Services Performed by the Invalid Corps – 16th Regiment

These posts are part of a larger series highlighting the contributions and accomplishments of the Invalid Corps/Veteran Reserve Corps during the Civil War. This post only captures some of the activities of individual regiments. Clearly, this is an area ripe for additional research.

16th Regiment

Organized at Harrisburg, Pa., October 10, 1863, by consolidation of the 6th, 18th, 80th, 86th, 89th, 90th, 181st, 182nd, 217th and 221st Companies, 1st Battalion. Mustered out by detachments July 15 to November 26, 1865.

This regiment, generally under command of Major Gaebel, carried on a campaign of several months in the mountains of Pennsylvania, where deputy provost-marshals and enrolling officers had been killed and wounded by disloyal persons engaged in resisting the draft. Treasonable organizations 500 or 600 strong were broken up. The expeditions were made through a wooded and mountainous country in winter, amid snow and ice, chiefly by night, and many of the men were badly frost-bitten. Hundreds of deserters and recusants were arrested; some were killed in skirmishes; one man of the regiment killed. The Sixteenth also forwarded deserters, recruits, conscripts, &c., to posts and camps of distribution. The number of persons thus arrested and guarded during the year is as follows: Deserters from regiments in the field captured and forwarded; 2,810, of whom 27 escaped; convalescents forwarded, 3,447, with 46 escapes; deserters from the draft captured and forwarded, 3,743, with 26 escapes; volunteers forwarded, 5,700. Total guarded, 15,637; total escapes, 99; number escorted up to July 1, 1865, averaged daily 150; number escorted during the remainder of the year averaged daily 63.

The following facts are interesting as exhibiting the amount of duty occasionally performed by officers of the corps. Col. Charles M. Prevost, of this regiment, has commanded draft rendezvous, Springfield, Ill., since November 19, 1864; has superintended the forwarding of about 25,000 men to the front, and the discharge and final payments of sixty-three regiments and seven batteries, and has still thirty-four regiments to muster out. Lieut. Col. Stephen Moore has been on several important details of special duty while commanding provisional brigade and draft rendezvous at Elmira, N. Y. Second Lieut. George R. Buffum tried in six months, as judge-advocate, 151 cases, covering 5,503 cap pages, and returned 41 cases to department headquarters, principally in consequence of the muster out of all the witnesses, which fact was not verified without a large correspondence.

Reference:

The War of the Rebellion: a compilation of the official records of the Union and Confederate Armies – https://archive.org/details/warrebellionaco17offigoog/page/n576