Theodore Hyatt
Recipient of the Medal of Honor (1830–1900)
George Theodore Hyatt (1830–1900) was a Union Army soldier during the American Civil War. He was awarded the Medal of Honor for gallantry during the Siege of Vicksburg on May 22, 1863.
Hyatt joined the 127th Illinois Infantry in August 1862, and was discharged in March 1865 for a wound received during the Atlanta campaign.
Union assault
On May 22, 1863, General Ulysses S. Grant ordered an assault on the Confederate heights at Vicksburg, Mississippi. The plan called for a storming party of volunteers to build a bridge across a moat and plant scaling ladders against the enemy embankment in advance of the main attack.
The volunteers knew the odds were against survival and the mission was called, in nineteenth century vernacular, a "forlorn hope". Only single men were accepted as volunteers and even then, twice as many men as needed came forward and were turned away. The assault began in the early morning following a naval bombardment.
The Union soldiers came under enemy fire immediately and were pinned down in the ditch they were to cross. Despite repeated attacks by the main Union body, the men of the forlorn hope were unable to retreat until nightfall.
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This entry incorporates text from “Theodore Hyatt” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.