Service
The 4th Pennsylvania Reserves were raised at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, on July 17, 1861. Robert G. March served as its first colonel, John F. Gaul as lieutenant colonel, and Robert M. McClure as major. The regiment trained near Easton until mid-July, when it was transferred to Camp Curtin in Harrisburg and then to Baltimore. On October 1, March was forced to resign due to illness and was succeeded by Lt. Col. Albert L. Magilton of the 2nd Reserves. The 4th became part of the 2nd Brigade of the Pennsylvania Reserves division, part of the I Corps, Army of the Potomac.
At first remaining with the I Corps in northern Virginia, the 4th, along with the rest of the division, was sent to the Army outside of Richmond, where it was reassigned to the V Corps. During the Peninsula Campaign, it fought in the Seven Days Battles, losing about 200 men. The regiment lost 27 men at the Battle of South Mountain and another 49 men at Antietam. After Fredericksburg, the 2nd Brigade, including the 4th Pennsylvania Reserves, was transferred from the Army of the Potomac in early 1863 to serve in the defenses of Washington, D.C.. In 1864, it served in West Virginia, fighting at the Battle of Cloyd's Mountain, where the regiment's colonel, Richard H. Woolworth, was mortally wounded.
The depleted regiment was mustered out in Philadelphia on June 15, 1864, when its original three-year term of enlistment expired. Men who reenlisted and those replacements whose enlistments had not yet expired were transferred to the 54th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry on June 8.
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Famous quotes containing the word service:
“A man’s real faith is never contained in his creed, nor is his creed an article of his faith. The last is never adopted. This it is that permits him to smile ever, and to live even as bravely as he does. And yet he clings anxiously to his creed, as to a straw, thinking that that does him good service because his sheet anchor does not drag.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“In any service where a couple hold down jobs as a team, the male generally takes his ease while the wife labors at his job as well as her own.”
—Anita Loos (1888–1981)
“The true courage of civilized nations is readiness for sacrifice in the service of the state, so that the individual counts as only one amongst many. The important thing here is not personal mettle but aligning oneself with the universal.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)