Charles A. Swan

He Took the Enemy Flag as Selma Fell

Charles Alexander Swan was born on May 29, 1838, in Greene County, Pennsylvania. He later made his home in Mount Pleasant, Iowa, the community from which he entered Union military service during the American Civil War. His wartime career would eventually place him in one of the final major cavalry campaigns of the conflict and earn him the Medal of Honor for capturing a Confederate flag and its bearer during the Battle of Selma.

Swan joined the United States Army and served with Company K of the 4th Iowa Cavalry. The regiment had been organized at Mount Pleasant and developed into an experienced mounted force that campaigned across the western and southern theaters of the war.

By 1865, the 4th Iowa Cavalry had become part of the powerful mounted force commanded by Major General James H. Wilson. Wilson’s Cavalry Corps was assigned a major strategic mission during the closing weeks of the Civil War: strike deep into Alabama and Georgia, destroy Confederate military infrastructure, and eliminate remaining centers of organized resistance.

The campaign became known as Wilson’s Raid.

Moving rapidly through Alabama, Union cavalry destroyed factories, arsenals, railroads, bridges, military stores, and other facilities that supported the Confederate war effort. One of the most important objectives was Selma, Alabama, a major Confederate manufacturing and supply center protected by extensive defensive works.

On April 2, 1865, Wilson’s cavalry reached Selma.

Confederate troops defended the city behind fortifications, but the Union mounted forces launched an aggressive assault against the defensive line. After severe fighting, Union troops broke through the works and entered Selma. Confederate resistance collapsed, and soldiers began retreating through and beyond the city.

Private Swan was among the Union cavalrymen pursuing them.

During that pursuit, Swan performed the action that would define his military legacy. While following the retreating Confederate force through and out of Selma, he captured an enemy flag and the man carrying it.

The captured bearer stated that the colors belonged to the 11th Mississippi. Later official records preserved the identification cautiously, describing the captured flag as supposedly belonging to the 11th Mississippi, Confederate States Army.

Capturing an enemy battle flag carried enormous significance during the Civil War. Regimental colors served as more than ceremonial objects. On chaotic battlefields filled with smoke, noise, and rapidly shifting formations, soldiers used their colors as rallying points and visual guides. A flag represented the identity and cohesion of the unit carrying it.

Because color bearers were highly visible and the flag was fiercely defended, capturing enemy colors frequently required a soldier to enter extremely dangerous close-range combat. Losing a flag was also a serious blow to a unit’s pride and battlefield organization.

Swan’s accomplishment was documented in reports of gallantry from Wilson’s campaign. He was specifically identified as a private of the 4th Iowa Cavalry who, during the pursuit at Selma, captured both a Confederate flag and its bearer.

His action occurred at a dramatic moment in the war. Selma fell on April 2, 1865—the same day Union forces broke through the Confederate defenses at Petersburg, Virginia. Within days Richmond was abandoned, and on April 9 General Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox Court House.

Wilson’s mounted campaign nevertheless continued through the South as Union forces pursued remaining Confederate troops and military objectives. The 4th Iowa Cavalry remained active during these final operations.

Recognition for Swan’s courage came unusually quickly.

On June 17, 1865, the War Department forwarded Medals of Honor for a group of soldiers distinguished during Wilson’s recent cavalry campaign. Among the men specifically named was Private Charles A. Swan of Company K, 4th Iowa Cavalry.

Swan received the Medal of Honor for his actions at Selma on April 2, 1865. His official citation recorded the essential achievement in only a few words: the capture of a flag, believed to belong to the 11th Mississippi, and its bearer.

The Medal of Honor had been created during the Civil War and represented the highest military recognition available to American servicemen. For soldiers such as Swan, it preserved individual acts of courage that might otherwise have disappeared within the enormous scale of the conflict.

His military record also reflects broader service beyond the single moment for which the Medal of Honor was awarded. Swan served as a Union cavalryman during the final campaigns of a war in which mounted troops performed reconnaissance, raids, pursuit, battlefield assaults, and attacks against enemy transportation and supply systems.

That broader Civil War service is also represented by the Army Civil War Campaign Medal.

The Civil War Campaign Medal was established by the War Department in 1907, more than four decades after the fighting ended. It was created to recognize qualifying United States Army service during the Civil War. Because the decoration was established long after the conflict, the year 1907 refers to the establishment of the medal rather than to the year of Swan’s wartime service.

For Swan, the Army Civil War Campaign Medal represented the wider military service of which his Medal of Honor action formed one extraordinary part. No devices are associated with either of his approved decorations.

After the war, Swan returned to civilian life in Mount Pleasant, Iowa. He lived long enough to see the Civil War pass from recent memory into national history and to witness the growth of veterans’ organizations and public commemoration of the soldiers who had fought to preserve the Union.

His connection to Mount Pleasant remained strong. The community later remembered him among Henry County’s Medal of Honor recipients, and he was buried at Forest Home Cemetery in Mount Pleasant.

Charles Alexander Swan’s military legacy rests above all on the events of April 2, 1865. As Confederate forces withdrew from Selma, a private cavalryman pursued them and seized both an enemy flag and its bearer.

That act earned him the Medal of Honor.

Together with the Army Civil War Campaign Medal recognizing his broader Union service, his decorations preserve the story of a cavalryman who fought through the closing campaign of the Civil War and seized an enemy standard as one of the Confederacy’s most important remaining military centers fell.