Service
This regiment, raised by the Union Defense Committee of New York city, under special authority from the War Department, was accepted by the State May 27, 1861; organized and recruited at New York city under Col. Frederick George D'Utassy, and mustered in the service of the United States for three years at Washington, D. C., June 6, 1861, to date from May 28, 1861. Three companies consisted of Germans, three of Hungarians, one of Swiss, one of Italians, one of Frenchmen, and one of Spaniards and Portuguese. May 31, 1863, the regiment was consolidated into four companies: A, B, C and D; new companies were organized in the field from recruits: E December 8; F December 14; G December 19; H December 30, 1863; I and K in January, 1864. Companies A, B, C and D were mustered out in New York city June 24, 1864, those not entitled to be discharged having previously been transferred to other companies; and the regiment, six companies, E, F, G, H, I and K, retained in service. In October, 1864, a new Company D, enlisted principally at Malone for one year, joined the regiment; June 2, 1865, the members of the regiment not to be mustered out with it were transferred to the 185th Infantry.
The regiment left the State May 28, 1861; served at and near Washington, D. C., from June 1, 1861; in the 1st Brigade, 5th Division, Army of Northeastern Virginia, from July 13, 1861; in Blenker's Brigade, Division of Potomac, from August 4, 1861; in Stahel's Brigade, Blenker's Division, Army of the Potomac, from October 15, 1861; in 1st Brigade, same division, Mountain Department, from April, 1862; in White's Brigade, Army of Virginia, at Winchester, Va., from July, 1862; at Harper's Ferry, W. Va., from September, 1862; at Camp Douglass, Chicago, Ill., from September 27, 1862; near Washington, D.C., 1st Brigade, Casey's Division, defenses of Washington, from December, 1862; in January, 1863, in 3d Brigade, Casey's, later Abercrombie's Division, 22d Corps; in 3d Brigade, 3d Division, 2d Corps, Army of the Potomac, from June 25, 1863; in the 3d, and for a time in the Consolidated, Brigade, 1st Division, 2d Corps, Army of the Potomac, from March, 1864; and was honorably discharged and mustered out, under Col. Augustus Funk, July I, 1865, except (new) Company D, which had been mustered out, June 7, 1865, at Alexandria, Va.
During its service the regiment lost by death, killed in action, 5 officers, 62 enlisted men; of wounds received in action, 3 officers, 49 enlisted men; of disease and other causes, 1 officer, 158 enlisted men; total, 9 officers, 269 enlisted men; aggregate, 278; of whom 1 officer and 99 enlisted men died in the hands of the enemy.
Read more about this topic: 39th New York Volunteer Infantry Regiment
Famous quotes containing the word service:
“Human life consists in mutual service. No grief, pain, misfortune, or “broken heart,” is excuse for cutting off one’s life while any power of service remains. But when all usefulness is over, when one is assured of an unavoidable and imminent death, it is the simplest of human rights to choose a quick and easy death in place of a slow and horrible one.”
—Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935)
“The service a man renders his friend is trivial and selfish, compared with the service he knows his friend stood in readiness to yield him, alike before he had begun to serve his friend, and now also. Compared with that good-will I bear my friend, the benefit it is in my power to render him seems small.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Civilization is a process in the service of Eros, whose purpose is to combine single human individuals, and after that families, then races, peoples and nations, into one great unity, the unity of mankind. Why this has to happen, we do not know; the work of Eros is precisely this.”
—Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)