He was educated in the district school of his neighborhood and at the age of thirteen entered the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute at Troy, New York.

In the late 1850s he organized and equipped a line of sailboats and steamers for traffic on Lake Erie and was engaged in that business when war erupted.

With the outbreak of the Civil War and President Abraham Lincoln's call for 100,000 volunteers to put down the rebellion, Sprague raised a company of infantry and was sent to Camp Dennison near Cincinnati.

While returning home on furlough in August 1861, he and a small party of fellow Buckeyes were captured in West Virginia and held as prisoners of war.

his regiment was part of the force under command of General Grenville M. Dodge that was detached to secure the railroad to Decatur, Alabama.

With only a small command, he defeated an overwhelming Confederate force and saved the entire ordnance and supply trains of the XV, XVI, XVII, and XX corps.

He commanded the brigade on its march from Raleigh, North Carolina, through Richmond to Washington, D.C., and participated in the Grand Review of the Armies in May.

[6] From April 1865 until September 1866, Sprague was the assistant commissioner of the Freedmen's Bureau for the district of Arkansas, serving under Maj. Gen. Oliver O. Howard.

In 1870 he became the general manager of the Western Division of the Northern Pacific Railway and co-established the city of Tacoma, Washington, on Puget Sound.

[9] After suffering for several years from heart disease and chronic cystitis, Sprague died at his home in Tacoma on December 27, 1893, and was buried in the city's cemetery.

In 1894 the United States Congress awarded the Medal of Honor to General John W. Sprague for distinguished gallantry during the Battle of Decatur.