The regiment soon learned they would be attached to General Nathaniel Banks' Department of the Gulf whose ultimate goal would be to open the Mississippi River to the Union.

The regiment was attached to the 1st Brigade, Sherman's Division, Department of the Gulf, until January, 1863 and saw duty at Camps Parapet and Chalmette until March 1863.

Their first true engagement with the rebels took place at Pontachoula, Louisiana, on May 13; The soldiers confiscated Confederate wares including cotton bales and a small steamboat.

This included an engagement at Cane River Crossing on April 23; The regiment's new colonel, James Smith, would later be breveted general for bravery in this fight.

At this time they were starting on a campaign to stop Confederate General Jubal Early's pestering of Washington and also to lay waste to the Valley, then considered the "breadbasket" of the South.

When Sheridan felt the Confederates had been pushed sufficiently south and were no longer a threat, he then turned the army about and proceeded to carry out the second part of the plan; To lay waste to the Valley.

Being in this position, the 128th were the regiment to have many men stationed as advanced pickets on the other side of Cedar Creek some distance out on the pike, guarding the approach.

From here he was able to devise a plan whereby the Confederates would leave behind everything that might make noise, and at night march around the base of the mountain, cross the Shenandoah and attack the Union army at first light.

It was a chilly and foggy morning, October 19, 1864; The majority of the soldiers were still sleeping when the attack began to start the Battle of Cedar Creek.

Very shortly after this bullets started flying at them, and the men began to return fire, but, realizing they had no support and that they were quickly being cut off from any chance of escape, they ran for the bridge.

Meanwhile, the Union General Sheridan, who'd been asleep twenty miles north of Middletown and Cedar Creek in Winchester, gallantly raced to rejoin his army.

For the most part, higher-ranking officers remained here and were shortly paroled while the men of the ranks were taken further south to Salisbury Prison in North Carolina.

In the fall of 1864, Orville Wood, a merchant from Clinton County and supporter of Abraham Lincoln in the 1864 presidential election, was tasked to visit hometown troops and "look after the local ticket."

Ferrell wrote to political operative Edward Donahue Jr.: "Inclosed in this package you will find tickets, also a list of names of the actual residents of Columbia County, now members of the 128th Regiment.

Wood reported multiple such operations he discovered to authorities, and less than two weeks before the election on October 27, 1864, Ferry and Donahue were tried before a military commission.