The Story of the 1st Medal of Honor Recipient (1861)

On this episode of Our American Stories, in 1863 Bernard John Dowling Irwin received the first Medal of Honor by date-of-conflict—for his heroism during the Apache War. The History Guy tells the story.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we continue with our American Stories, and we tell
stories about everything here on this show, including your story.
Send them to our American Stories dot com. There are
some of our favorites. Our next story comes to us
from a man who's simply known as the History Guy.
His videos are watched by hundreds of thousands of people
of all ages on YouTube. The History Guy has also

(00:31):
heard here on our American Stories. You've heard the History
Guy tell the story of the only woman to be
awarded the Medal of Honor. Today, the History Guy remembers
a desperate attempt to rescue soldiers besieged by Apache Indians,
which resulted in the first Medal of Honor by date
of action and starts the Apache War. Here's the History Guy.

Speaker 2 (00:54):
The Medal of Honor is the highest award for valor
to be offered to members of the United States Armed Forces.
It is so prestigious that President Harry Truman was famously
quoted as saying that he would rather have won the
Medal of Honor than been president of the United States.
The medal was created in eighteen sixty two, but it
was possible to nominate people for actions had occurred in
the past, and that meant that were actually medals of
honor awarded for events that occurred before the Medal of

(01:16):
Honor was created. And so it is that the earliest
event for which a Medal of Honor was awarded occurred
before the medal was created, and actually even before the
Civil War for which the Medal of Honor was created.
And it all has to do with an event that
is almost forgotten and yet still extremely important to American
history and still controversial today, the Medal of Honor that

(01:37):
was awarded to Assistant Surgeon Bernard Irwin, the first chronologically
by date of action, medal of honor to be awarded,
is history that deserves to be remembered. The peoples known
as the Apache or A people indigenous to the southwestern
United States. The Apache were generally an independent people who
lived in family clusters of extended family. This was important

(01:59):
in terms of their realflationships with other peoples in that
different family groups operated more or less independently, and so
different bands might have different relationships with their neighbors. Food
was largely derived from hunting and gathering, as well as trade.
When part of the culture was that the Apache tended
to use the practice of raiding as a way of
supplementing their diet. In general, the Apache distinguished rating for
economic purposes from rating for war. They did not think

(02:22):
of economic rating as an act of war, and it
usually occurred with small bands with specific purpose. Rating for
war included larger numbers of raiders and was usually done
for the purpose of retribution, and as part of that,
the Apache treatment of prisoners could include brutal torture. Apache
conflict with Spanish settlers began nearly as early as the
two came into contact in the sixteenth century. As part

(02:43):
of the Long Conflict, the Spanish built a series of
fortifications along the frontier to protect from Apache raids. This
was called pisidios, and they eventually became the centerpieces of
major modern cities like San Antonio, Texas, Santa Fe, New Mexico,
and Tucson, Arizona. Conflict with Americans started with the Mexican
American War, and after much of northern Mexico was ceded
to the United States after the war, the increasing number

(03:04):
of American settlers traveling down the Santa Fe trail caused conflict.
It was amid ongoing tensions and reading for both sides
that in January of eighteen sixty one, a group of
apaches rated a farmstead in southern Arizona owned by a
rencher named John Warr, taking some livestock and capturing Ward's
twelve year old step son, Felix. Ward traveled to the
nearby army outpost of Fort Kucannon and complained to the

(03:25):
fort commander, Lieutenant Colonel Pitcairn Morrison of the u S.
Seventh Infantry. Morrison dispatched Company C of the seventh Infantry
under Second Lieutenant George Bascombe, a West Point graduate, to
retrieve the missing boy. As they picked up the trail
from the raiders, it appeared to lead towards the Chirkawa Mountains,
leading Bastam conclude that the Cherkawa Apache, whose chief was
named Cochise, had been responsible for the raid. While Bascomb's

(03:49):
assumption that that Cherikawa had done the raid was understandable,
it was incorrect and that was a mistake that would
prove critical. On February third, Bascom and his party camp
near an overland mail station, and Bascom sent a message
to Cochies asking him to come in for a talk.
Co Chies, along with several members of his family, came
to the camp to talk. At this point, neither side

(04:10):
was expecting a violent confrontation. Bascom demanded that Cochise return
the kidneck boy. Cochies denied knowing of the kidnapping, but
offered to find the boy. Assuming that Cochise was being evasive,
Bascom tried to take Coachies and his party hostage until
the boy and the cattle could be returned, but Coaches
managed to escape by pulling out a knife and cutting
a hole in the tent in which they're eating and
running away. The rest of his party, however, was taken hostage.

(04:33):
Bascom and the sixty five men returned to the Overland
Mail station, which they fortified using wagons and great and
flowers acts. Bascom noted with dismay that morpatches seemed to
be arriving and he was besieged. While they had food,
water from the spring was more than a half mile away.
Coaches managed to capture some Overland Mail employees and offered
to trade them for his captured family members, but Bascomb
refused unless they returned the kidnack boy. The problem was

(04:56):
that Cochies did not have the boy, who had been
kidnapped by a di group of Apaches. On February seventh,
a group of Coaches' Apache attacked a group of Bascom's
men who were taking their mules to the spring for water.
One Overlan mail employee was killed and most of the
mules were taken. Bascom came to the conclusion that he
was surrounded by as many as five hundred Apache and
was in danger of attack, and so he decided to

(05:18):
send out two scouts to sneak through the lines and
seek help from Fort Buchanan. The messengers arrived at Fort
Buchannan on the evening of the eighth and Assistant Surgeon
Bernard John Dowling Erwin offered to take the only troops available,
eleven men of Company H of the seventh Infantry, to
assist Bascom. On the way, Erwin and his small group
encountered some Apache with stolen cattle and managed to capture

(05:39):
three Apache braves and several cattle. When Erwin's party arrived
at Bascom's camp on the tenth, the cattle provided much
needed beef. Erwin would later be presented the Medal of
Honor for his actions volunteering to lead the party and
capturing the Apache in cattle. Despite having such a small
force by date of action, it is the earliest medal
of honor to have been awarded. Eventually, seventy more men

(06:01):
of the first Agoons arrived as well, and the group
may have been helped in that a company of the
eighth Infantry, marching fifteen miles away and apparently unaware of
Bascombe's predicament, may have been interpreted by the Apaches planning
to attack their flank. Somewhere between February fourteenth and sixteenth,
the Apaches slipped away, killing their prisoners and leaving them
for Bascomb to find. In the decision that is controversial

(06:22):
to this day, the American officers decided to execute their hostages,
the three Braves that Erwin had captured and the three
that Bascomb had taken, although they did release the women
and children from Coaches's party. This turned out to be
a grave error, as the three Apache that Bascom had
captured were Cochies's brother and nephews. The decision to execute
those men turned the Apache anger from Mexico to the

(06:43):
United States and sparked the Apache Wars, which would last
for more than two decades and cost thousands of lives.
One of the most controversial aspects of the soul called
Bascom Affair was how much Lieutenant Bascombe had to do
with the decision to execute the Apache prisoners. Bascom is
usually presented as the villain whose miscalculation started a bloody war,
but actually the four officers that were there two from

(07:05):
the first Dragoons, Assistant Surgeon Irwin, and Bascombe. Bascombe was
the junior of the four, and records discovered sin suggests
that he was the only one of the four to
raise objections to the execution. In fact, the order for
the execution seems to have come from Assistant Surgeon Irwin.
The records from the Bascom Affair have largely been lost,

(07:25):
as Fort Buchanan was abandoned at the start of the
Civil War and Bascom's original report was apparently destroyed. George
Bascombe himself died leading a company of the seventh Infantry
in the Battle of Valverde in February of eighteen sixty two,
part of the far Western theater of the US Civil War.
Assistant Surgeon Irwin served throughout the Civil War and eventually
achieved the rank of colonel before retiring. He received the

(07:46):
Medal of Honor for actions that occurred in February of
eighteen sixty one. Thirty three years later in eighteen ninety four,
shortly before his retirement, co Chiefs turned out to be
one of the army's most skilled adversaries, but eventually he
did a great to live peacefully on a reservation, and
he died of natural causes in eighteen seventy four. One
of the most surprising turns in the Bascom Affair has

(08:07):
to do with the captured boy Felix Ward, long thought
to have been killed, it turns out that he had
been captured by a group of Pima Apache, with whom
Coachies was unrelated, and raised by them. He later served
with the US Army as an Apache scout, using the
name Mickey Fee. The Bascom Affair was one of many
examples where inexperienced officers on the frontier made missteps that

(08:27):
resulted in conflict, and that nearly forgotten event on the
border between the United States and Mexico and February of
eighteen sixty one, which sparked the Bloody Apache Wars, which
actually continued clear into the twentieth century, is a good
example of what can happen when there's a clash of
cultures and possibly the inevitable result of American westward expansion.
It is history that deserves to be.

Speaker 1 (08:48):
Remembered and great job is always by Greg Hengler and
a special thanks to the History Guy and if you
want more stories of forgotten history, please subscribe to his
YouTube channel, The History Guy History. He deserves to be remembered.
The story of the first Medal of Honor recipient in
American history. Here on our American Stories