The regiment sustained a significant number of casualties during its service tenure, including during the Battle of Fort Stevens on July 12, 1864. Ballier, in fact, was one of those wounded during the engagement, a military encounter in which President Abraham Lincoln was also nearly injured by Confederate fire while standing on a parapet surveying the action. After having sustained a gunshot wound to his right ankle on May 3, he then also sustained a gunshot wound to his right thigh at Fort Stevens.