THE THIRD MAINE INFANTRY
The Third Maine Infantry Regiment was one of Maine’s earliest volunteer regiments and one of the Army of the Potomac’s hardest-fighting units. Mustered into service on June 4, 1861, it served for three years, fighting in nearly every major campaign in the Eastern Theater before mustering out in Virginia on June 28, 1864.
During its three years of service, 1,586 men enlisted or were drafted into the Third Maine. Of those, 134 were killed in action or died of wounds, 149 died of disease, and 33 died in Confederate prisons, a fatality rate of nearly 20 percent. One in every five men who served in the Third Maine never came home.
“We were attacked in the woods by the Black Horse Cavalry, and we rushed in the woods, and I lost my hat pick… One man was shot, and when we got to the bridge, we were attacked in the area by the Artillery and three men were shot. We run about one mile further when our eyes gladdened by the sight of a long line of our men upon the hill in Centreville to cover our retreat.”
Charles F. Snell, diary entry, July 21, 1861 (First Battle of Bull Run)
A COMPANY IS BORN
Company D was one of two 100-man companies raised in the Third Maine Infantry Regiment, drawing its volunteers primarily from Bath and the surrounding Midcoast. Bath was one of New England’s leading shipbuilding centers. Its merchants and shipowners maintained strong economic ties to the South, transporting cotton and tobacco around the world. Yet when secession came, the city overwhelmingly rejected disunion. Hundreds volunteered to preserve the Union, and Company D became one of Maine’s earliest Civil War companies, filling its ranks with carpenters, shipbuilders, fishermen, teachers, and farmers.
COMPANY D UNDER FIRE
The first Company D soldier killed in the war was Private Robert Sanborn at the First Battle of Bull Run on July 21, 1861.
Less than a year later, at Fair Oaks, the company suffered its heaviest losses to date. By the time Company D reached Gettysburg in July 1863, only twenty-one of the original one hundred volunteers remained in the ranks.
Repeated casualties forced the company to replace its dead and wounded with draftees, substitutes, and reenlisted veterans. When the regiment mustered out on June 4, 1864, fewer than a dozen original members of Company D were still serving.
A FORGOTTEN SACRIFICE
Despite being one of Maine’s hardest-fighting regiments—serving on the front lines from Bull Run to the Wilderness—the Third Maine Infantry has largely faded from public memory. Unlike the Seventeenth and Twentieth Maine regiments, it never received a published regimental history and is often overlooked today. The Company D podcast exists to help bring the regiment and its soldiers back into the light.
ONE REGIMENT. ONE COMPANY. COUNTLESS STORIES.
These are only three of the many lives rediscovered by Company D.
(Click the portraits to link to the podcast episodes)
