Nearly half a century has elapsed since the Sixty-third Regiment, Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, was mustered into the military service of the United States, under the call of President Lincoln for soldiers to aid in suppressing the rebellion, which at that time threatened the perpetuity of the Federal Union, yet up to the present time no detailed record of the achievements of that famous command has been published in permanent form.
At the first annual reunion of the survivors of the Regiment held in Pittsburgh in November, 1879, a permanent organization was effected under the title of "The Sixty-third Pennsylvania Volunteers' Regimental Association," and steps taken to perpetuate the record of the Regiment by appointing Robert H. Millar, of Company E, Historian and Secretary. After much labor and research, a history was prepared which would have proved an invaluable contribution to the literature of the Civil War period, but the Great Commander called the writer before the manuscript was placed in the hands of the printer, and with his death, in 1899, every vestige of this material, collected from a variety of authentic sources, disappeared and was never recovered, an almost irreparable loss to the regiment.
