Arriving hours before the battle after two days of travel, these veteran troops doubled the number of U.S. Grant to intercept a Confederate army heading to Washington. The tag’s reverse bears a pinback mechanism to permit attachment to a uniform.Īt the Battle of Monocacy on July 9, 1864, the 138th Pennsylvania was one of several battle-hardened regiments of the VI Corps sent by Gen. McCabe says the Wilson tag, in the shape of a shield, is silver in composition and measures 25.4 millimeters wide and 30.1625 millimeters long. Weigel may have worn the tag around his neck or securely pinned to his uniform. The reverse is inscribed incuse around with SAMUEL WEIGEL BENDERSVILLE, PA, with Co. The obverse of the Weigel tag illustrates a Union shield surrounded by the inscription AGAINST REBELLION, with the date 1861 at the 6 o’clock position flanked by single five-pointed stars. Jana Friesen McCabe, chief of resource education and visitor services at Monocacy National Battlefield, said it is believed the Weigel tag is composed of a copper alloy. The Weigel tag, which is holed at the 12 o’clock position, is 30.1625 millimeters in diameter. “Because soldiers had to purchase these tags with their own money, there is no standardized style and no official record of how many soldiers had them.” To ensure their bodies could be identified, “Some soldiers used stencils to mark their clothing and belongings,” Monocacy National Battlefield officials commented, while “others purchased small metal tags, personalized with their name and regiment. Today, such pieces are sometimes grouped with exonumia, a category of numismatic items that includes tokens and medals. The tags had sufficient space on which to engrave or punch in the identification information. Tags for this purpose were often obtained from the sutlers who followed a military unit and sold the soldiers provisions. To make sure their families knew what happened to them, soldiers would create their own dog tags bearing identifying information, including name, rank and military outfit. Many soldiers feared that, if they were killed in action, they would be buried unidentified in an unmarked grave. Government authorities during the Civil War did not provide standard issue identification tags to their military personnel.
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