That on the 15th day of August, 1863, George F. Robinson enlisted in the Eighth Regiment of Maine Volunteers. On the 20th day of May, 1864, at an attack at Bermuda Hundred, made on General Butler's lines by the rebels, Robinson was wounded very severely in the leg by a canister shot. He was sent to Douglas Hospital in this city, where he lay nearly a year undergoing great suffering from his wound. On the memorable 14th day of April, 1865, although his wound was not then entirely healed, he was detailed from the hospital to act as nurse to Mr. Seward, the Secretary of State, who, it will be remembered, was confined to his bed by serious injuries—a broken arm and jaw. At 10 o'clock that night Robinson was on duty in Mr. Seward's room, when the assassin, Payne, sought that room to murder the feeble, wounded, helpless Secretary, in pursuance of the great conspiracy which ended with filling the whole civilized world with horror. The Secretary was sleeping; the room was darkened. Robinson hearing a disturbance in the hall opened the door; a flood of light streamed on him from the hall. On the threshold stood the athletic assassin, a revolver in one hand and a huge bowie knife in the other. He saw against the wall the wounded, crazed Assistant Secretary, with blood pouring from his wound. He caught the gleam of that terrible knife aimed at his throat; instinctively he struck up at the assassin's arm to ward off the knife, partially succeeded, but received the blow upon his head, and was prostrated to the floor. Bounding over him, Payne rushed on to the bed, and commenced wildly striking with the knife at the throat of the Secretary. Already he had cut the flesh off from one cheek to the bone, and the blood gushed in torrents over the pillow. This soldier, just from the hospital, with his wounded leg not yet healed, enfeebled from his year of suffering and pain, just prostrated to the floor by a blow from that terrible knife, springs to his feet, and without one moment's hesitation, without one moment's thought for himself, save, as he swears, the thought that he must die to save the Secretary; without a weapon of any description, with a bravery never surpassed in the annals of any country, he opposed his naked hands, his wounded and enfeebled body, to the terrible knife of the gigantic and desperate murderer. He seized the assassin just as the deadly knife was about to bury itself in the throat of the Secretary, and then commenced an unequal struggle which seemingly can only end in the death of the brave soldier. Having succeeded in dragging Payne from off the bed, he receives over his shoulder two deep wounds down his back, inflicting injuries from which one side of his face and two fingers of one hand are still partially paralyzed. He received two more wounds under his left shoulder blade, which proved nearly fatal, and received blows about the head and face from the revolver. At last Payne, probably becoming alarmed for his own safety should he spend more time in the house, wrenched himself loose and fled, stabbing a messenger from the State Department on his way down stairs. Disregarding his own desperate wounds, the blood from which was filling his shoes, with the help of Mr. Seward's daughter Robinson placed the insensible and mangled form of the Secretary on the bed from which he had fallen, and re-covering the gashed cheek with its flesh, he placed his fingers on the wounded artery from which Mr. Seward's life was fast passing, and with the same coolness, the same utter self-abandonment, he kept his position, though scarcely able to stand, and believing himself fatally wounded, until relieved by the arrival of the Surgeon-General. After the Secretary's wounds were dressed his own were attended to, and he was the same night carried back to the hospital.
On the 17th day of May following Robinson was honorably discharged from the service. Finding himself unable to labor on a farm, by reason of his wounds, he was obliged to sell his little place for some $1,200, and sought employment as a Government clerk. He is now a clerk in the Quartermaster General's Department, at a salary of $1,200 per year, and has no other means of supporting himself, his wife, and boy, except a pension of $8 per month for wounds received on the field of battle. Robinson is a modest man, of excellent character, and a faithful and efficient clerk.
The committee unanimously recommend the passage of the accompanying joint resolution.
August 31, 1872.
By Resolution of Congress February 24, 1873.
LOSS OF THE STEAMER METIS.
[For Courage and Humanity.]
A man standing in a boat, a coil of rope under his left arm, directs oarsmen with his right hand to pull for the wreck of the Metis. One of the men is lifting a woman from the sea into the boat. To the right, in the background, a light-house.