This Medal of Honor was awarded to Sergeant Major Christian Fleetwood, 4th U.S. Colored Troops, for heroism on the field of battle at Chaffin’s Farm on September 29, 1864. Fleetwood seized the colors after two color bearers had been shot down, and bore them nobly through the fight. Fleetwood was 23 years old.

Fleetwood was a free man born in Baltimore, Maryland. He traveled to Liberia as a young man and attended Ashmun Institute in Oxford, Pennsylvania. During his life he was an editor, a musician, and a government official. He organized a battalion of the District of Columbia National Guard and a Colored High School Cadet Corps. He is the author of a pamphlet entitled The Negro as a Soldier, in which he wrote, “... it is possible only to indicate in skeleton the worth of the Negro as a solider. If this brief sketch should awaken even a few to interest in his achievements, and one be found willing and fitted to write the history that is their due, that writer shall achieve immortality.”

Measurements:4 1/4 x 2 1/16 x 1/4 in.; 10.8 x 5.24 x .64 cm; Date Made: 1862

Use this Investigation Sheet to guide students through describing the object and analyzing its meaning.