 Accepted into service on August 19, the 68th left New York the next day, traveling by train from Perth Amboy, New Jersey, to Washington, D.C., to join the brigade of Brigadier General Louis Blenker in the Army of the Potomac. Blenker was a German immigrant himself, a refugee of the Revolutions of 1848, and many of the units under his command were heavily German-American. Encamped at Roach's Mills, Virginia, the 68th participated in the defense of Washington, losing three men in their first combat, a minor skirmish with a Confederate patrol.
