08/24/2022
Charles Henry Lott of Hainesport, Burlington County, New Jersey enlisted in the Union Army as a recruit Private at age 18 on April 13, 1865. Born September 24, 1846, he was still only 14-years-old when the Confederates fired on Fort Sumter, South Carolina on April 12, 1861. He as he grew into adulthood he likely watched as dozens of men from his community and county enlisted at various times in the Union Army after the war started and as it progressed, some never to return. Nine months after he turned eighteen he enlisted himself, four days after Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox Court House, and a day before John Wilkes Booth shot President Abraham Lincoln at Fords Theater in Washington, DC. The unit the young, green recruit was assigned to was the 2nd New Jersey Infantry Battalion's Company B. The 2nd New Jersey had been one of the original four three-year-enlistment regiments that would go on to be famed as part of the "First New Jersey Brigade". By the time Private Lott joined it, it had seen service in every major campaign of the Army of the Potomac in the last four years, and had lost a total 165 men killed, mortally wounded, or died of disease. In September 1864 the veterans whose enlistments expired and opted not to re-enlist were honorably mustered out, and the re-enlistees were organized into a three-company battalion and operationally attached to the 15th New Jersey Volunteer Infantry. Their last full combat had been at the beginning of April 1865 as it was part of the final assaults that broke the Confederate positions at Petersburg, Virginia, and facilitated the Confederate's withdrawal and eventually surrender. Transferred to Company C at an unrecorded date, Private Lott would serve in the very last days of the war, and in the unit's occupation duty until he was mustered out with the battalion on July 11,1865 - a veteran of four months service. Those four months almost certainly made an impression on him and his family his whole life, as after he died at age 86 on June 30, 1933 his regimental information was prominently included on his grave maker in Hainesport's Brotherhood Cemetery.
