It was June, 1863. General Lee and his rebel forces had invaded Pennsylvania, and the Army of the Potomac was marching to intercept them, clearing the land around Washington, D.C. of troops. The 27th Maine, their nine-months of service expiring on the 30th, were anxiously awaiting orders to head north for home.

The following morning, Col Wentworth formed his regiment together in a square around him and read the request. Capt. Bryant, Co. I, wrote in his journal that they "formed in line, and all willing to stay were requested to step out in front". At first count, 176 men stepped forward. Throughout the day, others would change their mind, until there were 300 volunteers. That evening, the others began packing up and Major Hill, who had volunteered his services, was instead asked to lead the rest of the regiment to the train station. Col Fessenden and his 25th Regiment, who had chosen not to stay behind, left for home as well.

On Wednesday, 1 July 1863, Col Wentworth and his volunteers reported to Brig Gen'l DeRussey, who was commanding the defenses around Washington, at his headquarters in the Arlington House. Where they encamped for the next three days is unknown, but was somewhere along the Arlington Heights.

On the afternoon of Saturday, the 4th, the results of the Battle of Gettysburg were announced, and the order received to march for Washington. That evening, the train left for Portland, Maine. They arrived there on the 6th, and went back into camp. They would be mustered out over a week later, on the 17th of July.

It was not until the following Sept that Secretary Stanton began the process of preparing the medals for the 27th Maine men. E. D. Townsend, the Ass't Adjutant General, instead of procuring a list of the 300 volunteers who actually stayed behind, had created one from the muster out rolls, a list containing 864 men! He sent it along to clerk John Potts of the War Dep't, who sent it to Wm Wilson & Son, the manufacturers of the medal.  

On 26 Jan 1865, the office of the Adjutant General sent the medals to Gov. Cony of Maine. He wrote to Mark Wentworth on the 30th, inquiring what all the medals were about. The colonel replied on Feb 2nd, explaining the situation, and asked the governor to forward them to Kittery, and he would take charge in distributing them to his former soldiers.

The medals were sent out, or hand delivered, to the volunteers who were on Wentworth's list, through (at least) May of 1865. An article printed in the May 24th Lewiston Evening Journal wrote that "they have just been distributed", the author stating they had just seen the one awarded to Capt. Jeremiah Plumer of Co. F. The over five hundred "extra" medals not meant for distribution were supposedly sent back to Augusta, but were again returned to Wentworth, who stored them away. The whereabouts of those unawarded medals...well, that's for another entry.

See also (pages on this site):
312 (pages from the History of the Twenty-Seventh Maine)
Medal of Honor List (comparing the 312 list with the 299 one)
Blog: A Medal Found (One of the undistributed medals found on a Wells beach)

On Family Search: a checklist, from the Maine State Archives, likely the one Wentworth used in distributing the medals to the volunteers: the 299 list
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General Orders, No. 195, was issued by the Adjutant General's Office of the War Department, under orders of Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, on the 29th of June, 1863 [General Orders of the War Department, 1861-1863: Vol 2, pg 219-220]. This order would hit the local newspapers in a few days, and nationwide within a few weeks. The message would carry headlines such as "Medals for Volunteers", "Medals of Honor for Soldiers", etc. An "appropriate" medal of honor was being offered for troops choosing to remain beyond their expiration of service, as well as for those troops who volunteered to defend Pennsylvania and Maryland "in the present emergency", ie. the "Pennsylvania Emergency", or the invasion of the north by the Confederate Army. 

On the same day (the 29th), Daniel Somes entered the camp of the 27th Maine, bringing with him the request from Sec. Stanton and the President, asking both the 25th and 27th Regiments to remain behind a few days [see Medal of Honor blog].

Two weeks prior to this, General Lee had entered Pennsylvania. Sec. Stanton contacted New York State's Gov. Seymour, asking him to raise 20,000 volunteers from the state militia and rush them to Harrisburg. Nearly 14 thousand were raised, 12k of which were on the march the following day. With the Army of the Potomac a few days behind the rebel army, the guardsmen wouldn't have fared well had General Lee attacked Harrisburg. 

Meanwhile, the 27th New Jersey Infantry (a nine-month regiment) was due to reach the end of their service on the 19th of June, and had been ordered to proceed home from Kentucky. Gen. Burnside, on the 17th, sent a telegram to Stanton, telling him that the 27th N.J., currently with him in Cincinnati, Ohio, had volunteered to stay on one more month and had been sent to Pittsburg, PA.[telegram in the Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Vol. 6]. They then proceeded onto Harrisburg, guarding the bridge there on the 26th. The city deemed safe from an attack, they returned home for mustering out on July 2nd.

Fast forward to the 1870's. The war was long over, and the 27th Maine was the only regiment to receive their medals. But, what of the other units who also volunteered?

On behalf of the New York militia volunteers, the Legislature in NY passed a resolution on 9 Apr 1876, urging the Federal government to keep its word. Three years later, Thomas C. Reed of the 27th NJ Inf. requested a medal for his volunteer service based on G.O. 195, but was told that no funds had ever been appropriated for those medals promised in 1863, and so rejected his claim. He tried again in 1884, and the Medal of Honor was issued to him on 17 May of that year. Upon hearing this, four other soldiers from his New Jersey regiment also applied and received their medals [A Shower of Stars, pg 110].

On 12 May 1896, the House Committee of Military Affairs agreed to a resolution in authorizing the issuing of the medals, and funds were set aside for this purpose, but nothing more came out of this. Even the Assistant Secretary of War, in May 1896, had no objection to carrying out the orders of GO 195, and had regretted that there had been such a long delay [Buffalo Evening News, 30 Jan 1900, pg 4].

During this time, however, there were numerous other requests for medals, not just because of the GO, but for other actions that took place during the war. There were talks of totally shutting down any awarding of medals months before the above resolution was spoke of. One chairman estimated they would need some 200,000 medals to cover all of the applications [The Indianapolis Journal, 16 Mar 1896].

The New York militia volunteers never did get their medals. When the purge came in 1916-1917, the five New Jersey veterans of the 27th Infantry were among those who also had their Medal of Honor revoked.

In The Portland Daily Press, on the 4th of August, 1890 [link: Chronicling America] the above notice was printed [and copied by the Daily Whig on the following day]. A Medal of Honor, which was inscribed to Philip Banfield of Company E, 27th Maine, had been found on a beach in Wells, Maine, and the former soldier was being sought out for its return.

​At the time of this publication, Philip Banfield was an inmate in the Soldiers Home out in Milwaukee [1890 Vet. Sch: NW Branch Nat'l Home, pg 85], living there since March 1884. He had been transferred there from the Hampton, Virginia (Southern) Branch, first admitted into the system in Sept 1881. He returned to Maine in July of 1891, when he was transferred over to Togus. There were no furloughs mentioned in the paperwork from the earlier facilities, which may have shown him traveling to Maine, or in the vicinity of.

..."a reward for his patriotism in remaining behind in Washington"
However, Pvt Banfield was NOT on the list of those men who stayed behind in Washington, so this medal would have been one of the 500+ extras not distributed by Col. Mark Wentworth. As mentioned in "A Shower of Stars" [pgs 129-130: Erastus Moulton's 1904 letter], the undistributed medals were returned to Augusta, Maine, where they sat in City Hall, until the building was remodeled, and the medals were sent back to Wentworth in Kittery. 
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It has been stated that (as Moulton's letter continued), while having a 27th Maine Regimental Reunion in Kittery, some of the attendees went into the Colonel's stable and grabbed some of the medals, later offering them to those whose names were written on them (though many did not accept them). The date of this incident was most likely either 12 Sept 1888 or 27 Aug '89, as Wentworth berated many of the men who showed up "at a reunion in Biddeford" [the 27th of Aug 1891 being the only time a reunion was held there] wearing these unearned medals.

How did this medal end up on a beach in Wells?
​Was Banfield's medal one of those stolen from Wentworth's stable and, since this soldier was probably not in attendance at the reunion (him being in the Milwaukee Soldiers Home in 1888-1889), his medal was just discarded? It is even possible, considering the inscription is on the back side of the medal, that someone else had been wearing his medal and tossed it out after one of the Kittery reunions.

There was never a follow-up article about this in the newspaper. "Joseph Fountain of Great Falls, NH", himself a Civil War veteran (with the 6th NH Inf), died in 1895. I wonder what ever became of this medal.

More about:
Philip Banfield (his bio page)