He then officially mustered in for duty at Camp Curtin in Harrisburg on August 30, 1861 as a Sergeant with Company F, 47th Pennsylvania Infantry Regiment, under the command of Captain Henry S.
[8][9] Following brief light infantry training, he was transported with the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers by rail to Washington, D.C. Stationed at "Camp Kalorama" near Georgetown, they mustered into federal service with the Union Army on September 24, 1861.
According to James Franklin Lambert and Henry J. Reinhard in their A History of Catasauqua in Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, James W. Fuller Jr. "suffered a protracted illness, which overtook him during the first year of the Civil War in Virginia", and "was honorably discharged from the army and returned to his home.
"[11] In 1868, he organized the firm of McKee, Fuller & Company, proprietors of the Lehigh Car, Wheel & Axle Works.
Since then the firm was known as the Lehigh Car, Wheel & Axle Works, and developed an enterprise of much benefit to the business prosperity of the community.