Abstract
For Sergeant John I. Faller, Company A, Seventh Pennsylvania Reserve Infantry, the month of April 1864 passed splendidly. The twenty-three-year-old Philadelphia machinist began serving out the final weeks of his three-year term of service inside the defenses of Washington. In March, he wrote to his sister that he liked his duty "very well," and he assured her that, "I am well over from head to feet and from the right hand to the left." Because he chose not to re-enlist in December, Faller looked forward to returning to his parents' house in Carlisle and instructed his sister "to have a room fixed up for me when I get home next summer."
As spring began, two important items escaped Sergeant Faller's attention. First, he made no mention of Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant's April 17 order to suspend prisoner exchanges. A few days earlier, at Fort Pillow, Tennessee, Confederate troops had refused to accept the surrender of defeated African American soldiers, killing or massacring 231 officers and men. Grant reasoned that if Confederate troops would not offer quarters to surrendering black soldiers, then it was the Union army's obligation to hold Confederates taken in battle indefinitely to ensure the safety of African American prisoners of war. Second, Faller failed to detect the uproar in his regiment's parent unit—the Pennsylvania Reserve Division—regarding the War Department's proposal to extend its term of service beyond three years. While in winter encampment at Brandy Station, Virginia, the other regiments of the Pennsylvania Reserve Division had staged a near mutiny, protesting a War Department directive that proposed to retain the Keystone soldiers two to three months beyond their expected muster-out date. Perhaps Faller disregarded this disturbance simply because it did not matter to him whether he mustered out in May—the month designated by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania—or July—the month designated by the War Department. As long as Faller remained in Washington, he could avoid the enemy's bullets and merely count down the days until he went home. However, on April 18, orders came from Major General George G. Meade directing Faller's regiment, the Seventh Reserves, and another regiment, the Eighth Reserves, to join the Army of the Potomac at Brandy Station. Fourteen days later, Faller found himself marching into the Wilderness as part of Grant's historic—and costly—Overland Campaign....