JOSEPH PERU -- 22nd INFANTRYKILLED IN ACTION - It was a busy day for the recruiter in Keeseville onMay 7, 1861, less than a month after Lincoln's first call for 75,000troops on April 15th. Fifty-two men enlisted in the 22nd Infantry. Allof them were mustered into Company C under Captain Oliver DavidsonPeabody with Gorton Tallman Thomas, Jr. as sergeant and promised toserve for 2 years. The 22nd was composed of 4 companies from WashingtonCounty, 3 from Essex, 2 from Warren and 1 from Saratoga County and weremustered into U. S. Army service at Camp Rathbone, Troy.Private Joseph Pero was there on that day with the regiment known as the2nd New York Regiment -- the first being the 16th Infantry recruited inthe Plattsburgh area. The regiment was formed with 800 men and wasplaced in a brigade along with the 24th New York, 30th New York, and the84th New York, also known as the 14th New York State Militia. The 2ndUnited States Sharpshooters, a regiment under the respected ColonelHenry A.V. Post, were also with them for a few months.The brigade was the First Brigade in the First Corps of the Army of thePotomac, and Colonel Walter Phelps and the regiments of the brigadereferred to themselves as the Iron Brigade of the East and served withthe Division\'s more famous Fourth Brigade which would earn the title\"Iron Brigade of the West\" in September 1862 during Battle of SouthMountain in the Maryland Campaign.Joseph wasn't with the regiment at the Battle of South Mountain. Whileon General Pope's Campaign in August of 1862, he was killed in action atthe Second Battle of Bull Run on August 30, 1862. During that battle, 3other men from his company were killed or mortally wounded and 3 wereinjured.Read more about the 2nd Battle of Bull Run, or 2nd Manassas as it'scalled, where 1, 747 Union soldiers were killed, 8, 452 were wounded and4, 263 were captured or who went missing. The Confederate Army had 1,096 men killed and 6, 202 wounded. At the battle, the North had about77,000 men on the field and the South had about 50,000 men.
