The Thirty-Ninth Regiment Massachusetts Volunteers, 1862-1865

In Short

Alfred S. Roe's chronicle documents the trial by fire of a Union volunteer infantry regiment raised in Massachusetts in the summer of 1862. Drawn from towns like Woburn, Somerville, and Medford, these citizen-soldiers transition from green recruits in rural camps to hardened veterans enduring the relentless meatgrinder of the Army of the Potomac. The narrative traces their march through Maryland picketing, the bloody wilderness of Virginia, the siege of Petersburg, and the horrific starvation of Southern prison camps like Salisbury. Roe blends official military records, personal journal entries, camp poetry, and veteran recollections to capture the mundane realities and terrifying violence of the Civil War. It endures as an unvarnished testament to the endurance, humor, and collective sacrifice of common soldiers who gave up peaceful New England lives to see the Union preserved.

The Story

The chronicle opens in July 1862 across eastern Massachusetts, where local selectmen hold town hall meetings, raise enlistment bounties, and deploy brass bands to fill local military quotas. Volunteers gather at regional training camps in Lynnfield and Boxford, forming the ten companies of the Thirty-ninth Massachusetts Infantry. After basic organization, the regiment boards trains for Washington, stepping into a landscape defined by war.

Their initial duty consists not of grand battles, but of grueling patrol and picket details along the Potomac River near Poolesville and Offutt’s Cross Roads. Here, the fresh recruits learn the mechanics of soldiering. They endure variable winter weather, contend with disease, and witness seasoned veterans carelessly burn civilian fence rails for warmth—a brazen disregard for property that shocks the green New Englanders until they, too, adapt to field life. Daily life alternates between repetitive drill schedules, baseball games against neighboring artillery batteries, and nervous nights guarding river crossings against Confederate cavalry raids.

In the summer of 1863, the Thirty-ninth is formally integrated into the First Provisional Brigade of the First Army Corps, joining the main body of the Army of the Potomac. The narrative follows their exhausting, foot-blistering marches through Maryland and Virginia. They navigate a shifting campaign of maneuvers across the Rappahannock and Rapidan rivers, suffering through sudden snowstorms, muddy roads, and short rations at places like Brandy Station and Mine Run.

The spring of 1864 shatters the relative routine of camp duty as General Ulysses S. Grant launches the Overland Campaign. The regiment plunges directly into the jungle-infested hell of the Wilderness. In dense, fire-swept thickets where artillery is useless, the men drop their muskets for axes and shovels, desperately building improvised earthworks out of dirt, pine trees, and rail fences. At Spottsylvania, the Thirty-ninth charges across open, gullied fields under a murderous fire toward enemy breastworks at Alsop's Farm, suffering heavy casualties and losing officer after officer.

The relentless campaign pushes the survivors through the mud and dense fogs of the Ny River, the crossing of the North Anna, and the slaughter at Cold Harbor. Reaching the James River in June, the exhausted soldiers take a brief, joyous plunge into the water before being thrown into the trench warfare surrounding Petersburg. For months, they live underground, enduring scorching summer heat, mortar bombardments from weapons like the "Petersburg Express," and continuous picket duty where silent truces are suddenly broken by deadly gunfire.

During the fierce fighting along the Weldon Railroad in August 1864, a massive Confederate counterattack cuts off and captures a large portion of the regiment. These captured soldiers are shipped south in overcrowded baggage cars to the brutal open-air stockade at Salisbury, North Carolina. Exposed to freezing autumn nights in thin summer blouses, stripped of proper rations, and subjected to harsh punishments on wooden horses, many perish from exposure and disease.

The remaining elements of the regiment fight on through the spring of 1865, engaging at Hatcher's Run and Gravelly Run. Following the surrender at Appomattox, the survivors reunite, march through Richmond, and participate in the Grand Review in Washington. The book closes as the regiment returns home to Boston in June 1865 to be mustered out, leaving behind hundreds of dead comrades whose lives are carefully cataloged in the concluding regimental rosters.

How It Unfolds

The call to arms Towns across Massachusetts rally citizens with brass bands and bounties, gathering young farmers, shoemakers, and clerks to form the regiment at Camp Stanton in Lynnfield.

Guarding the Potomac The new recruits arrive in Maryland to undertake arduous picket duty, learning the harsh realities of soldiering through winter storms, muddy marches, and strict daily camp schedules.

Joining the main army Assigned to the First Army Corps, the regiment enters the active theater of war, executing long, foot-sore maneuvers back and forth across the Rappahannock River in Virginia.

Into the Wilderness The Thirty-ninth encounters its first catastrophic full-scale battle in the dense Virginia thickets, where soldiers rapidly learn to entrench themselves using bayonets, knives, and tin plates.

The bloody assault at Spottsylvania Lyle's brigade charges across 500 yards of gullied open field at Alsop's Farm under lethal fire, coming within feet of the enemy works before being forced back with heavy loss of life.

Crossing the James After weeks of continuous fighting and marching through mud and fog, the weary men enjoy a rare moment of respite bathing in the James River before moving on to Petersburg.

Life in the trenches The regiment is dynamic in digging the vast subterranean defensive works surrounding Petersburg, enduring constant artillery fire, blistering heat, and grueling fatigue duties.

Disaster on the Weldon Railroad A swift enemy encirclement results in the death or capture of numerous officers and enlisted men, scattering the regiment's strength and sending dozens into Southern captivity.

The horrors of Salisbury Captured members of the Thirty-ninth suffer through a brutal winter in Southern prison camps, facing starvation, freezing weather, and severe disease with zero shelter.

Victory and the final review The surviving veterans participate in the victory parade through Washington before taking the train back to Massachusetts to receive their final pay and formal discharge.

The People

• Alfred S. Roe

A veteran of the Civil War who serves as the meticulous chronicler of the regiment. He wants to create an enduring, honest historical record of his comrades' service, compiling official military records, personal diaries, and veteran recollections to preserve every soldier's name and fate.

• Lieutenant Colonel (Commanding Officer at Spottsylvania)

An officer forced into sudden leadership during the bloody assault at Alsop's Farm after senior officers fall. He wants to breach the enemy's incomplete breastworks, but faces overwhelming flanking fire and heat exhaustion, ultimately ordering a reluctant retreat while limping off the field using his sword as a cane.

• Sergeant W. P. Brown

An ordnance sergeant of Company K who displays exceptional coolness under fire during the retreat at Hatcher's Run. He refuses a panicked officer's order to burn all the ammunition wagons, single-handedly saving equipment and rescuing his distraught superior officer despite receiving no public credit in wartime newspapers.

• Corporal Cottrell

The brave regimental color-bearer who carries the flag into the thick of the assault near the Brock Road. He is shot down right beside his commanding officer, begging not to be abandoned before being left behind to die in a Confederate prison.

• Corporal F. A. Glines, Corporal John E. Horton, and Corporal Edward H. Lewis

Individual soldiers whose detailed wartime diaries provide the intimate internal voice of the regiment. They want simple survival, home news, and basic comforts, recording the exact details of daily rations, teeth fillings made of lead, buried comrades, and winter weather.

• The Massachusetts Volunteers

The collective mass of shoemakers, farmers, carpenters, and clerks from towns like Woburn, Natick, Somerville, and Medford. They enter service as naïve, law-abiding citizens shocked by war's destruction and exit—if they survive—as hardened, lean veterans marked by iron endurance and lifelong bonds.

In Its Own Voice

When seasoned veterans from earlier battles joined the green Massachusetts troops at camp, they wasted no time showing the newcomers how field life truly operated:

"One of the latter's first acts was to build great fires, using therefor the fence rails, hitherto untouched by the Bay State lads, this being in conformity with orders, but the experienced campaigners cared not a copper for rules, but speedily laid hold on the combustible matter and lighted roaring fires that astonished the lately arrived."

The grueling nature of the 1864 Overland Campaign forced soldiers to discard all non-essential equipment, reducing survival down to the barest elements:

"In the mutations of fighting and moving about, all the regular contents of knapsacks had disappeared, the most of the men retaining, in addition to canteen and haversack, rubber blankets only; besides, rations were scarce, yet men were content to rest without food, so trying had been the ordeal of the preceding ten days."

A captured member of the regiment recorded the sheer physical misery endured by Union prisoners thrown onto the bare ground of Salisbury Prison without shelter:

"Worn out with hunger and fatigue, we threw ourselves on the frozen ground with no covering save the heavens, which were very cold that night; dressed, the most of us, in summer blouses with no underclothing, it was one continuous shiver till the rising sun gladdened our eyes and warmed our bodies."

What It's Really About

Beneath its chronological recording of troop movements, The Thirty-Ninth Regiment Massachusetts Volunteers is a study in the transformation of ordinary civilian society under the pressure of total war. It contrasts the comfortable, orderly life of 19th-century New England towns with the brutal, improvisational existence of the combat soldier. The book demonstrates how abstract patriotism rapidly devolves into a daily struggle for basic physical survival—where hardtack, dry footwear, and a shovelful of dirt hold far more immediate value than military grand strategy.

The narrative also serves as an argument for the collective nature of military sacrifice. Rather than highlighting romanticized, larger-than-life generals, Roe focuses on the shared ordeal of the unit as a single community. The text grapples with the injustice of war, noting how true acts of quiet heroism—like saving supply wagons or carrying brigade colors—often go unrewarded, while disease, administrative errors, and prison stockades claim as many lives as enemy bullets.

Why Read It Today

This regimental history offers an unvarnished, granular view of the American Civil War that completely eschews romanticized myth-making. Readers fascinated by military history or 19th-century social history will appreciate the book's intense focus on everyday logistics, camp humor, and the raw human experience of common infantrymen. It reads less like a grand historical narrative and more like a detailed mosaic of lived experience, filled with primary diary entries, informal camp poetry, and candid post-war recollections.

The book does present specific reading challenges. Because it was written primarily as a memorial volume for surviving veterans and their families, it contains extensive regimental rosters, detailed muster-out lists, and administrative minutiae that can slow down casual readers. The narrative structure moves chronologically from month to month, occasionally trade-off narrative tension for historical completeness. Furthermore, the modern reader must navigate period-specific terminology, casual military slang, and brief references to unvarnished 19th-century realities.

What stays with the reader, however, is the startling intimacy of the soldiers' voices. Whether describing a baseball game played on Fast Day in 1863, an ex-dentist filling a soldier's tooth with molten lead in the Petersburg trenches, or the heartbreaking routine of men huddled together for warmth on the frozen ground of a North Carolina prison camp, Roe preserves the authentic, unpretentious humanity of men caught in the greatest crisis of American history.

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