Frederick Ballen

Frederick A. Ballen was a Union soldier of the United States Army during the American Civil War whose military legacy became permanently associated with the Vicksburg Campaign. The surviving authoritative award record identifies him as Frederick A. Ballen. Because reliable official evidence does not establish the full form of his middle initial, his name should remain recorded in that form rather than expanding the “A.” without documentary support.

Ballen served as a Private in Company B of the 47th Ohio Infantry. The regiment belonged to the Union forces operating in the Western Theater and became involved in the long campaign to gain control of the Mississippi River. His verified military rank during the action for which he later received the Medal of Honor was Private, and no higher later rank has been established strongly enough for the final profile. Private therefore remains both his action-time rank and his highest verified rank.

The 47th Ohio Infantry served in operations that placed its soldiers in some of the most strategically important campaigns of the Civil War. By 1863, Union commanders had turned their attention toward Vicksburg, Mississippi, one of the Confederacy’s most important strongholds on the Mississippi River.

Vicksburg occupied commanding ground above the river and formed a major obstacle to Union control of the Mississippi. As long as the city remained in Confederate hands, the Confederacy maintained an important link between its eastern and western territories. Major General Ulysses S. Grant therefore made the capture of Vicksburg one of the central objectives of his 1863 campaign.

The geography of the campaign presented enormous difficulties. Confederate artillery batteries positioned along the river could fire on Union vessels attempting to pass the city, making naval and transport operations extremely dangerous. Moving troops, supplies, and equipment past those batteries demanded extraordinary courage from soldiers and sailors alike.

On May 3, 1863, Frederick Ballen took part in the action that would eventually earn him the Medal of Honor. He volunteered as a member of a small party assigned to take a steam tug and two barges loaded with subsistence stores past the Confederate batteries at Vicksburg.

The mission was dangerous from the moment it began. The vessels had to move through an area where Confederate artillery could engage them directly from fortified positions overlooking the river. Unlike soldiers advancing across a battlefield with the possibility of using terrain for cover, the volunteers aboard the vessels had very limited protection once they came within range of the batteries.

The barges carried supplies essential to Union operations. Successfully moving them past the enemy defenses would help sustain Grant’s army during the campaign. The mission therefore combined logistical importance with extreme personal danger.

Ballen volunteered for this hazardous duty despite the obvious risk. His participation placed him among a group of soldiers who knowingly exposed themselves to enemy artillery in order to help move the supplies through the defended river passage.

The operation required courage, discipline, and determination. The volunteers had to remain aboard the vessels and continue their task while Confederate batteries attempted to stop them. Even a single accurate shell could damage the tug, destroy a barge, ignite material aboard the vessels, or kill members of the crew.

Ballen’s conduct during the operation became the defining act of his military career. His official Medal of Honor recognition was based on his participation in this dangerous volunteer mission at Vicksburg on May 3, 1863.

The wider Vicksburg Campaign continued after Ballen’s action. Grant’s forces moved through Mississippi, defeated Confederate forces in a series of engagements, and eventually drove Lieutenant General John C. Pemberton’s army into the defenses surrounding Vicksburg.

After unsuccessful direct assaults in May 1863, the Union Army settled into siege operations. Federal troops gradually tightened their grip on the city while Union artillery and naval forces maintained continuous pressure.

Conditions inside Vicksburg deteriorated as food and other supplies became increasingly scarce. On July 4, 1863, Pemberton surrendered the city to Grant.

The fall of Vicksburg was one of the most important Union victories of the Civil War. Combined with the later surrender of Port Hudson, it gave the Union effective control of the Mississippi River and divided the Confederacy geographically.

Although Ballen’s Medal of Honor action occurred before the final surrender, his mission belonged directly to the logistical effort that made the campaign possible. Moving supplies past Confederate batteries was essential to sustaining Union operations during one of the war’s most difficult campaigns.

For more than four decades, however, Ballen did not possess the Medal of Honor for his Vicksburg service. His heroism was recognized only many years after the Civil War.

On November 6, 1908, Frederick A. Ballen was presented with the Medal of Honor for his actions of May 3, 1863. The award came approximately forty-five years after the event.

Such a long delay was not unique among Civil War recipients. Many acts of courage from the war were formally recognized years or even decades later as military records, testimony, veteran petitions, and official correspondence were reviewed.

The Medal of Honor itself originated during the Civil War. Congress authorized the Army Medal of Honor in 1862 as a national decoration for extraordinary military conduct. At the time, the United States did not yet possess the broad system of combat decorations that later developed during the twentieth century.

For Civil War soldiers, the Medal of Honor therefore became the principal Federal decoration used to recognize exceptional courage and distinguished conduct.

Ballen’s case requires special attention because the date of his heroic action and the date of his actual medal presentation belong to very different periods of Medal of Honor history.

His heroic action occurred in 1863, but his Medal of Honor was not issued until 1908. By that time, the Army Medal of Honor had undergone a major redesign.

In 1904, the Army adopted the redesigned Medal of Honor associated with Major General George L. Gillespie. This design replaced the earlier Civil War and nineteenth-century form and remained the principal Army Medal of Honor design until another major presentation change occurred in the 1940s.

Because Ballen’s award was presented in 1908, his database medal should not be represented by the original 1862–1895 Army version. The historically appropriate project selection is Medal of Honor 1904–1944 Army — 1908.

This distinction is important. The 1863 date describes the battlefield action. The 1908 date describes the actual Medal of Honor presentation. The database design period follows the medal version in use when Ballen received the decoration.

No additional star, clasp, bar, oak leaf cluster, or other device has been verified for Ballen’s Medal of Honor. His award therefore represents one Medal of Honor without any additional device.

His Civil War service also creates a separate question concerning the Army Civil War Campaign Medal. Ballen unquestionably served during the Civil War, and he survived into the twentieth century, living long enough to reach the period when the later campaign medal existed.

However, Civil War service by itself does not prove that a particular veteran personally received or was officially issued the Army Civil War Campaign Medal. General eligibility and recipient-specific entitlement are separate historical questions.

No sufficiently strong recipient-specific issuance record, medal roll, surviving named medal, or equivalent documentation has been verified establishing that Frederick Ballen personally received the Army Civil War Campaign Medal.

For that reason, the Civil War Campaign Medal remains excluded from his published medal rack. His final verified medal record consists of one decoration only: Medal of Honor 1904–1944 Army — 1908 — with no device or clasp.

Ballen survived the Civil War and lived for many decades afterward. The surviving military record preserves his Vicksburg heroism far more clearly than many details of his later civilian life, so uncertain information concerning his postwar years should not be expanded beyond documentary evidence.

His place in military history rests primarily on the decision he made on May 3, 1863. As a Private of Company B, 47th Ohio Infantry, he volunteered for an operation that required a steam tug and two supply barges to pass directly under Confederate batteries protecting Vicksburg.

The mission did not involve a conventional infantry charge or the capture of an enemy flag. Instead, it demonstrated a different kind of battlefield courage: volunteering to perform an essential logistical mission while fully exposed to enemy artillery.

More than forty years later, the United States formally recognized that courage with the Medal of Honor.

Frederick A. Ballen is therefore remembered as a Union Army Private, a veteran of the Vicksburg Campaign, and a Medal of Honor recipient whose bravery helped sustain one of the most important Union operations of the American Civil War. His final verified decoration record is simple but historically significant: one Medal of Honor, presented in 1908 for extraordinary service performed under fire at Vicksburg in 1863.