A Cattaraugus County lawyer and state assemblyman from Ellicottsville, Addison G. Rice, was appointed a Colonel for the recruiting effort.

They blended into the 154th Regiment alongside their Cattaraugus County neighbors, and the ten companies mustered in the next week, on September 24 and 25.

On Friday, the officers mustered into federal service the next day, and on Monday, September 29, the 154th New York left for Virginia.

[12] On Tuesday, September 30, 1862, the 154th left the state and was assigned to the 1st brigade, 2nd (Steinwehr's) division, XI corps, which was stationed during the fall of 1862 in Northern Virginia in the vicinity of Centerville.

Burnside's relief by Hooker raised morale as the Army prepared for its next move, a plan to get Lee out of his positions at Fredericksburg.

His chief of staff, Butterfield, commissioned COL George H. Sharpe from the 120th New York Infantry to organize a new Bureau of Military Information (BMI) in the Army of the Potomac, part of the provost marshal function under BGEN Marsena R.

[17] Over the next two weeks, the 154th and its brigade showed no signs of activity to lull the Rebl cavalry guarding the other side of the ford into complacency while Hooker moved the 42,000 men in the V, XI, and XII Corps stealthily into nearby hidden positions for the crossing.

[18] The men, unaware of the Hooker's plans, patrolled the riverbank and were struck by the hostility of the local white population and friendliness of the black.

[17] Completely surprising the Confederates, the 154th, paddled out of Marsh Run, 500 yards downstream in canvas pontoon boats.

[23][24][note 11] While elements of the corps further right, westward, started seeing indications of activity to their right in the woods west along the turnpike, the westernmost division commander, Devens, and Howard dismissed these reports as the imaginings of nervous troops.

[25][note 12] Ergo, when Jackson struck the AoP's right flank at 17:30 on Saturday afternoon, May 2, 1863, the corps collapsed and fled to the east along the turnpike.

Individual regiments and brigades, such as those in Schurz's 3rd Division around the Hawkins farm held their ground to stem the tide of the enemy advance before retreating in good order.

[10] These daring but futile actions were mostly the inspiration of small-unit commanders as the leadership on the brigade, division, and corps level struggled to bring order to the mob that an hour before had been the right flank of the Union Army.

The regiment had been on the road for three weeks since leaving Stafford County, and had endured difficult, long, dusty marches in the early summer heat.

It was a five-acre pentagonal lot enclosed by sturdy rail fences with the house on the street and the brickworks—a wooden barn, dome-shaped brick kilns, and a mill behind it.

It was, at that time, still a largely rural landscape apart from the main town with a slope north of it and wheat fields to the east and south.

At Rocky Face Ridge, the first important battle of the Atlanta campaign, the regiment behaved with distinguished gallantry and sustained its heaviest loss-13 killed and 37 wounded.

[46][40] By the Chancellorsville campaign, the regiment reported the following survey result to U.S. War Department:[4] Footnotes Citations References