James Calvin Summers

He Led the Forlorn Hope Into Vicksburg

James Calvin Summers was born on February 14, 1838, along the Elk River about six miles above Charleston, in the region that was then part of Virginia and would later become West Virginia. He grew up in the Kanawha Valley during a period when the nation was moving steadily toward the sectional crisis that would erupt into the American Civil War. When that conflict began, Summers entered Union military service and became a private in Company H of the 4th West Virginia Infantry.

The 4th West Virginia Infantry served in the western theater, where Union armies fought to control the Mississippi River and divide the Confederacy. By 1863, Summers and his regiment had been drawn into Major General Ulysses S. Grant’s Vicksburg Campaign. The fortified city of Vicksburg, Mississippi, stood on commanding ground overlooking the Mississippi River and represented one of the Confederacy’s most important remaining strongholds on that vital waterway.

After Union forces maneuvered successfully into Mississippi and defeated Confederate forces in a series of battles, Grant’s army closed on Vicksburg. An initial assault on the defenses failed on May 19, 1863. Three days later, Union commanders launched another major attempt to break through the Confederate fortifications.

On May 22, a volunteer storming party was selected to move at the front of the assault against the defenses near the Stockade Redan, a powerful Confederate position guarding the approach along Graveyard Road. The men who volunteered for this advance faced an exceptionally dangerous assignment. They would have to move ahead of the main attacking force toward prepared enemy works while exposed to Confederate fire.

Private James Calvin Summers was among those volunteers.

His Medal of Honor citation is notably brief, recording his action as “Gallantry in charge of the ‘volunteer storming party.’” Those few words place Summers directly within one of the most celebrated and hazardous episodes of the Vicksburg Campaign. Rather than embellishing the event, the surviving citation preserves the essential fact: Summers demonstrated distinguished gallantry while serving with the volunteer force that led the Union attack on May 22, 1863.

The assault failed to break the Confederate defenses that day. Vicksburg did not fall through a direct storming of its fortifications. Instead, Grant settled into siege operations, gradually tightening the pressure on the city until the Confederate garrison surrendered on July 4, 1863. The victory opened the Mississippi River more fully to Union control and became one of the decisive strategic achievements of the Civil War.