Henry H. Taylor was born in Jo Daviess County, Illinois, near Galena, on July 4, 1841, to John W. Taylor and Temperance Stringfield. Taylor would enlist, on May 9, 1861, after Abraham Lincoln’s call for 75,000 state militia, after the firing on Fort Sumter. He would be assigned to the 45th Illinois Infantry on November 20, 1861. The regiment would officially be mustered into Federal service on December 25, 1861, at Camp Douglas, Illinois.(i)
The 45th Illinois would fight in many of the most significant battles in the Western Theater including: Fort Henry, Fort Donelson, Shiloh, Corinth, Vicksburg Campaign, Atlanta Campaign and the Carolinas Campaign. Taylor mustered in as a private and would advance to sergeant of Company C, where he would be a color bearer.
During the fighting, at Vicksburg, Mississippi, Taylor would provide his most important service to the United States. On June 25, 1863, after the reduction of the Third Louisiana Redan, by an underground mine, the infantry would be sent into the breach. A Union soldier described the explosion, “All at once a dead heavy roll, a hundred shouts, and you could see nothing but a black cloud of dirt and powder smoke, throwing the earth thirty of forty feet in the air, and about half of the wall rolled over the ditch as if turned 
by a ponderous plow. Instantaneous with this was the crack of a hundred cannon, as though they were all pulled off by one lanyard….while the infantry advanced with a yell that none but soldiers can give, rushed up the breastworks and a galling fire ensued between the rebs at the bottom and at the top.”(ii) The 45th Illinois was part of US Brigadier General Mortimer D. Leggett’s First Brigade, assigned to US Major General John Logan’s First Division of US Major General James B. McPherson’s XVII Corps. Led by Colonel Jasper A. Maltby, the 45th Illinois rushed into gaping hole left after the detonation of the mine. The fighting would be described by Leggett as “desperate.”(iii) Taylor, as color bearer, was in the front of his regiment. As they clawed their way to the top of the Third Louisiana Redan, Sergeant Taylor would plant the regiment’s colors on the works. A soldier in the 20th Illinois (in the same brigade as the 45th Illinois) described what they encountered at the redan, “The up-heaved earth was soft, and our feet sank deep into the loose dirt as we rushed over the dead and dying up the incline to the foot-wide crest of undisturbed earth, which, fortunately for the defenders of the Fort, remained to obstruct the on-slaught of the union forces.”(iv) The fighting would continue well into the night. The Federal troops would finally pull back about 75 feet, a position they held through the surrender, on July 4.
Taylor would receive the Medal of Honor for his valor during the fight at what would be called, “General Logan’s Canal.” After the surrender, the 45th Illinois would be the first regiment to enter Vicksburg. General Leggett described the scene, “The Forty-fifth Illinois was the first regiment to march into Vicksburg, receive the surrender, and hoist the flag on the court house. The whole of one division went in on the 4th of July, and no other troops. The Forty-fifth was part of the first brigade which I had commanded, and it was for its gallantry in breaking the Confederate line as well as for its other services in the campaign, that I gave it the front on that day.”(v)
Taylor would remain in the 45th Illinois Infantry until he mustered out on September 8, 1864, after his three year term of enlistment expired.
The following is the citation that Sergeant Henry H. Taylor received with his Medal of Honor, on September 1, 1893.
“Was the first to plant the Union colors upon the enemy works.”(vi)
After the Civil War, Taylor and his wife, Margery, would reside in Wyandotte, Kansas. He would work as a banker. He died on May 3, 1909 at Leavenworth, Kansas. Sergeant Henry H. Taylor is a true American HERO.
(i) The Civil War Soldiers and Sailors System was used to research this article.
(ii) Ballard, Michael B., Vicksburg: The Campaign That Opened the Mississippi, published by The University of North Carolina Press 2004, Pgs. 367–368.
(iii) Beyer, Walter F., Keydel, Oscar Frederick, Duffield, Henry Martin, Deeds of Valor, published by Perrien-Keydel Co. 1907, Pg. 215.
(iv) Ballard, Michael B., Vicksburg: The Campaign That Opened the Mississippi, published by The University of North Carolina Press 2004, Pg. 368.
(v) Beyer, Walter F., Keydel, Oscar Frederick, Duffield, Henry Martin, Deeds of Valor, published by Perrien-Keydel Co. 1907, Pg. 215.
(vi) R.J. (Bob) Pfoft, Editor, United States of America’s Medal of Honor Recipients, Fifth Edition, Pg. 1020.