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Home Town Johnstown, Pennsylvania
Last Address Fargo, North Dakota
Date of Passing Apr 15, 1895
Location of Interment Arlington National Cemetery (VLM) - Arlington, Virginia
Civil War Union Brevet Major General, Congressional Medal of Honor Recipient. Enlisted at the start of the Civil War as the Chief Surgeon of the 1st West Virginia Volunteer Cavalry, serving in that capacity for 2 1/2 years, until he was promoted to Colonel and commander of the regiment in March 1864, after the resignation of Colonel Nathan Richmond. He was awarded the CMOH for his bravery at Greenbrier River, West Virginia on May 22, 1864. His citation reads simply "Saved, under fire, the life of a drowning soldier". The man he saved, Private Watson Karr of Company B, had been swept under the waves while the regiment was fording the River under the fire of Confederate sharpshooters. Colonel Capehart dove deeply twice to retrieve the foundering soldier, and had brought him across to the other side of the river while dodging Rebel bullets. His Medal was awarded to him on February 12, 1895. He was brevetted Brigadier General, US Volunteers on March 13, 1865 for "gallant and distinguished services" and Major General, US Volunteers on June 17, 1865 for "gallant and meritorious services". He was one of fourteen 1st West Virginia Cavalry soldiers to be awarded the Medal of Honor for bravery during the Civil War (the others being Private James F. Adams, Corporal Thomas Anderson, Lieutenant Wilmon W. Blackmar, Captain Hugh P. Boon, Sergeant Richard Boury, Major Charles E. Capehart, 1st Sergeant Francis M. Cunningham, Commissary Sergeant William Houlton, Private Archibald Rowand, Chief Bugler Charles Schorn, Corporal Emisire Shahan, Sergeant Levi Shoemaker, and Private Daniel A. Woods). His younger brother was Lt. Colonel Charles E. Capehart, who commanded the 1st West Virginia Cavalry for a time, and was also awarded the CMOH. Both men are interred in Arlington National Cemetery.
Description The American Civil War was an internal conflict fought in the United States from 1861 to 1865. The Union faced secessionists in eleven Southern states grouped together as the Confederate States of America. The Union won the war, which remains the bloodiest in U.S. history.
Among the 34 U.S. states in February 1861, seven Southern slave states individually declared their secession from the U.S. to form the Confederate States of America. War broke out in April 1861 when Confederates attacked the U.S. fortress of Fort Sumter. The Confederacy grew to include eleven states; it claimed two more states, the Indian Territory, and the southern portions of the western territories of Arizona and New Mexico (called Confederate Arizona). The Confederacy was never diplomatically recognized by the United States government nor by any foreign country. The states that remained loyal, including border states where slavery was legal, were known as the Union or the North. The war ended with the surrender of all the Confederate armies and the dissolution of the Confederate government in the spring of 1865.
The war had its origin in the factious issue of slavery, especially the extension of slavery into the western territories. Four years of intense combat left 620,000 to 750,000 soldiers dead, a higher number than the number of American military deaths in World War I and World War II combined, and much of the South's infrastructure was destroyed. The Confederacy collapsed and 4 million slaves were freed (most of them by Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation). The Reconstruction Era (1863–1877) overlapped and followed the war, with the process of restoring national unity, strengthening the national government, and granting civil rights to freed slaves throughout the country.
