John Warden

He Volunteered for the Charge Into Vicksburg’s Guns

John Warden was born on June 11, 1841, in Cook County, Illinois. During the American Civil War, he entered the United States Army and served with Company E of the 55th Illinois Infantry, a regiment that became deeply involved in the Union campaigns along the Mississippi River.

By 1863, Union forces had turned their attention toward Vicksburg, Mississippi, one of the Confederacy’s most important strongholds. Perched above the Mississippi River and protected by powerful defensive works, Vicksburg controlled a vital stretch of the waterway. Its capture would help divide the Confederacy and give the Union greater control of the Mississippi.

Warden reached Vicksburg as a Corporal.

The defining moment of his military career came on May 22, 1863.

Union commander Ulysses S. Grant had already attempted to break the Confederate defenses by direct assault on May 19. When that attack failed, another major assault was ordered three days later.

The Confederate works were formidable.

Deep ravines, steep slopes, rifle pits, artillery positions, and fortified earthworks protected the approaches. Any soldier moving directly toward those defenses faced concentrated musket and artillery fire.

Before the main assault began, volunteers were called for a particularly dangerous assignment.

A group of soldiers would move ahead of the attacking columns as a volunteer storming party. Their task placed them at the very front of the advance, exposed to enemy fire before the larger Union force could reach the Confederate works.

John Warden volunteered.

On May 22, he advanced with the storming party toward the defenses of Vicksburg.

The men moved across ground dominated by Confederate positions. Enemy soldiers fired from protected works while the Union volunteers attempted to reach the fortifications under some of the most dangerous conditions of the siege.

The assault became costly.

Union troops struggled against the terrain and the strength of the Confederate defenses. Many attackers were killed or wounded, and the attempt to take Vicksburg by direct frontal assault failed.

Warden survived.

His conduct during the charge was later officially described simply as gallantry in the charge of the volunteer storming party.

The brevity of that citation does not diminish what the action required.

Volunteering meant knowingly accepting a place among the first soldiers expected to move against heavily fortified enemy positions. There was little protection once the advance began, and the men of the storming party faced the full danger of Confederate fire as they approached the works.

Although the May 22 assault failed to capture Vicksburg, the Union campaign continued.

Grant abandoned further attempts to storm the defenses directly and instead tightened the siege. Confederate troops and civilians inside Vicksburg endured weeks of bombardment and steadily diminishing supplies.

On July 4, 1863, Vicksburg surrendered.

The victory gave the Union control of the Mississippi River and became one of the most strategically important successes of the Civil War.

Warden continued his military career beyond the action that later brought him national recognition. His service eventually carried him from the enlisted rank of Corporal to the commissioned rank of First Lieutenant.

Yet recognition for his courage at Vicksburg did not come immediately.

More than thirty years after the assault, on September 2, 1893, John Warden received the Medal of Honor for his gallantry as a member of the volunteer storming party.

The Medal of Honor had been established during the Civil War as the nation’s highest military decoration. Many Civil War soldiers received the award years or even decades after the actions for which they were recognized as wartime records were reviewed and acts of extraordinary courage were formally acknowledged.

For Warden, the medal preserved the memory of one extraordinary morning in 1863.

He had been a Corporal when he volunteered to move ahead of the main Union assault against the defenses of Vicksburg.

He knew the position was dangerous.

He went forward anyway.

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

Warden’s broader Union Army service also falls within the period later commemorated by the Army Civil War Campaign Medal. That decoration was created after his lifetime to recognize qualifying Army service during the Civil War. His Medal of Honor, however, remained specifically connected to his gallantry during the May 22 assault at Vicksburg.

Warden lived for more than four decades after the Civil War.

During those years, the battlefield where he had once advanced with the volunteer storming party became one of the best-known sites of the Vicksburg Campaign, remembered as a turning point in the struggle for control of the Mississippi River.

John Warden died on July 2, 1906, in Sumner, Washington.

He was buried at Orting Cemetery in Orting, Washington.

His story is preserved not because he commanded a large force or directed the campaign, but because he volunteered for one of its most dangerous assignments.

On May 22, 1863, the defenses of Vicksburg stood ahead of him.

Confederate guns covered the approaches.

The chances of success were uncertain, and the danger was obvious.

John Warden still stepped forward.

As a Corporal in the 55th Illinois Infantry, he joined the volunteer storming party and advanced into the fire.

For that gallantry, he was awarded the Medal of Honor and earned a lasting place among the soldiers whose courage defined the struggle for Vicksburg.