The 50th participated at the battle of Fort Donelson and reportedly escaped with General Floyd. In a battle near Suffolk, Virginia, Colonel Poage was killed and Colonel Vandeventer was promoted colonel of the regiment at the age of 19 years. The regiment was transferred to the Army of Northern Virginia, and participated in the great battle at Chancellorsville, in which Colonel Vandeventer commanded the brigade on the second day after his superiors were incapacitated. Colonel Vandeventer's son related that his father would shudder each time he would hear a whipporwhill because the whipporwhills sang over his dead friends in the quiet after that battle. Colonel Vandeventer was captured with E.M. Johnson's division at the Bloody Angle, Spottsylvania Court House on May 12, 1864 and was confined at Fort Delaware. He was one of the six hundred Confederates placed under the fire of Confederate guns in Charleston Harbor. He was later exchanged.