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Contact Info
Home Town Philadelphia, PA
Last Address Survived the Civil War, and died in Camden, New Jersey.
Date of Passing Jul 06, 1881
Wall/Plot Coordinates Evergreen Cemetery Camden, New Jersey
RICHARD HAMILTON January 23, 1836 – January 20, 1881
Coal Heaver, U.S. Navy
Medal of Honor for bravery during the American Civil War
Prisoner of War
U.S. Picket Boat No. 1, 27 October 1864
Rank and organization: Coal Heaver, U.S. Navy. Born: 1836, Philadelphia, Pa. Accredited to: Pennsylvania G.O. No.: 45, 31 December 1864. Medal of Honor citation below.
Hamilton, a native of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was taken prisoner after the explosion, survived the war, and died in Camden, New Jersey on July 6, 1881.
Other Comments:
MEDAL OF HONOR
Citation:
Hamilton served on board the U.S. Picket Boat No. 1, in action, 27 October 1864, against the Confederate ram Albemarle which had resisted repeated attacks by our steamers and had kept a large force of vessels employed in watching her. The picket boat, equipped with a spar torpedo, succeeded in passing the enemy pickets within 20 yards without being discovered and then made for the Albemarle under a full head of steam. Immediately taken under fire by the ram, the small boat plunged on, jumped the log boom which encircled the target and exploded its torpedo under the port bow of the ram. The picket boat was destroyed by enemy fire and almost the entire crew taken prisoner or lost.
Civil War
From Month/Year
April / 1861
To Month/Year
April / 1865
Description The American Civil War was an internal conflict fought in the United States from 1861 to 1865. The Union faced secessionists in eleven Southern states grouped together as the Confederate States of America. The Union won the war, which remains the bloodiest in U.S. history.
Among the 34 U.S. states in February 1861, seven Southern slave states individually declared their secession from the U.S. to form the Confederate States of America. War broke out in April 1861 when Confederates attacked the U.S. fortress of Fort Sumter. The Confederacy grew to include eleven states; it claimed two more states, the Indian Territory, and the southern portions of the western territories of Arizona and New Mexico (called Confederate Arizona). The Confederacy was never diplomatically recognized by the United States government nor by any foreign country. The states that remained loyal, including border states where slavery was legal, were known as the Union or the North. The war ended with the surrender of all the Confederate armies and the dissolution of the Confederate government in the spring of 1865.
The war had its origin in the factious issue of slavery, especially the extension of slavery into the western territories. Four years of intense combat left 620,000 to 750,000 soldiers dead, a higher number than the number of American military deaths in World War I and World War II combined, and much of the South's infrastructure was destroyed. The Confederacy collapsed and 4 million slaves were freed (most of them by Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation). The Reconstruction Era (1863–1877) overlapped and followed the war, with the process of restoring national unity, strengthening the national government, and granting civil rights to freed slaves throughout the country.
My Participation in This Battle or Operation
From Month/Year
April / 1861
To Month/Year
April / 1865
Last Updated: Mar 16, 2020
Personal Memories
Memories Hamilton, a native of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was taken prisoner after the explosion, survived the war, and died in Camden, New Jersey on July 6, 1881.