What is a Corps Badge?
Gettysburg National Military Park Kidzpage


Maltese cross of the Fifth Corps
In January 1863, the Army of the Potomac received a new commander named General Joseph Hooker- a hard fighting and flamboyant general, whose nickname was "Fighting Joe". At this time, General Hooker was handed an army so beaten and so severely demoralized that men were deserting by the hundreds every day. The soldiers were willing to serve the Union as long as they were well led, but numerous setbacks and poor generalship had finally done many of them in. Disgusted, many many refused to perform assigned duties or they just wandered away from the army altogether. General Hooker was not blind to this dilemma and immediately set about rebuilding the army with better food, new equipment, additional training, and discipline. The general also ordered a special badge to be designed for each infantry corps (pronounced "core") of the army, which would be a special symbol of that corps.

Sgt. Lawn, 95th PA
Sgt. Michael Lawn has a Sixth Corps badge on his cap.
(M.McAfee Col.)
An army corps was a large organization of infantry brigades and divisions with an artillery brigade, commanded by a major general. Each corps was divided into three divisions, each division having three brigades. To designate each of the three divisions of a corps, General Hooker decided that the badges should be made in three distinctive colors similar to the US flag- red, white and blue with red for the First Division of the corps, white for the second, and blue for the third. The badges were meant to not only give each corps a symbol of pride, but they would also make each one easily identifiable to the generals in charge. The generals in command of each corps chose shapes of the badges they wanted for their organization. Soon after, the Quartermaster Department handed out the corps badges which were made of wool cloth and were small enough to fit on top of a soldier's cap. As General Hooker had ordered, the different shaped badges were made in three distinct colors for each division of the corps. For example, the maltese cross shown here is the badge of the Fifth Corps. The red color stands for the First Division, Fifth Corps. A white cross stood for the Second Division, Fifth Corps, and a blue cross specified the Third Division, Fifth Corps.

Major Melcher
Major Holman Melcher of the 20th Maine Infantry wears a large Fifth Corps badge on his coat.

The soldiers rapidly took to wearing the new corps badges and most of them enjoyed having the distinctive symbol. Corps badges were initially worn on the top of the cap, though many also sewed one on their uniform coats. Army sutlers began to offer a line of more elaborate corps badges bordered with brass edging, or made of stamped brass and painted in the proper color for each division. These also became widely popular in the Army of the Potomac. They proved to work so well that the U.S. War Department ordered all army corps to have badges made, even for those in the Union armies serving in Tennessee and Mississippi. Though the "westerners" adopted corps badges, they were not as popular among those men and they were with the Union armies in Virginia. Confederates did not have corps badges and never adopted anything like it. Some Confederates wrote to their home folks about the colorful badges the "Yankees" took to wearing and wondered how much more elaborate they could get.

Every corps in the Army of the Potomac had a corps badge. Years after the end of the war when veterans of that army returned to Gettysburg to erect their monuments, they included their old corps symbols in their stone memorials at Gettysburg. The U.S. Army still has specific symbols for its organizations today, which are known as shoulder patches and worn on the left sleeve of the uniform. The patches of today's army are much more elaborate and designate all sorts of units, divisions, corps and armies.

Corps Badges
Corps Badges of the Army of the Potomac

Make your own corps badge! Choose one of the shapes in the chart above and cut it out of felt, construction paper, or some other material you have, and pin it to your jacket or cap. A good school project would be to make a display of many different corps badges like those used in the Army of the Potomac.

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