John Shanes

He Charged a Confederate Cannon Alone

John Shanes was born on July 23, 1844, in Monongalia County, an area that was then part of Virginia and later became part of West Virginia. He came of age during a period of deep national division, and when the American Civil War engulfed the country, he entered Union service and became a Private in Company K of the 14th West Virginia Infantry.

The 14th West Virginia Infantry was organized during the war to defend the Union and soon found itself involved in increasingly demanding operations in the eastern theater. Its soldiers served in regions where Confederate forces regularly contested Union control, and by the summer of 1864 the regiment was operating in Virginia during a period of intense maneuvering and combat.

Shanes’s defining moment came on July 20, 1864, during the fighting at Carter’s Farm, Virginia, in the engagement commonly known as the Battle of Rutherford’s Farm.

Union forces under Brigadier General William W. Averell encountered Confederate troops near Winchester while attempting to disrupt Confederate operations in the Shenandoah Valley. The battle developed quickly as infantry and artillery became heavily engaged.

During the fighting, Confederate artillery presented an immediate danger to the advancing Union troops. Field guns could tear apart infantry formations with shell, case shot, or canister, and attacking an operating cannon position required soldiers to advance toward one of the most dangerous points on the battlefield.

John Shanes did exactly that.

While serving as a Private in the 14th West Virginia Infantry, he moved forward ahead of his comrades and charged directly toward a Confederate fieldpiece.

He reached the enemy gun and, through his own action, silenced it.

The deed was remarkable not simply because he approached an artillery position under fire, but because he did so in advance of the other soldiers around him. Instead of waiting for the larger formation to overwhelm the position, Shanes pressed forward against the cannon himself.

The official Medal of Honor citation later preserved the essential facts of the episode: he charged upon a Confederate fieldpiece ahead of his comrades and silenced the gun through his individual efforts.

The encounter at Rutherford’s Farm became a Union victory. Confederate forces were driven from the field, and the engagement formed part of the continuing struggle for control of the Shenandoah Valley during the summer of 1864.

For Shanes, however, the battle would be remembered for one highly personal act of courage.

He survived the engagement and continued his Civil War service with the 14th West Virginia Infantry. Like thousands of other Union volunteers, his military experience was part of a much larger conflict that demanded years of campaigning, marching, exposure, and battlefield service.

Yet recognition for what he had done at Carter’s Farm did not come immediately.

More than three decades passed.

On January 31, 1896, John Shanes was presented with the Medal of Honor for his actions of July 20, 1864.

By the time he received the decoration, the Civil War had been over for more than thirty years. The young Private who had charged an enemy cannon had become a veteran living in a very different United States.

The Medal of Honor had originated during the Civil War itself. Congress authorized the Army decoration in 1862 as a means of recognizing exceptional military conduct. Many Civil War soldiers received the medal during the conflict, while others were recognized years or even decades afterward as wartime actions were reviewed and formally acknowledged.

Shanes belonged to that later group.

His Medal of Honor represented a very specific act of battlefield courage: an infantry soldier advancing ahead of his comrades toward a Confederate artillery position and personally silencing the weapon.

No additional clasp, star, or device was attached to his Medal of Honor.

His wider Union Army service was later represented by the Civil War Campaign Medal. Established after the generation of Civil War soldiers had begun to pass away, the medal commemorated qualifying United States Army service during the conflict.

For Shanes, the campaign medal represented the broader military service surrounding the single battlefield action recognized by the Medal of Honor. His service in the 14th West Virginia Infantry placed him among the Union soldiers who fought through the difficult final years of the war.

The Civil War Campaign Medal carried no additional device for his Carter’s Farm action. The Medal of Honor remained the individual decoration specifically tied to his courage on July 20, 1864.

After the war, Shanes returned to civilian life. He survived for nearly four decades beyond the conflict, living through the period in which Civil War veterans became increasingly important figures in American public memory.

Veterans gathered in organizations, attended reunions, participated in commemorations, and watched as battlefields, monuments, and national cemeteries transformed their wartime experiences into permanent historical memory.

For Medal of Honor recipients such as Shanes, the passage of time also brought increased recognition of individual acts that had occurred amid the enormous scale of Civil War combat.

John Shanes died on January 26, 1904, in Brave, Pennsylvania.

He was buried in Lantz Cemetery in Brave, carrying with him a military legacy formed during a few extraordinary moments nearly forty years earlier.

His story is not one of senior command or complicated battlefield strategy.

He was a Private.

On July 20, 1864, an enemy cannon stood in front of the Union advance.

The weapon was dangerous.

The position was defended.

Shanes moved toward it anyway.

He went ahead of his comrades, charged the Confederate fieldpiece, and silenced it.

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

John Shanes entered history not because of rank or command, but because when confronted by an enemy gun on the battlefield at Carter’s Farm, he chose to advance toward the danger alone.