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.
In August of 1918, as the armies of Europe neared exhaustion, American troops of the 28th “Keystone” division were thrown into a nearly forgotten battle that fully represented the horrors of the War to End All Wars.
Of the vaunted ironclad warships of the US Civil War perhaps the mightiest and most terrifying was the confederate ram Tennessee. On August 5, 1864, she would be put to the test in the largest naval engagement of the war, an engagement that defined the divided loyalties of the War of the Rebellion.