of some of
them. During the War of Independence alone, how many exploits, how
many heroes do we find worthy of being thus honored! How numerous
would have been our medals if Congress had not been imbued with the
conviction that only the very highest achievements are entitled to
such a distinction, and that the value of a reward is enhanced by its
rarity! In voting those struck after the War of 1812-'15 with Great
Britain, and after that of 1846-'47 with Mexico, the same discretion
was shown. There was still greater necessity for reserve during the
late Civil War, and only two were presented during that painful
period: one to Ulysses S. Grant, then a major-general, for victories,
and another to Cornelius Vanderbilt, in acknowledgment of his free
gift of the steamship which bore his name.

Similar national rewards have been earned also by deeds which interest
humanity, science, or commerce; as, for instance, the laying of the
transatlantic telegraph cable, the expedition of Doctor Kane to the
Arctic Seas, and the beneficence of George Peabody. If to these are
added the Indian peace medals, bearing the effigies of our (p. ix)
successive Presidents, the various elements which compose the official
medals of the United States of America will have been enumerated.

As neither titles of nobility nor orders of knighthood exist in our
country, Congress can bestow no higher distinction on an American
citizen than to offer him the thanks of the nation, and to order that
a medal be struck in his honor. I cannot do better than to quote here
the words of General Winfield Scott, when he received from President
Monroe the medal voted to him for the battles of Chippewa and Niagara:

"With a deep sense of the additional obligation now contracted, I
accept at the hands of the venerable Chief Magistrate of the Union the
classic token of the highest reward a free man can receive: the
recorded approbation of his country."

Our medals number eighty-six in all, most of which were struck by
order of Congress in honor of citizens of the United States. Seventeen
belong to the period of the Revolution, twenty-seven to the War of
1812-'15, four to the Mexican War, and two to the Civil War. Only five
were voted to foreigners: one, in 1779, to Lieutenant-Colonel de
Fleury, a French gentleman in the Continental Army, for gallant
conduct at Stony Point; another, in 1858, to Dr. Frederick Rose, an
assistant-surgeon in the British Navy for k