Frank D. Baldwin medal
Heritage Auctions (ha.com)
When Frank D. Baldwin volunteered in a local cavalry company in September 1861, the 19-year-old Michigan native began the arc of a decorated military career. In 1862 he was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the 19th Michigan Infantry, with which he served until the Civil War ended. He took part in campaigns that included William T. Sherman’s March to the Sea and incursion into the Carolinas. On July 12, 1864, at Peach Tree Creek, Georgia, Baldwin’s actions earned him the Medal of Honor. According to the citation, Baldwin “[l]ed his company in a countercharge … under a galling fire ahead of his own men, and singly entered the enemy’s line, capturing and bringing back 2 commissioned officers, fully armed, besides a guidon of a Georgia regiment.” Someone (maybe Baldwin) had this silver badge made after the war; its five bars name the battles he fought in.
In 1866, Baldwin enlisted in the Regular Army and in 1874, during the Indian Wars, he led a surprise attack on an Indian camp in Texas that rescued two kidnapped sisters. For this, Baldwin was awarded another Medal of Honor—making him one of only 19 servicemen to twice receive the nation’s highest military award for valor. He was a brigadier general when he retired in 1906, and 80 when he died in 1923, in Denver, Colorado.
