John Swanson

He Entered the Fort When Few Sailors Dared Follow

John Swanson, later known as Jacob Johnson, was born in Gothenburg, Sweden, in the early 1840s. Like many European immigrants of his generation, he eventually crossed the Atlantic and made his way to the United States. During the American Civil War, he entered the United States Navy and served as a Seaman aboard USS Santiago de Cuba.

By the closing months of the war, Wilmington, North Carolina, had become critically important to the Confederacy. Its port remained one of the last major gateways through which blockade runners could deliver weapons, ammunition, clothing, and other supplies from overseas.

Protecting the entrance to the Cape Fear River was Fort Fisher, an enormous system of earthworks built along the North Carolina coast. Its heavy guns and strong defenses made Wilmington difficult for the Union Navy to close completely.

The first major Union attempt to capture Fort Fisher in December 1864 failed.

In January 1865, Federal forces returned.

A massive naval bombardment was followed by coordinated attacks involving both Army troops and sailors and Marines from the fleet. USS Santiago de Cuba participated in the operation, and John Swanson became part of the landing force sent ashore.

On January 15, 1865, Swanson was serving as one of a boat crew detailed to support a Union general on shore.

Leaving the relative protection of his ship meant entering an entirely different kind of battle.

The naval landing parties had to move across exposed ground toward one of the Confederacy’s strongest coastal fortifications. Confederate defenders fired on the advancing sailors and Marines as the attackers struggled toward the works.

The assault became chaotic and costly.

Yet Swanson continued forward.

He entered Fort Fisher during the attack.

That achievement alone placed him among a remarkably small group. Of the sailors participating in the fleet’s assault, Swanson was one of only six men credited with actually entering the fort.

Once inside the battle zone, his work was not finished.

Swanson accompanied his party while carrying dispatches during some of the most intense fighting.

Before radios and modern battlefield communications, written dispatches could be essential to command and control. Orders and information often had to be physically carried from one commander or position to another. A dispatch carrier moving through an active battlefield could be exposed to rifle fire, artillery, confusion, and the constant possibility of becoming separated from friendly forces.

Swanson performed that duty while the struggle for Fort Fisher raged around him.

The fort was eventually captured after brutal fighting.

Its fall was strategically devastating to the Confederacy. With Fort Fisher in Union hands, access to Wilmington from the sea was effectively closed. One of the Confederacy’s most important remaining supply routes had been broken, and Wilmington itself would fall soon afterward.

For John Swanson, the battle became the defining episode of his naval service.

His courage was recognized by the United States Navy under General Order No. 59, dated June 22, 1865.

He received the Medal of Honor for his conduct during the Fort Fisher assault—entering the fort with the attacking force and helping carry dispatches at the height of the battle.

The Navy Medal of Honor had been created during the Civil War as the nation’s highest military decoration for extraordinary conduct by sailors and Marines. Swanson’s award reflected a form of naval courage that took place far from the deck of his ship.

He had gone ashore.

He had joined an assault against a fortified position.

He had entered the enemy works.

And while the battle continued around him, he had carried military communications through the fighting.

No additional clasp, star, or other device accompanied his Medal of Honor.

Although the award authority dated from 1865, Swanson’s physical medal was not delivered to him until much later. On May 28, 1900, the Medal of Honor was mailed to his home in Indianapolis, Indiana.

By then, more than thirty-five years had passed since Fort Fisher.

His wider wartime naval service was later represented by the Navy Civil War Campaign Medal. The campaign medal commemorated qualifying service by United States Navy and Marine Corps personnel during the Civil War.

For Swanson, it represented the broader wartime service surrounding his individual act of Medal of Honor heroism. The Medal of Honor remained specifically connected to January 15, 1865, while the Civil War Campaign Medal represented his service during the conflict as a whole.

No campaign star or other device is associated with his Civil War Campaign Medal.

After the war, Swanson eventually settled in Indianapolis.

At some point in his postwar life he became known as Jacob Johnson, the name under which later records and his burial identify him. The change in name created some confusion in the historical record, but John Swanson and Jacob Johnson were the same Civil War sailor and Medal of Honor recipient.

He lived long enough to witness enormous changes in the United States Navy.

The wooden steam warships and improvised landing parties of the Civil War era gave way to steel battleships, modern naval artillery, and an expanding American fleet. The dangerous assault in which he had taken part at Fort Fisher became part of a distant generation’s military history.

John Swanson, known in later life as Jacob Johnson, died in Indianapolis on June 13, 1923.

He was buried at Crown Hill Cemetery under the name Jacob Johnson.

His story remains inseparable from the final struggle for Fort Fisher.

Thousands of Union sailors and Marines participated in the naval operation.

Many came ashore.

Many faced the fort.

But only a handful from the fleet actually entered it during the assault.

John Swanson was one of them.

After reaching the Confederate stronghold, he continued performing his duty by carrying dispatches through the battle when communication between commanders mattered most.

His Medal of Honor therefore recognized more than a single dramatic instant.

It commemorated determination sustained through an entire assault—from ship to shore, from the beach toward the fort, and finally into the Confederate defenses themselves.

On January 15, 1865, Seaman John Swanson went ashore from USS Santiago de Cuba and entered one of the Confederacy’s strongest fortifications while the battle was at its height.

For that courage and devotion to duty, he earned the Medal of Honor and a lasting place in the history of the United States Navy.