Charles H. McCleary (1842 – June 23, 1906) was a Union Army soldier who received the Medal of Honor, his country's highest military award for valor, for his actions during the American Civil War.
On December 16, 1864, at the Battle of Nashville, McCleary led his company to attack Compton's Hill, later known as Shy's Hill, a key entrenched Confederate position outside Nashville, Tennessee. Union attackers, including McCleary's troops, fixed bayonets, scaled the hillside, and advanced on Confederate positions in silence to achieve surprise. McCleary dashed out ahead of his troops, braving Confederate artillery fire, and personally captured the flag of the 4th Florida Infantry Regiment.[5] The Confederates broke and fled, and the Union won a decisive victory.[1][6]
General George Henry Thomas sent McCleary to Washington, D.C., where he and other officers presented captured Confederate flags to Secretary of War Edwin Stanton. McCleary next met with President Abraham Lincoln, who granted him the "freedom of the city" and a thirty-day furlough, in the course of which the studio of Mathew Brady took McCleary's photograph. On February 24, 1865, the United States Congress awarded McCleary the Medal of Honor.[6] Promoted to captain in May 1865, he mustered out with his regiment on September 11, 1865, and returned to civilian life.[3][4]
McCleary married Clarissa Brown and had at least one child, a daughter named Hallie McCleary. Sometime after the Civil War, he served as postmaster of his hometown of Clyde, Ohio.[7]