Roberts had a horse shot out from under him at the Second Battle of Bull Run, when he commanded the 1st Brigade while General John H. Martindale suffered from typhoid fever.
[3] Roberts retired due to ill health in 1863 and was succeeded on January 10, 1863, by Colonel George Varney.
Then Lieutenant Colonel Varney had led the regiment at the Battle of Fredericksburg on December 13, 1862, where he received a head wound from a shell fragment.
[5] The Roberts family of Bangor were prominent War Democrats, rather than members of the Republican Party establishment led locally by Vice President Hannibal Hamlin.
Roberts was the Democratic Party candidate for governor of Maine in 1875, but lost to another former Civil War general, Republican Seldon Connor.