Colonel John Wilson Sprague, a businessman before the war with no military experience, had risen to command a brigade in XVI Corps of the Army of the Tennessee. On the outskirts of the battle of Atlanta, near Decatur, he and his heavily outnumbered men fought off Confederate General Joseph Wheeler's bold flanking attack long enough to save practically all the ordinance and supply trains of the Army of the Tennessee. He was awarded the Medal of Honor for this action just before he died in 1894. (By John Osborne)
Source Citation
Terry L. Jones, Historical Dictionary of the Civil War (New York: Scarecrow Press, 2011), I: 1369.
Record Data
Date Certainty
Exact
Type
Battles/Soldiers
