Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Question For The Masses

Is it correct to call it:

Medal Of Honor

or

Congressional Medal Of Honor

Medal of Honor is correct

( it is not won)

I believe they are one and the same.

6/half dozen

Same/same

Google it...they are NOT the same...one is a military honor only

MOH

This may help...

https://taskandpurpose.com/military-life/theres-no-such-thing-as-the-congressional-medal-of-honor/

The reason I asked this is I was researching the Custer battle and found this medal of honor and if you notice it is marked "The Congress to" which would lead me to consider it to be "Congressional"...

When Google or any other source has more definitive data, it raises an eyebrow as this is an actual medal...

That’s pretty cool.

That can be understood as it is written, but the source is where I pause.

Secondly, this image is of an actual medal, not something a great great grandson is claiming they have...

Shrapnel,
That’s pretty neat.
I had the honor to meet an MOH recipient at the NRA convention by the name of SGT. Sammy Davis.
He’s a super nice guy and I enjoyed talking to him and also enjoyed his book.
I thought I would do a little research on MOH recipients in Indiana and was surprised to discover that I had one buried in my hometown in a cemetery that I drive by almost every day.
His name was CPT. Thomas Box and he was awarded the MOH for actions during the American Civil War.
IIRC, it was a battle outside of Atlanta.
I could be wrong, but in those days, if you were awarded a medal for bravery, it was the MOH.
There were no other awards for bravery as there were in the wars that followed in the twentieth century so it obviously couldn’t be downgraded to a DSC or something.
That is in NO way meant to disrespect anyone who was awarded an MOH at this point in history. I’m sure all were well deserved.
I mean anyone who gets on line to absorb a hailstorm of 58 caliber minie balls deserves some type of medal for bravery.
Of course being a history buff you probably already knew this. Fun conversation nonetheless.

It was my understanding as well that after the Civil War and some of the Indian wars that they rearranged the value of what the Medal of Honor was. As I understand it it takes a lot more from an individual service man to get a Medal of Honor than it did back in those days.

Pretty sure I read some citations once for several MOHs awarded for lifesaving after a boiler explosion on a ship during peacetime. This would have been sometime between the Civil War and 1900ish.

The inscription on the medal is not the name of the medal.

The inscription of "The Congress To" is the point is am curious about. I was always under the opinion that it is "The Medal Of Honor" as that seems to be the rule. However, Mechlin did receive the Medal of Honor along with several others for their acts of bravery as they transferred water from the Little Bighorn river to the parched troops on Reno/Benteen hill under severe enemy fire from the Indians.


So no one sees the reference to "Congress" on that medal as an association with Congressional?

I'm not saying it is so, it just appears to have some validity to the title "Congressional Medal Of Honor"

Your picture is of the inscription to the recipient on the back side of the actual medal. I don't understand why there is any confusion over the official name of the medal - this particular example is the Army version of The Medal Of Honor.

The inscription says "From The Congress To" on the reverse of the bar - your picture cuts off the "from". It says that because that is the original intent of the medal - bestowed BY the President FROM the Congress. Correction - the Medal was redesigned several times - earlier Civil War era version did say "from the congress to", some later versions just said "the congress to" implying the "from".

Congress just approves it to the recipient. It's the medal of honor.

100% correct.