The following comments are excerpts from notes written by Captain McClure of the 2nd PAHA of the 112th regiment of Pennsylvania volunteers. This soldier seemed to be the leader of Company F (the unit my great grandfather's joined on 8/3/1863). Much of this content is in a book written by George Ward.
It was a well known fact that the President had great confidence in the regiment (112th PA) and did not want the regiment to leave the defenses of DC. Officers felt going to the field was a means of being promoted. New recruits to the regiment came in great numbers during the later months of 1863 and there were enough to make another regiment — the rolls swelled to over 3600 men — so extraordinary arrangements were required to be made. It was suggested to form another regiment from the surplus. On the 26th of March 1864 the regiment packed knapsacks and marched to Forts Ethan Allen and Marcy.
Recruits could choose the regiment to which they were to be assigned, thus preventing them from being assigned to other regiments without their consent. The suggestion of another Second Pennsylvania Heavy Artillery, with "Junior" or "No. 2" added, to properly designate them, was urged by many who were in order for promotion, believing, of course, officers for the new regiment would be taken from the experienced men, commissioned and non-commissioned, of the old regiment.
In the spring of 1864, General Grant, who was then in command of the Armies of the United States, began reorganizing the Army of the Potomac, preparatory to a march on the Confederate capital, and, to give better assurance of success to his plan, he began drawing on the Defenses of Washington for seasoned and drilled troops.
The Pennsylvania Heavy Artillery regiment having become numerically too large to constitute a single regiment, the War Department, on the 18th of April, 1864, issued an order to organize the surplus into a separate regiment, which was done under Special Orders No. 153, on the 20th of April, 1864, and the new regiment, composed mostly of new recruits, was known as the Provisional Second Pennsylvania Heavy Artillery.
This new regiment "the Provisionals" lay in camp near Fort Ethan Allen until the 26th of April, when it marched to Alexandria, Va. The "Provisionals" were soon attached to the Ninth Army Corps and were sent to do battle at Wilderness Run, Spotsylvania, and North Anna.