29-year-old Adam Laws, from Fayette County, Pennsylvania, enlisted on December 9, 1863 at Frederick, Maryland where he was working as a blacksmith. He mustered into the 19th Regiment on January 4, 1864 as a 1st Sergeant at Camp Stanton.

In November 1965, Captain William Bryant, commanding Company C, noted:

1st Sergeant Laws is a brave and good soldier and deserves any favor which can consistently be granted him.

Sergeant Laws was indeed a good and brave soldier. He entered the Army as a 1st Sergeant, and was discharged from the Army as a 1st Sergeant, exactly the kind of man the Union Army relied upon to lead men. However, he had a couple of bumps along the way.

On April 23, 1864, shortly after the Regiment left its training camp at Benedict, Maryland on its way to the Virginia battlefield via Baltimore, Annapolis, and Washington, D.C., Sergeant Laws was arrested for insubordination. Shortly after that, on May 3, 1864, he was sent to Claremont General Hospital in Alexandria, Virginia with smallpox. He stayed there for a month, returning  to duty on June 8, 1864.

On August 12, 1864 a General Court Marshal found Sergeant Laws guilty of "Conduct prejudicial to good order and military discipline." He was sentenced to be reduced in rank to Private and confined to 6 months imprisonment at the Fort Jefferson military prison in the Dry Tortugas islands in the Gulf of Mexico. He was first sent to the Castle Williams military prison on Governor's Island in New York, probably to await transportation by ship to the Dry Tortugas.

On October 7, 1864, Sergeant Laws wrote to President Lincoln from Castle Williams requesting a pardon. Lincoln's secretary John Hay took an interest in the case and asked Judge Advocate General Holt to look into the matter. Holt provided the President with his report on October 22, 1864. President Lincoln did not act immediately, being somewhat busy with the Civil War, but on January 28, 1865 he pardoned Sergeant Laws.

Sergeant Laws was sent to the Fort Jefferson military prison in the Dry Tortugas sometime after he wrote his letter from Castle Williams, but he was released from Fort Jefferson on February 9, 1865 after being pardoned by President Lincoln, and returned to his regiment. On August 1, 1865, Laws was again promoted to 1st Sergeant.

Sergeant Laws was arrested again on March 18, 1866 while the regiment was stationed in Brownsville, Texas. A Mexican baker alleged that Sergeant Laws had stolen a loaf of bread. At a court martial, Captain William Bryant, Laws' defense attorney, argued that it was a case of mistaken identity, and that Sergeant Laws was not at the bakery, but was instead managing a soldiers' ball some distance away. The military court found Sergeant Laws guilty anyway and reduced him in rank. But the court also ordered him released from the military prison at Brownsville, noting that he had already been confined there for two months "with all classes and kinds of culprits."

On August 1, 1866, Captain Bryant promoted Laws back to 1st Sergeant, a rank he held until the regiment was mustered out on January 15, 1867 at Brownsville, Texas.

Sergeant Laws has no pension record. The information here is taken from his court martial file # MM-3909.