Roster of Company I, 24th Regiment, Massachusetts Volunteers — Text and Context

The Rhythm of Muster and Fate

The roster’s structure imposes a relentless rhythm. Each man’s record follows a fixed template: name, age, residence, muster date, then a string of events. The verbs are almost always passive or past participle—'Mustered in,' 'Wounded,' 'Killed,' 'Discharged.' This uniformity creates a kind of grim poetry. Consider the entries for Salem D. Slayton and Marshall E. Smith: both re-enlisted on January 2, 1864; both were killed within months—Slayton at Bermuda Hundred on May 30, 1864, Smith at Deep Run on August 16, 1864. The roster does not pause to mourn; it simply records.

The repetition of 'Re-enlisted Jan. 2, 1864' across many entries signals a pivotal moment for the company. That date marks the Veterans’ Volunteer enlistment drive, when men who had already served could re-up for another term. The roster’s dry notation of this decision—followed often by wounding or death—underscores the gamble these men took. The text’s refusal to comment makes the pattern speak for itself.

A Geography of Violence

The roster’s engagement list and individual entries map a specific geography of the Civil War: Roanoke Island, Newbern, Tranters Creek, Kinston, Goldsboro Bridge, James Island, Fort Wagner, Bermuda Hundred, Deep Run, Drurys Bluff, Petersburg, Richmond. These place names recur in the men’s fates. For instance, 'Wounded June 5, 1862, at Tranters Creek, N.C.' appears for William Reynolds; 'Killed March 14, 1862, at Newbern, N.C.' for Charles Riley. The same battle can yield different outcomes for different men.

The list of engagements at the end of the roster compresses time into a sequence of locations and dates. It begins with Roanoke Island in February 1862 and ends with the assault on Fort Wagner in July–September 1863. The roster itself, however, includes men who served through 1865, suggesting that the engagement list is incomplete—or that the company’s later actions were not recorded here. This gap between the list and the individual records hints at the limits of the document’s scope.

Silences and Anomalies

Amid the roster’s uniformity, anomalies stand out. James Stevens is noted as 'A deserter from December, 1861, to June 6, 1864'—a rare admission of absence that breaks the pattern of service and sacrifice. Michael Whelan’s entry contains a probable typographical error: 'Re-enlisted Jan. 2, 1884' instead of 1864, a small glitch that reminds us this was a human compilation. The ages of the men vary widely: Captain George Le Favor was mustered in at age 18, while Private James Stewart was 42. These details, embedded in the dry data, hint at the range of lives that converged in Company I.

The roster also omits what we might expect: no physical descriptions, no letters, no accounts of battles. It is a document of record, not memory. The committee of survivors—Charles B. Amory, James Armstrong, Nelson H. DeLane—chose to produce a list, not a history. Their restraint is the text’s defining feature, and it invites the reader to imagine the stories behind the names.

Reading this roster requires patience with its austerity. It is not a narrative but a ledger, and its power lies in what it leaves unsaid. To engage with it is to become a kind of detective, tracing the arcs of individual men through the sparse data. The repeated phrase 'expiration service' marks the end of a term, but for many, the service ended earlier—in a wound, a desertion, or a death noted without ceremony. This document is a monument of facts, and its silences are as eloquent as its entries.

There’s something about a list of names—ages, towns, what happened to each one—that stays with you longer than any grand tale. I thought of that quiet weight while leafing through the New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 April-September, 1915 — Edition Insights, where the same solemn roll call repeats itself, only larger, and just as human.