Franz Frey

What kind of courage leads a soldier to volunteer for an assault so dangerous that the men chosen for it knew they might never return? On May 22, 1863, at Vicksburg, Mississippi, Corporal Franz Frey of the 37th Ohio Infantry answered that question by stepping forward for one of the most hazardous attacks of the American Civil War. More than thirty years later, the United States recognized his gallantry with the Medal of Honor.

Born Franz Xavier Frey on December 8, 1837, in Switzerland, Frey immigrated to the United States before the Civil War and settled in Cleveland, Ohio. When war divided his adopted country, he entered Union service at Cleveland on October 16, 1861, joining the 37th Ohio Volunteer Infantry. His advancement came the following year when he was promoted to corporal on July 25, 1862.

By the spring of 1863, Frey and the 37th Ohio were part of the enormous Union effort to capture Vicksburg, the Confederate stronghold overlooking the Mississippi River. Control of Vicksburg was strategically vital. Its fall would help give the Union command of the Mississippi and divide the Confederacy geographically. Frey's regiment served in Brigadier General Hugh Ewing's brigade within Major General William T. Sherman's XV Corps during the operations against the city.

The moment that defined Frey's military career came on May 22, 1863.

After an earlier assault had failed, Union commanders prepared another attack against Vicksburg's heavily fortified Confederate defenses. Before the main assault, a special group of approximately 150 volunteers was organized for an extremely dangerous mission against the Confederate earthworks. Frey was one of the soldiers who volunteered. The men became known historically as the volunteer storming party.

Their task placed them directly in front of fortified enemy positions. The attack exposed the volunteers to intense Confederate fire as they advanced toward the defenses. The assault ultimately failed to break the Confederate line, but the bravery demonstrated by members of the storming party became one of the most memorable episodes of the Vicksburg campaign. Frey's participation was not something assigned to him by chance. He had volunteered to enter that danger.

For his actions that day, Franz Frey received the Medal of Honor, the highest military decoration of the United States. His official citation is strikingly short:

“Gallantry in the charge of the ‘volunteer storming party.’”

The National Park Service identifies Frey as Corporal, Company H, 37th Ohio Infantry, and records his Medal of Honor action at Vicksburg, Mississippi, on May 22, 1863. The decoration was issued on August 14, 1894. The Congressional Medal of Honor Society independently records the same action, unit, date, and presentation.

The simplicity of that citation can obscure what it represents. There is no lengthy description of the Confederate fire, no dramatic language about the danger, and no elaborate account of the failed assault. Instead, the official record reduces the event to its essential fact: Frey displayed gallantry while participating in the volunteer storming party at Vicksburg. For a soldier who had deliberately stepped into one of the most dangerous assignments of the campaign, those few words carried enormous weight.

Frey's war did not end at Vicksburg. He remained in Union service and continued his military career after the campaign that made him a Medal of Honor recipient. According to the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History, he eventually rose to commissary sergeant and completed the war in that position. He was discharged at Camp Cleveland in 1865, bringing nearly four years of wartime service to an end.

This later promotion is important when telling his story accurately. He is properly remembered as Corporal Franz Frey in connection with the Medal of Honor because corporal was his rank during the May 22, 1863 action. By the end of his service, however, he had advanced to commissary sergeant.

After the Civil War, Frey returned to civilian life in Cleveland. More than three decades passed between the assault at Vicksburg and the formal recognition of his heroism. On August 14, 1894, Frey finally received the Medal of Honor for the gallantry he had demonstrated as a young corporal in 1863. Unlike many Civil War recipients whose awards were issued soon after their actions, Frey's recognition came late in life, allowing him to personally receive the nation's acknowledgment of his wartime courage.

Franz Frey died in Cleveland on March 13, 1900, at the age of 62. He was buried at Lake View Cemetery in Cleveland, Ohio. His grave marks the resting place of a Swiss-born immigrant who became an American soldier, served through the Civil War, and earned the country's highest military honor.

Frey's story is more than a name on a Medal of Honor roll. It is the story of an immigrant who chose to fight for his adopted country and of a corporal who voluntarily stepped forward when the mission offered extraordinary danger and little promise of success. The assault of May 22 did not capture Vicksburg that day, but the courage of the men who participated in it became part of the larger story of the campaign that ultimately ended with the Confederate city's surrender.

Corporal Franz Frey's Medal of Honor was awarded for one defining act: gallantry in the charge of the volunteer storming party at Vicksburg. More than 160 years later, those few words still tell the essential story of a soldier who volunteered to go where the danger was greatest.