National Medal of Honor Day

Good post. You beat me on this one by just a few mins.

Thanks for reminding us about the first six medal of honor recipients who were traded for captured confederates and freed from the confederate prison camp they had been held for so long and tortured SGT John " Mac " McConnell Six of the raiders were on hand for the awarding of the medal: William Bensinger, Robert Buffum, Elihu H. Mason, Jacob Parrott, William Pittenger and William H. Reddick were exchanged for Confederate soldiers from the prisoner-of-war camp at City Point, Virginia on March 17, 1863.
Four received it posthumously since they had been hung as spies by the confederates.
Within a week Andrews and all 21 raiders. In Atlanta James Andrews was tried and convicted as a spy. On June 7th he was hanged. Eleven days later on June 18th seven more raiders including the civilian William Campbell and his friend Private Shadrach and two of the three NCOs were also hanged as spies. The remaining 14 young soldiers were placed in prison camps to await what they assumed would be a similar fate. Bold, courageous and with nothing to loose they engineered a daring escape four months later in which eight of them reached safety. The other six [William Bensinger, Robert Buffum, Elihu H. Mason, Jacob Parrott, William Pittenger and William H. Reddick] were recaptured and brutally punished.

Great history