It was engaged in, or present at, the Occupation of New Orleans, Raceland, Boutte Station, Bayou des Allemands, the Steamer "Cotton," Bisland, and Port Hudson, in the Department of the Gulf, and Opequon, Fisher's Hill, Cedar Creek, and Newtown in the Shenandoah Valley campaign.

[9][note 3] Being thus thrown on their own resources to obtain supplies as best they could, members of the 8th developed learned to become self-reliant and make do to meet and endure the hard life in store for them.

[11] The regiment bivouacked in the middle of a Vermont winter of unusual severity, amid deep snows, when the thermometer ranged from ten to fifteen degrees below zero.

[20] The men noted the sights as the ship rode high above the rice plantations including the wrecks of the Confederate gunboats, Forts Jackson and St. Philip on either side now flying the stars and stripes, and the throngs of blacks along the banks welcoming the regiment.

[27] As the men in the 8th began to appear in public, and travel about on their duties, the bitter hatred of the local white seccessionists manifested in numerous ways from disgust looks to vehement verbal attacks.

[33] Initially, local citizens showed their hostility by closing stores and other public places to the federal troops, but economic necessity overrode their attitude, and they soon reopened their businesses.

Wearing small Confederate flags conspicuously on their dresses, or waving them in their hands in public places, they would rise and leave a street car if a Union officer entered it.

The regiment was the only Union force on that side of the river, and Colonel Thomas had general charge of the district around Algiers, in a civil and military capacity, with his own provost judge and marshal.

Other regimental officers took umbrage at Brown's assumption of personal authority, but before matters came to a head, Washington D.C. reversed and ordered its forces not to return fugitives.

On Friday, Company H, which had been at the extreme end of the operable line, had fallen back from La Fourche Crossing to Bayou des Allemands, when reports of Rebels tearing up track to the west caused Capt.

[51] The 8th, as part of Phelps' brigade moved north to support Brig Gen. Thomas R. Williams attack at the Battle of Baton Rouge on Tuesday, August 5, but made no contact with the enemy and returned to Algiers.

After an all-night march, they fell upon Rebels gathering the cattle early in the morning, when the cavalry began a sharp skirmish, and the artillery shelled a piece of woods and a sugar-cane field to drive out the enemy.

He put together a force consisting of the Terrebonne and St. Charles militias and a Texas-Louisiana partisan ranger battalion led by Major James A. McWaters[61] of the 2nd Louisiana Cavalry Regiment.

Captain Clark, of Company K, 60 man, and a 12-pound field gun escorted the Thursday Des Allemands train bound for Algiers riding in open flat cars.

Deprived of a second victim, the enemy set fire to the station buildings and houses in the vicinity, and then pushed rapidly up the track towards Des Allemands, held by a portion of Companies E, G, and K, under command of Capt.

Without allowing the Germans to communicate with their friends or prepare their defence, a quick court martial returned a guilty verdict condemning them to be publicly shot as deserters.

[73] On Thusrday, October 23, a 70-man firing squad executed them along a shallow trench under some trees beside the railroad track and hastily buried.They were forced to dig their own graves, then were shot.

[84] Thomas would take the 8th, the 1st, and 2nd Native Guards, which Butler had recently organized, and up the railroad dislodging Confederates from Des Allemands, and meet Weitzel at La Fourche Crossing.

[85] Butler tasked Weitzel's mhe main column of 5,000 soldiers to attack Taylor at Donaldsonville and Thibodeaux, occupy the La Fourche district, cut off the Rebels' cattle supplies from Texas permanently, and open the NOO&GW so loyal planters could send their sugar and cotton to the New Orleans market.

Weitzel had marched out at dawn on Sunday, October 26, down the left (east) bank Bayou Lafourche until 1 mi (1.6 km) from Napoleonville, where the Union troops camped in battle order.

[97][note 23] Weitzel's troops on the right bank, the 8th New Hampshire Infantry Regiment and two sections of the 1st Maine Light Artillery Battery moved faster than those on the left.

Getting a report that Confederates were in considerable force ahead with six artillery pieces, Weitzel formed 75th New York, 13th Connecticut, and the 4th Massachusetts Battery, in battle order on the left (east) bank, and sent them forward through a sugarcane field.

Finally, the Federals reached a point about 100 yd (91 m) from the 18th and 24th Louisiana Infantry, who defended a drainage ditch behind a fence near a plantation road at Georgia Landing.

[100] On Tuesday, October 28, as he approached Des Allemands, Thomas expected a fight for its possession because reports from local blacks told of over 1,000 Rebel militia holding that position.

Making no contact with the enemy, they found the Confederates had spiked their artillery and departed the night before, after torching the railway station and burning behind them the long bridge over the bayou.

[102][note 25] During this period Thomas, aware that squads of the enemy were prowling about the country, threw out his pickets up and down the bayou, with strict orders to use every means to prevent surprises and sudden attacks.

[104] During this work on the railway, the U.S. Army had learned of the executions of the regiment's German members in October when Weitzel's troops captured documents left by retreating Rebels at La Fourche Crossing.

[106] In this period, President Lincoln gave Maj. Gen. Nathaniel Banks command of the Army of the Gulf, and asked him to organize a force of 30,000 new recruits, drawn from New York and New England.

As ordered, the brigade advanced several hundred yards beyond the Federal lines and engaged the vastly superior Confederate forces in brutal hand-to-hand combat.

The 47th Pennsylvania Infantry, on the Brigade's extreme right flank, was almost immediately overrun, hindered by a dense fog and Union 8th Corps men fleeing through its line.