburg for “great gallantry” and for sharing “all the dangers of the field.”26 At the Battle of Bristoe Station, Virginia, that fall, the II Corps’s official history remembered Bingham and other staff officers galloping “up and down along the track, encouraging the men with cheers mingled with imprecations.”27 Bingham’s reputation for bravery would continue in the 1864 Overland campaign, which saw Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee locked in a grinding campaign of nearly continuous combat beginning in May 1864.
Between 5 and 6 May 1864, Grant opened his offensive against Lee with a bloody and inconclusive battle in a thickly wooded area west of Fredericksburg, Virginia, known as the Wilderness. On the second day of the battle, Confederate General James Longstreet launched a crushing counterattack that struck the II Corps’s left flank, forcing many of Hancock’s troops into a disorganized retreat.28 At this critical moment of the battle, Henry Bingham “specially distinguished himself in rallying and leading into action a portion of the troops who had given way on the afternoon of the 6th.”29Union resistance eventually stiffened, and Longstreet was severely wounded just as his assault threatened to place the entire Army of the Potomac in an untenable position. Grant held his position by nightfall.
Unlike Union generals before him who had been checked by Lee, Grant resolved to push onward. He again collided with Lee at Spotsylvania Courthouse on 12 May, where Hancock’s corps played a role in some of the most savage combat of the Civil War. “In this battle the troops of the Second Corps were constantly under heavy musketry for about twenty hours,” Hancock reported.30 In the captured Confederate trenches the next morning were found “a most terrible spectacle of dead and wounded, who were, indeed, piled upon each other for several hundred yards; the result of one of the most brilliant and deadly battles of this great war.”31 In the same report, Hancock noted that his JA, “Harry Bingham,” had been “badly wounded in the thigh.”32
After several months of convalescent leave and a detached detail for courts-martial in Philadelphia, Bingham returned to the Army of the Potomac in the siege lines at Petersburg, Virginia.33 Around the time that Bingham was preparing to return to his command, Hancock wrote to Judge Advocate General Joseph Holt on Bingham’s behalf, requesting that he be commissioned in accordance with legislation authorizing a JA in the rank of major for corps commands. Holt concurred with Hancock’s recommendation.34 On 25 September 1864, Bingham was discharged from the 140th Pennsylvania for promotion and was commissioned the following day as a JA and major in the United States Volunteers, one of thirty-three officers to serve as full-time JAs under the 1862 legislation.35 He remained in that role for the II Corps until the end of the war.36
Despite his official designation as a JA, Bingham continued to serve under fire. At the Battle of Boydton Plank Road on 27 October 1864, he was captured by Confederate troops while carrying dispatches for Hancock, but he managed to escape the same night and rejoin his command.37 On 7 April 1865, just two days prior to Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, Bingham was wounded for a third and final time in fighting near Farmville, Virginia.38
Bingham remained in the Army until July 1866, continuing to serve under Hancock as a JA for much of this time.39 On 22 August 1865, Bingham received a brevet promotion to lieutenant colonel “for highly meritorious services during the recent campaign terminating with the surrender of the insurgent Army under General Robert E. Lee,” backdated to Lee’s surrender on 9 April 1865.40 In thanks for his wartime service and combat actions, and at the instigation of his old commander and friend, Winfield Hancock, he later received symbolic promotions to colonel and finally brigadier general in 1867 (all backdated to Lee’s surrender on 9 April 1865).41 With his military career at an end, he returned to his native Philadelphia, where he was appointed postmaster in March 1867.42
Bingham reentered the legal profession in 1872 after his election to the clerkship of the courts of oyer and terminer and quarter sessions of the peace in Philadelphia. In 1878, Bingham was elected to the House of Representatives for Pennsylvania’s First District, a position he would hold from 1879 until his death. A lifelong Republican, Bingham took a special interest in issues involving the Post Office and the port of Philadelphia, and was an active leader in the Grand Army of the Republic, the primary Union veteran organization.43 Despite their political differences (Hancock ran as the Democratic presidential nominee in 1880), Bingham maintained a friendship with his old commander until Hancock’s death in 1886. A popular speaker, he was the featured orator at the dedication of the Winfield S. Hancock monument at Gettysburg in 1896.44 Bingham’s thirty-three-year tenure in Congress gained him the nickname “Father of the House” in his later years.45 He died on 22 March 1912, and was buried in his native city.46
In August 1893, while a member of Congress, Bingham received the Medal of Honor for his actions at the Battle of the Wilderness three decades prior. This was not entirely unusual—between 1891 and 1897, more than 500 Medals of Honor were awarded for actions performed during the Civil War.47 In some cases, veterans wrote on their own behalf and requested the award, which was then simply mailed to the successful requestor.48 With no formal system of nomination for the Medal of Honor, the award was open to abuse by glory-seeking veterans during a period of intense interest in and commemoration of the Civil War.49
In Bingham’s case, however, he was nominated in March 1893 by the Quartermaster General of the Army, Richard N. Batchelder. Batchelder was a fellow II Corps staff officer during the Civil War, serving as the corps’s chief quartermaster, and apparently wrote to the Adjutant General of his own accord to recommend Bingham for the award. After citing Bingham’s combat record, Batchelder concluded his application by arguing that “General Bingham’s career since the War, whether in Congress or in private life, has been one of honor and usefulness to his country, and it is respectfully submitted that upon no one could a medal of honor be more worthily bestowed.”50
Assistant Secretary of War Lewis A. Grant wrote back to Batchelder in August, reminding him that “medals of honor are awarded for conspicuous gallantry in action, and not for general good and gallant service.”51 Grant asked Batchelder to select a specific incident of “gallant acts for which a medal of honor should be issued.”52 Prompted by Grant, Batchelder selected Hancock’s report of Bingham’s actions at the Battle of the Wilderness as proof of “the battle which should be selected in connection with the bestowal of a medal of honor.”53 Grant acquiesced, and Hancock’s 1864 after-action report became the exact language of Bingham’s citation. Bingham’s award was mailed to him in late August 1893.54
In 1897, the War Department began to tighten the standards of evidence for award of the medal, and self-nomination was later banned. Legislation in 1916 stipulated that the Medal of Honor was only to be awarded “for action involving actual conflict with the enemy, distinguished by conspicuous gallantry or intrepidity, at the risk of life, above and beyond the call of duty.”55 At the same time, the Army and Navy initiated a review of all of the more than 2,600 medals that had been awarded since the medal’s creation, resulting in more than 900 awardees being stricken from the roll of recipients.54
Bingham’s award survived the Army’s scrutiny. None questioned his war record, and his citation noted his bravery during a critical portion of a major battle. The official history of the II Corps, written seven years before he received the Medal of Honor, described Bingham as “an officer rarely equalled [sic] in courage, energy, and intelligence.”57 Did Bingham’s status as a deceased senior member of Congress impact the Army’s decision? While it may have helped spur his receipt of the award in the first place, Bingham’s actions were of equal or greater merit than those of many other Civil War-era recipients.
This leads to one final question about Henry H. Bingham—was he the only JA in our history to receive the Medal of Honor while serving in that capacity? Although Bingham was appointed to the II Corps staff as a JA, he was serving in an “acting” role, and was considered a member of his Pennsylvania infantry regiment on detached duty until September 1864. Bingham, therefore, was technically still an infantry officer at the Battle of the Wilderness. Although he was not commissioned as a full-time Army lawyer at the time of his Medal of Honor action, Bingham came as close as any member of the JAG Corps in our history. TAL
Notes
1. Winship also received the Silver Star for his service in France. After a term as The Judge Advocate General (1931–1933), Winship became the governor of Puerto Rico. His attempts to suppress the Puerto Rican independence movement culminated in what became known as the Ponce massacre on 21 March 1937. President Franklin D. Roosevelt removed Winship from the governorship in 1939, but the Army recalled him to active duty during the Second World War. He retired again in 1944 at the age of seventy-five. He was the oldest Army officer on active duty at the time. Kincaid retired as a brigadier general. See Fred L. Borch III, Judge Advocates in the Great War, 1917–1922, at 55–57 (2021).
2. Nardotti served as the thirty-fourth The Judge Advocate General (1993–1997), while Nolan was the first JAG Corps senior noncommissioned officer (1980–1983), predecessor to the Regimental Command Sergeant Major position. See Michael J. Nardotti, “As Soon As the Shooting Starts, They’ll Look to You:” Leadership in Combat, West Point Ctr. for Oral Hist.,
https://www.westpointcoh.org/interviews/as-soon-as-the-shooting-starts-they-ll-look-to-you-lead-ership-in-combat [https://perma.cc/AUM9-LBLF] (last
visited Dec. 30, 2025); Fred L. Borch III, From Legal Clerks to Paralegal Specialists: A Short History of Enlisted Soldiers in the Corps, in Lore of the Corps: A Compilation from The Army Lawyer, 2017–2023, at 52 (The Judge Advocate General’s Corps, U.S. Army, 2023) [hereinafter Lore Compilation 2017-2023]; Fred L. Borch III, Oral History of Regimental Sergeant Major John Nolan, in Lore Compilation 2017-2023, supra, at 6–11.
3. The Army Lawyer: A History of the Judge Advocate General’s Corps, 1775–1975, at 55–56 (U.S. Gov’t Printing Off. 1975).
4. Wells Howard Blodgett, Cong. Medal of Honor Soc’y,
https://www.cmohs.org/recipients/wells-h-blodgett [https://perma.cc/RR6V-SXQE]
(last visited Dec. 30, 2025).
5. Joshua E. Kastenberg, Law in War, War as Law: Brigadier General Joseph Holt and the Judge Advocate General’s Department in the Civil War and Early Reconstruction, 1861–1865, at 146–47 (2011); An Act to Amend the Act calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections, and repel Invasions, approved February twenty-eight, seventeen hundred and ninety-five, and the Acts amendatory thereof, and for other Purposes, 12 Stat. 597 (1862).
6. Bingham’s full name was William Henry Harrison Bingham, named for the ninth president. Harrison was a military hero and member of the Whig Party, many of whose Northern members joined the new Republican Party in the 1850s.
7. Henry Harrison Bingham (Late a Representative from Pennsylvania) Memorial Addresses Delivered in the House of Representatives and the Senate of the United States, H.R. Rep. No. 956, at 50–51 (1913) [hereinafter Bingham Memorial Address].
8. Robert Laird Stewart, History of the One Hundred and Fortieth Regiment, Pennsylvania Volunteers 2 (1912).
9. Id. at 7, 139.
10. Id. at 7, 139, 329–30, 367.
11. Id. at 386.
12. Id. at 25–26.
13. Id. at 52–53.
14. Id. at 386–87.
15. See 1 Merrill Edwards Gates, Men of Mark in America: Ideals of American Life Told in Biographies of Eminent Living Americans 157 (1905).
16. See id.; Stewart, supra note 8, at 386–87.
17. The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, ser. I, vol. XXV, pt. I, at 315–17 (Gov’t Printing Off. 1889) [hereinafter OR].
18. Id.
19. Almira Russell Hancock, Reminiscences of Winfield S. Hancock 214 (1887); 1 John B. Bachelder, The Bachelder Papers 350 (David L. Ladd & Audrey J. Ladd eds. 1994).
20. Hancock, supra note 19, at 214; Bachelder, supra note 19, at 350.
21. Michael Shaara, The Killer Angels (1974).
22. Gettysburg (Turner Pictures 1993).
23. For an example of an exaggerated version of Armistead’s alleged statements after his wounding, see Abner Doubleday, Chancellorsville and Gettysburg 195 (1882); Hancock, supra note 19, at 214–15; Gettysburg, supra note 22.
23. For an example of an exaggerated version of Armistead’s alleged statements after his wounding, see Abner Doubleday, Chancellorsville and Gettysburg 195 (1882); Hancock, supra note 19, at 214–15; Gettysburg, supra note 22.
24. See History of the Brother-to-Brother Masonic Monument, Illinois Freemasonry, https://ilmason.org/our-blog/brother-to-brother-gettysburg-monument [https://perma.cc/8HYM-9ZWR] (last visited Dec. 30, 2025); Friend to Friend Masonic Memorial at Gettysburg, Stone Sentinels, https://gettysburg.stonesentinels.com/other-monuments/friend-to-friend-masonic-memorial [https://perma.cc/S3NX-8KKF] (last visited Dec. 30, 2025).
25. For a full examination of Armistead and Hancock’s relationship, see Tom McMillan, Armistead and Hancock: Behind the Gettysburg Legend of Two Friends at the Turning Point of the Civil War (2021).
26. OR, supra note 17, ser. I, vol. XXVII, pt. I, at 376.
27. Francis A. Walker, History of the Second Army Corps in the Army of the Potomac 352 (1886).
28. Gordon C. Rhea, The Battle of the Wilderness, May 5–6, 1864, at 354–80 (1994).
29. OR, supra note 17, ser. I, sol. XXXVI, pt. I, at 327.
30. Id. at 360.
31. Id.
32. Id.
33. See Compiled Military Service Record, Henry H. Bingham, Co. G, 140th Pennsylvania Infantry, Records of the Adjutant General (on file with Nat’l Archives, Rec. Grp. 94) [hereinafter Henry H. Bingham CMSR].
34. In August 1864, Hancock recommended Bingham for a brevet promotion to major, which was also accepted. Bingham therefore held simultaneously the rank of major and brevet major by 1865. See Medal of Honor file # 9272-VS-1882, Henry H. Bingham, Volunteer Service Division, Records of the Adjutant General (on file with Nat’l Archives, Rec. Grp. 94) [hereinafter Medal of Honor file # 9272-VS-1882].
35. Stewart, supra note 8, at 150.
36. Walker, supra note 27, at 684. Bingham applied for a colonelcy in one of the newly created Veterans Reserve Corps regiments in December 1864. Despite recommendations from corps commander Andrew A. Humphreys and division commanders John Gibbon and Gershom Mott, for some reason Bingham remained in his position as a JA. See Medal of Honor file # 9272-VS-1882, supra note 34.
37. OR, supra note 17, ser. I, vol. XXXXII, pt. I, at 232, 239, 438, 441, 457.
38. Walker, supra note 27, at 684.
39. Medal of Honor file # 9272-VS-1882, supra note 34.
40. Henry H. Bingham CMSR, supra note 33.
41. Soldier’s Certificate # 1397749, Henry H. Bingham, Captain, Co. G, 140th Pennsylvania Volunteers, Case Files of Approved Pension Applications, Civil War and Later Pension Files, Records of the Department of Veterans Affairs (on file with Nat’l Archives, Rec. Grp. 15); Henry H. Bingham CMSR, supra note 33; John H. Eicher & David J. Eicher, Civil War High Commands 740 (2001).
42. Bingham, Henry Harrison, The People of the People’s House,
https://history.house.gov/People/Detail/9383 [
https://perma.cc/3NRC-T75A] (last visited Dec. 30, 2025).
43. Id.; Bingham Memorial Address, supra note 7, at 15, 42.
44. See Henry H. Bingham, An Oration by Brevet Brigadier-General Henry H. Bingham at the Unveiling of the Equestrian Statue of Major-General Winfield Scott Hancock on the Battlefield of Gettysburg, June 5, 1896 (1899).
45. Bingham Memorial Address, supra note 7, at 15.
46. Bingham, Henry Harrison, supra note 42.
47. Mark C. Mollan, The Army Medal of Honor: The First Fifty-Five Years, Prologue (Nov. 8, 2022),
https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2001/summer/medal-of-honor-1.html [https://perma.cc/88WP-WB2Q].
48. See id.
49. See id.
50. Medal of Honor file # 9272-VS-1882, supra note 34.
51. Id.
52. Id.
53. Id.
54. Id.; Walker, supra note 27, at 207, 209. Batchelder himself received a Medal of Honor in 1895 for actions in October 1863. See Richard Napoleon Batchelder, Cong. Medal of Honor Soc’y, https://www.cmohs.org/recipients/richard-n-batchelder [https://perma.cc/F8NG-H46S] (last visited Dec. 30, 2025).
55. Mollan, supra note 47.
56. Id.
57. Walker, supra note 27, at 478.
Author
Dr. Roland is the Regimental Historian, Archivist, and Professor of Legal History and Leadership at The Judge Advocate General’s Legal Center and School in Charlottesville, Virginia.