There is, of course, a story behind every Medal of Honor awarded, and there is also the story of the medal itself. And those two stories intertwine in the story of the nation’s only chief executive to have been awarded the nation’s highest and most prestigious military decoration.
During the civil war, the manufacture of powder and explosives was often handled by the most vulnerable, young women and children, whose labor was needed when so many men had been sent off to war. On March 13, 1863, the confederacy experienced a munitions disaster, in the confederate capitol of Richmond.