Note 9 — The Boys in Green.
Reading edition
While the Sixty-Third was in Camp of Instruction on David's Island, in the East River, opposite New Rochelle, N. Y., it was under the spiritual care of Father Dillon, an enthusiastic young priest. He was an ardent advocate of temperance. Like all green troops, the Sixty-Third had some reckless members, who frequently took a "dhrop" too much. Before leaving for the seat of war, at the conclusion of a powerful temperance discourse, he proposed to the assembled regiment that every man and officer take the temperance pledge, "for the war." One thousand uplifted hands responded, and while he slowly read the words of the pledge the men repeated them; and this was how the Sixty-Third became "a temperance regiment."