Medal of Honor - Similar Decorations Within The United States

Similar Decorations Within The United States

The following United States decorations, in one degree or another, bear similar names to the Medal of Honor, but are entirely separate awards with different criteria for issuance:

  • Cardenas Medal of Honor: decoration of the Revenue Cutter Service, merged into the United States Coast Guard
  • Chaplain's Medal for Heroism: awarded posthumously for a single action to four recipients
  • Congressional Gold Medal: the highest civilian honor bestowed by the United States (along with the Presidential Medal of Freedom)
  • Congressional Space Medal of Honor: intended for issuance to astronauts, but despite its name, it is not equal to the Medal of Honor
  • Presidential Medal of Freedom: the highest civilian honor bestowed by the United States (along with the Congressional Gold Medal)
  • The Southern Cross of Honor: a military decoration meant to honor the officers, noncommissioned officers, and privates of the Confederate States of America for their valor in the armed forces during the American Civil War. It was formally approved by the Congress of the Confederate States on October 13, 1862, and was originally intended to be on par with the Union Army's Medal of Honor.

Several United States law enforcement decorations bear the name "Medal of Honor". The Public Safety Officer Medal of Valor, established by Congress in 2001, stated to be "the highest National award for valor by a public safety officer", is also awarded by the President of the US.

Read more about this topic:  Medal Of Honor

Famous quotes containing the words united states, similar, decorations, united and/or states:

    On the whole, yes, I would rather be the Chief Justice of the United States, and a quieter life than that which becomes at the White House is more in keeping with the temperament, but when taken into consideration that I go into history as President, and my children and my children’s children are the better placed on account of that fact, I am inclined to think that to be President well compensates one for all the trials and criticisms he has to bear and undergo.
    William Howard Taft (1857–1930)

    A whole village-full of sensuous emotion, scattered abroad all the year long, surged here in a focus for an hour. The forty hearts of those waving couples were beating as they had not done since, twelve months before, they had come together in similar jollity. For the time Paganism was revived in their hearts, the pride of life was all in all, and they adored none other than themselves.
    Thomas Hardy (1840–1928)

    Let the realist not mind appearances. Let him delegate to others the costly courtesies and decorations of social life. The virtues are economists, but some of the vices are also. Thus, next to humility, I have noticed that pride is a pretty good husband. A good pride is, as I reckon it, worth from five hundred to fifteen hundred a year.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    The parallel between antifeminism and race prejudice is striking. The same underlying motives appear to be at work, namely fear, jealousy, feelings of insecurity, fear of economic competition, guilt feelings, and the like. Many of the leaders of the feminist movement in the nineteenth-century United States clearly understood the similarity of the motives at work in antifeminism and race discrimination and associated themselves with the anti slavery movement.
    Ashley Montagu (b. 1905)

    A little group of willful men, representing no opinion but their own, have rendered the great government of the United States helpless and contemptible.
    Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)