Fact File 5.
by Terry Foenander.
A higher proportion of Union Navy personnel received the award, when compared to the Army, in comparison to the numbers who served within each service.
Despite the fact that the Union Army and Navy records are much more complete than those of the Confederate forces, there is a minor dispute about the exact number of personnel who served within each service, Army or Navy, of the Union. A large number of personnel, on completion of their initial service, were known to have re-enlisted again, and some may have done this on more than one occasion. A soldier, or sailor, may have, at the end of his (or her - we should not forget that there were a number of females who served within the ranks of the Army, though none are known to have served in the Navy) term of enlistment, decided to re-enlist for another year, two years or three years, as the case may be. Some would have even served for a third term, after the end of their second term of service. The number of personnel who went through this process is not exactly known, and because of this inability to come to an exact figure on these personnel, the total number of personnel who served for the Union cannot be arrived at conclusively. [Lord 325-327.]
One source, considered as being quite reliable, gives the number of enlistments in the Union Army throughout the war years as 2,672,341, and in the Union Navy (including the Marine Corps) as 105,963. [Time-Life Master Index 135.] These numerical figures obviously include multiple enlistments, but will be used in calculating the percentage rates due to the lack of completely reliable figures to show the exact number of personnel who enlisted within each service, throughout the war.
A count of the number of Navy personnel who were awarded the Medal of Honor lists 325 recipients, including 17 Marines. The same source gives the number of recipients, from the Union Army as 1,200. [MOH 957.] Percentage wise, the number of recipients in the Navy were about 0.31% of the total number of enlistments, and in the Army the percentage of recipients to the total number of enlistments was about 0.05%. Even if the number of Marine recipients were not taken into account, the Naval percentage of recipients would still be about 0.29%, a higher percentage than the Army.
A complete study of the recipients from the Union Naval service, to show ages, nativity, and other such statistical data is currently lacking, and it is doubtful, at this late stage in time, if anyone will ever undertake such an important study, for the benefit of researchers.
Sources:
Lord: "They Fought for the Union: A Complete Reference Work on the Federal Fighting Man," by Francis A. Lord; published 1960, by Bonanza Books, New York. Citation includes page number.
MOH: "The Congressional Medal of Honor: the Names, the Deeds," published 1984, by Sharp & Dunnigan Publications, Forest Ranch, California 95942. Citation includes page number.
Time Life Master Index: "The Civil War: Master Index, An Illustrated Guide," by the editors of Time-Life Books, 1987; Alexandria, Virginia. This volume is one of the series relating to the Civil War. Citation includes the page number from this particular volume.
December, 2004.