George Foster Robinson was born at Hartford, Oxford County, Maine, August 13, 1832. In 1863, he enlisted in the 8th regiment of Maine Volunteers, and was severely wounded at Bermuda Hundred, May 20, 1864. On the night of April 14, 1865, while acting as sick nurse to the Honorable William H. Seward, then secretary of State, at the imminent peril of his life, and at the cost of serious wounds, he saved Mr. Seward from the knife of the assassin Payne. For his heroic conduct on this occasion, Congress voted him five thousand dollars and a gold medal. He was clerk in the Treasury Department, from June, 1865, to August, 1866, when he resigned. He was appointed in December, 1868, to a similar position in the quartermaster-general's office, Washington.
ORIGINAL DOCUMENTS.
Resolution of Congress Voting a Medal to George F. Robinson.
Be it Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled: That the Secretary of the Treasury be, and he is hereby, directed to pay to George F. Robinson, late a private in the Eighth Regiment of Maine Volunteers, the sum of five thousand dollars, out of any money in the Treasury of the United States not otherwise appropriated.
Section 2. And be it further resolved, That the Secretary of the Treasury be, and he is hereby, directed to cause to be prepared and presented to the said George F. Robinson a gold medal with appropriate devices and inscriptions, commemorative of the heroic conduct of the said Robinson on the fourteenth day of April, eighteen hundred and sixty-five, in saving the life of the Honorable William H. Seward, then secretary of State of the United States, the expense of said medal to be paid out of any money in the Treasury not otherwise appropriated.
Approved March 1st, 1871.
The Committee on Foreign Affairs, to whom were referred the resolutions of the legislature of the State of Maine, declaring that the heroic conduct of George F. Robinson, late a private in the Eighth Regiment of Maine Volunteers, in saving the life of Secretary Seward from the knife of an assassin, at the imminent peril of his own life, and at the expense of permanent wounds, should receive public recognition by the Congress of the United States, to the end that his noble deeds may be known and remembered by the American People, and that provision may be made for his future welfare such as right and justice demand, and the generous impulse of a grateful people require, respectfully submit the following report:[125]