William F. Fox, Lt. Col. U. S. V., Regimental Losses in the American Civil War, 1861-1865: A Treatise on the extent and nature of the mortuary losses in the Union regiments, with full and exhaustive statistics compiled from the official records on file in the state military bureaus and at Washington

Eighty-Eighth New York Infantry.

Present, also, at Yorktown; North Anna; Strawberry Plains; Hatcher's Run; Farmville; Appomattox.

notes.--Fourth regiment, Irish Brigade; a brigade which never lost a flag, although it captured over twenty stands of colors from the enemy. At Fredericksburg the Eighty-eighth, in company with the brigade, participated in the gallant but unsuccessful assault on Marye's Heights. The brigade was then commanded by General Meagher, and the division by General Hancock. While in line at Fredericksburg awaiting the order for the assault, little sprigs of green were distributed among the men, every officer and man in the brigade, including Meagher and his staff, placing one in his cap. After the assault had failed, a long, well-aligned row of dead lay on the crest of the hill within a few yards of the Confederate breastworks, and by each pale dead face was a sprig of Irish green. The brigade became so reduced by losses that the Sixty-third, Sixty-ninth, and Eighty-eighth were, shortly before Gettysburg, consolidated into two companies each. At that battle, the brigade halted for a few moments, just as it neared the “wheatfield,” and knelt with uncovered heads while Father Corby, the Chaplain of the Eighty-eighth, gave them his benediction; the men, rising to their feet, went into action immediately. Colonel Kelly, who commanded the brigade at Gettysburg, was afterwards killed in the assault on Petersburg, where he was again in command of the brigade. Major William Horgan fell at Fredericksburg in the desperate assault on Marye's Heights.