Courage in the Swamp: Nicholas Fox’s Port Hudson Medal of Honor
ECW welcomes guest author Peter C. Vermilyea.
Pinned down by Confederate fire with their faces in the sandy soil of Port Hudson, Louisiana, even an act as simple as glancing upward to take in their surroundings drew lethal gunfire. The suffering of the men of the 28th Connecticut Infantry Regiment only grew worse with the ascending June sun. Soon, a single word could be heard from the dozens of wounded caught between the lines: “Water!”
Hours passed. A solitary figure stirred, gathered canteens from his comrades and, with Confederate bullets buzzing around him, rose and sprinted to the rear.
This was Nicholas Fox, an 18-year-old Irish immigrant serving in Company H of the 28th. Finances and the opportunity to earn a bounty up to $500 were undoubtedly part of Nicholas’s decision to enlist in the regiment on August 28, 1862. Standing 5 feet 8 inches tall, with sandy hair and gray eyes, he was seventeen when he enlisted to fight for his adopted country.[1]
The 28th, a nine-month regiment, arrived at Port Hudson in time to serve as stretcher bearers after a disastrous Union assault on May 27, 1863. Over the ensuing six weeks they occupied rifle pits 100 yards from the rebel lines, engaging in the mundane activities of siege warfare.[2]
The exception was June 14. After an artillery bombardment that lasted nearly 24 hours, Maj. Gen. Nathaniel Banks ordered an assault on the Priest Cap, high ground toward the northern end of the Confederate lines. The attack was a disaster from the start, as the 28th’s line staggered when it collided with the 4th Massachusetts, which was breaking for the rear.
This hesitation lasted briefly until division commander Brig. Gen. Halbert Paine appeared, “urging the boys on, swinging his sword and crying ‘Forward! Forward!”[3] The 28th surged forward, only to find “so many ravines, felled timber, and many other things to hinder their progress.”[4] Private Noah Hoyt recalled that “when within 25 Rods of their breast work, we wer Cut off by a gauling fire of Musketry, we could not go any farther, we could not retreat … and we had to throw ourselves upon the ground.”[5] Paine, making one final effort to rally the troops, fell severely wounded in the leg about thirty feet in front of the Union line. Orders came for the 28th to shelter behind a small rise. “Here we lay all day in the Boiling Sun, and the Dust was three inches Deep,” Hoyt recorded.[6] “Dreadful was our suffering that Day, not only from Bullets, but from the heat and thirst, for the water, what little there was in our Canteens, got so hot before night that you could not tell what it was by the taste.”[7] In front of the 28th, the wounded Paine shouted all day, offering “any amount of money for someone to get him a canteen of water.”[8]
Whether it was five hours of listening to the cries of wounded comrades, Paine’s constant shouts, or his personal experiences of suffering as a child, Nicholas Fox could no longer lie idle on the ground. He crawled to his company commander, Capt. George Middleton, and declared that he “would run the risk or make the attempt to go to the rear and get water.” Middleton “warned him of the danger and of the fate of those who had attempted to cross the exposed ground on the same errand.”[9] Removing his accoutrements, Fox “took seven canteens and put the straps over my shoulders and arranged them around my body. Then I got up almost straight and looked back at the breastworks.”[10]
Seeing no Confederates, he “made a break for the rear.” Reaching an exposed area, Fox crawled to a hedge that provided shelter. There he met regimental chaplain Richard Wheatley and reported on Paine’s condition. The private filled the canteens from a spring and turned back toward the front. He was soon under enemy fire. Fox raced toward three men he spotted in a concealed position and violently collided with one, who snapped, “Where are you going?” It was the 28th’s colonel, Samuel Ferris. Fox introduced himself and explained his mission, and Ferris, complimenting him on his bravery, asked, “Did you procure the water?” Fox offered Ferris a drink from his own canteen, but the colonel declined, remarking, “My God! How the boys must have suffered all day.”[11]
Fox, weighted down by the full canteens, then sprinted down a road to the wounded. He remembered that “although shots from the rebel breast-works flew thick and fast around me I returned safely to the regiment with the water for the suffering men.”[12] The sun only getting hotter as the day wore on, the private repeated the mission, once again dodging Confederate bullets. The 28th Connecticut remained below the ridge all night before withdrawing to its starting point in the early morning darkness.
The assault cost the 28th Connecticut eight men killed and 45 wounded. It was, in the words of Pvt. Hoyt, “a Disgrafull Defeat … General Banks said, he would … Bury Port Hudson in Iron, But instead … he buried his men in the trenches of Port Hudson.”[13] The Confederates surrendered Port Hudson on July 9 after receiving confirmation that the garrison at Vicksburg, Mississippi, had surrendered. Six days later, the 28th Connecticut began their journey back to Connecticut where they were mustered out on August 28.
Fox returned to Greenwich and resumed his pre-war work. On April 2, 1865, perhaps motivated by patriotism, the prospect of earning more bounty money, or both, Fox rejoined the military, enlisting in the 22nd New York Cavalry.[14] When that regiment mustered out in early August, Fox again returned to civilian life. He moved to neighboring Port Chester, New York, married, and raised ten children. He became a dedicated community servant as a long-time volunteer fireman and as commander of his local Grand Army of the Republic post.[15]
In 1898, Representative Ebenezer Hill learned of Fox’s bravery and shepherded a Medal of Honor application through the War Department. Nicholas must have been moved by the affidavits offered by his former comrades in support of the application. Chaplain Wheatley emphasized Fox’s work in providing comfort to the wounded and of being of “great service to Gen. Paine.” George Middleton declared that Fox’s actions, “inspired by sympathy for the sick and wounded and for his suffering comrades generally, deserve appropriate recognition even at this late day by the Government … saving … the lives of many suffering soldiers.” Charles Heohl declared the exploit to be “one of the bravest acts witnessed by myself during my service.” The veteran soon received word that “by direction of the President,” the Medal of Honor would be presented to him as soon as it could be engraved.[16]
Fox lived 31 years after receiving the medal; he worked at the same company for 72 years. An active participant in local parades, he often marched at the front, wearing his Medal of Honor that was both a reminder of that day in the sweltering heat of Louisiana and representative of how far this child of Ireland had come in his adopted country. Fox died in 1929 with veterans from the Civil War, Spanish-American War, and World War I forming an honor guard at his funeral.[17]
Peter C. Vermilyea teaches history at Housatonic Valley Regional High School in Falls Village, CT and for the University of Connecticut. The author of five books and two dozen articles, mostly about Civil War history, he is Nicholas Fox’s great-great-great nephew.
Endnotes:
[1] Compiled Military Service Record, Nicholas Fox, Private., Company H, 28th Connecticut Infantry, RG 94; NA–Washington (hereafter Fox CMSR)
[2] Loomis Scofield, History of the Twenty-Eighth Connecticut Volunteers (New Canaan, CT: New Canaan Advertiser, 1915), 3, 11-12.
[3] Scofield, 12.
[4] Scofield, 10.
[5] Noah Webster Hoyt, The Civil War Diaries of Noah Webster Hoyt: 28th Regiment Connecticut Volunteers (Stamford, CT: Stamford Historical Society, 1996), 20.
[6] Hoyt, 21.
[7] Hoyt, 21-22
[8] Scofield, 13.
[9] Nicholas Fox Medal of Honor Application, Fox CMSR.
[10] Nicholas Fox, “Recollections of the Siege of Port Hudson,” Scofield, History of the Twenty-Eighth Connecticut Volunteers, 20. Note: Authorship of this article in the published book is attributed to “Michael Fox” of Port Chester, New York, formerly of Company H of the 28th Connecticut. However, the account is certainly that of Nicholas Fox, who was the only “Fox” in the regiment, served in Company H, and lived in Port Chester after the war.
[11] Fox, “Recollections,” 20-21.
[12] Fox Medal of Honor Application, Fox CMSR.
[13] Hoyt, 22-23.
[14] Fox CMSR.
[15] “Nicholas Fox Dies at 86,” New York Times, October 3, 1929; “Fox to be Given Military Honor by All War Veterans”; 1880 United States Census, via Ancestry.com, accessed July 29, 2024; 1890 United States Census, via Ancestry.com, accessed July 29, 2024; 1900 United States Census, via Ancestry.com, accessed July 29, 2024.
[16] Fox Medal of Honor Application, Fox CMSR.
[17] “Fox to be Given Military Honor by All War Veterans,” Port Chester Daily Item, October 3, 1929.
