John M. Deane was proud of his war service and preserved a wonderful archive of material. He rose from Lieutenant to Major, serving at the very first call for troops in the 3^rd Mass Volunteer Militia and then joining the 29^th Mass for service in the Irish Brigade of the 2^nd Corps before the unit joined the 9^th Army Corps in late 1862, with whom it served for the rest of the war. Deane himself won the Medal of Honor for actions at Fort Stedman.

Deane preserved a couple of red cloth 1^st Division 9^th Army Corps badges that are quite scarce. Fancier privately purchased badges are common by comparison, but a soldier or officer had his own money tied up in those. These are the type issued by the government and consequently of lesser value at the time, and immensely scarcer now.

As one memento of his service in the 9^th Corps Deane preserved the touching farewell address of Orlando Wilcox to the members of the corps dated July 25, 1865. We include with this one of the wartime issue corps badges Deane preserved (a second was pinned to a general order with a signed note from Deane at bottom that it was, “one of the Badges issued to me while in the service.”

We don’t have to add how unusual it is to find a Civil War cloth corps badge you can trust. This is a rare opportunity not just to acquire a real Civil War wartime corps badge, not a postwar veteran’s badge, but an issue cloth one as well, and one documented as owned by a Medal of Honor winner, too.  [SR]

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