President Joe Biden awards two Civil War soldiers the Medal Honor for the Great Locomotive Chase

July 3 (UPI) – President Joe Biden will posthumously award the Medal of Honor on Wednesday to two Union soldiers who participated in a successful operation against the Confederacy behind enemy lines during the Civil War.

The honors for Union Pvt. Philip G. Shadrach and Pvt. George D. Wilson, part of what historians now know as the “Great Locomotive Chase,” were on hold for years because it was unclear why they were not initially considered. Even a House bill passed in 2008 to honor the soldiers in 2008 has so far led to no action.

Advertising

Descendants of both men will attend the ceremony at the White House.

The soldiers are credited with infiltrating the Confederacy by hijacking a train and driving it 87 miles north, destroying railroad tracks and cutting telegraph lines that hindered the South along the way.

They were part of a group of 24 Union soldiers who wreaked havoc from Georgia to Tennessee while the Confederate military tried to track them down.

Historians said the group’s bravery and ingenuity was underscored by the fact that some of them had no experience in railroad operations. In addition, it rained at the start of the mission, making it difficult for them to destroy tracks and burn bridges.

“The fact that these men volunteered speaks to the courage and heroism of these men,” Shane Makowicki, a historian at the U.S. Army Center of Military History, told the Washington Post. “Today, we have to put people who do something like that through months or weeks of special training.”

The men were eventually forced to abandon the train just before Chatanooga when they ran out of wood to power the locomotive and scattered. Shadrach and Wilson were eventually captured and hanged by the Confederacy. Most of the men involved in the operation were awarded medals by the Army.