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Captain Easton fell beside a gun at Gaines's Mill, shouting, “No! We never surrender,” in reply to the demand of the victors to give up his battery.1

At Gettysburg, young Cushing shouts to his general that he will give them “one shot more,” and falls dead as Pickett's men surge up to the muzzles of his pieces.

Of the noted batteries mentioned in the accompanying list of casualties, Kern, Woodruff, Burnham, Hazzard, DeHart, Dimmick, Rorty, Hazlitt, Leppien, McGilvery, Geary (of Knap's), Simonson, Erickson and Whitaker (of Bigelow's)--were killed in action.

When closely pressed by a charge of the enemy, the gunners, though unarmed, would often defend their pieces with rammers and handspikes used as clubs. In the charge of the Louisiana Tigers on Ricketts's Pennsylvania Battery, at Cemetery Hill, Gettysburg, one of the assailants fell dead in the battery, killed by a stone which was hurled at him.

Some of the light batteries sustained a remarkable loss in horses, killed in battle.

Bigelow lost, at Gettysburg, 50 horses killed and 15 wounded, according to the official report of Lieutenant Milton, who brought the battery off the field.2

Lieutenant Sears states in a newspaper article that the Eleventh Ohio Battery lost, at Iuka, “42 horses killed upon the field, and (a coincidence) 42 so disabled from wounds that they had to be turned over, unfit for service.”

Lieutenant Snow, First Maine Battery, in his official report for Cedar Creek, states that he “lost 49 horses killed il harness.”

The maximum losses of horses killed in any one action seems to have been reached in these instances;3 at least, a careful examination of official reports fails to show any greater.

The following list of remarkable losses in the light artillery, during the last war, embraces every instance in which a battery lost twenty or more killed and wounded, in any one action, the mortally wounded being included with the wounded; and includes the casualties in infantry details attached to these batteries.

maximum losses of Light Artillery

in any one engagement.

Synonym. Battery. Battle. Killed. Wounded. Missing. Aggregate.
Sands's” -- 11th Ohio Iuka 16 35 3 54
Seeley's” K,4 4th United States Chancellorsville 7 38 -- 45
Campbell's” B,5 4th United States Antietam 9 31 -- 40
Cushing's” A, 4th United States Gettysburg 6 32 -- 38
Burnham's” H, 5th United States Chickamauga 13 18 13 44
Parsons's” I, 4th United States Chaplin Hills 10 19 10 39
Stewart's” B, 4th United States Gettysburg 2 31 3 36
Sanger's” E,6 3d United States Olustee 11 22 6 39
Langdon's” M, 1st United States Olustee 4 22 6 32
Arnold's” A,7 1st Rhode Island Gettysburg 3 28 1 32
Wood's” A, 1st Illinois Shiloh 4 26 -- 30
Burrows's” -- 14th Ohio Shiloh 4 26 -- 30
Randolph's” E, 1st Rhode Island Gettysburg 3 26 1 30
Bigelow's” -- 9th Massachusetts Gettysburg 8 18 2 28
Leppien's” --8 5th Maine Chancellorsville 6 22 -- 28
Ricketts's” I,9 1st United States First Bull Run 12 15 -- 27
Rorty's” B, 1st New York Gettysburg 10 16 -- 26
Stevens's” -- 5th Maine Cedar Creek 2 26 -- 28
Adams's” G,10 1st Rhode Island Cedar Creek 4 23 -- 27
Brown's” B, 1st Rhode Island Gettysburg 7 19 2 28
Dillon's” -- 6th Wisconsin Corinth 5 21 -- 26
Kern's” G,11 1st Pennsylvania Manassas 3 23 8 34
Houghtaling's” C, 1st Illinois Stone's River 5 20 -- 25
Woodruff's” I, 1st United States Gettysburg 1 24 -- 25
Turnbull's” F & K, 3d United States Gettysburg 9 14 1 24
Bush's” -- 4th Indiana Stone's River 5 19 -- 24
Edgerton's” E, 1st Ohio Stone's River 3 20 25 48
Adams's” G, 1st Rhode Island Fredericksburg 5 18 -- 23
Cooper's” B,12 1st Pennsylvania Manassas 4 19 -- 23
Cowan's” -- 1st New York Cedar Creek 6 17 -- 23
“Bridges's” -- -- Illinois Chickamauga 6 16 4 26
Cushing's” (H. C.) H, 4th United States Chickamauga 5 17 -- 22
Knap's” 13 -- -- Pennsylvania Wauhatchie 3 19 -- 22
Smith's” I, 4th United States Chickamauga 1 21 -- 22
Zickerick's” -- 12th Wisconsin Allatoona Pass 6 15 -- 21
Ricketts's” F & G, 1st Pennsylvania Gettysburg 6 14 3 23
Dimmick's” H, 1st United States Chancellorsville 3 18 -- 21
Simonson's” --14 5th Indiana Stone's River 3 18 -- 21
Seeley's” K, 4th United States Gettysburg 2 19 4 25
Haley's” -- 1st Maine Cedar Creek 3 17 8 28
Watson's” I, 5th United States Gettysburg 1 19 2 22
Nims's” -- 2d Massachusetts Sabine X Roads 1 18 1 20
Tompkins's” A, 1st Rhode Island Antietam 4 15 -- 19
Kern's” G, 1st Pennsylvania Gaines's Mill 7 12 -- 19
Cooper's” B, 1st Pennsylvania Seven Days 4 15 -- 19
McKnight's” M, 5th United States Cedar Creek 2 17 4 23
Woodbury's” M, 1st New York Chancellorsville 5 13 4 22
Harris's” -- 19th Indiana Chickamauga 2 16 2 20
Standart's” B, 1st Ohio Stone's River 5 12 3 20
Griffin's” D, 5th United States First Bull Run 4 13 10 27
Mann's” -- -- Missouri Shiloh 3 14 -- 17
Belger's” F, 1st Rhode Island Drewry's Bluff 3 14 4 21
Rogers's” -- 19th New York Spotsylvania 7 9 -- 16
Andrews's” F, 1st Michigan Richmond (Ky.) 6 9 54 69
Loomis's” A, 1st Michigan Chickamauga 6 7 12 25
Stevens's” -- 5th Maine Gettysburg 3 13 7 23
Monroe's” D, 1st Rhode Island Manassas 6 12 1 19
De Hart's” C, 5th United States Seven Days 7 5 7 19
Goodspeed's” A, 1st Ohio Chickamauga 2 14 4 20
Simonson's” -- 5th Indiana Chaplin Hills 2 13 6 21
Bainbridge's” A, 1st United States Port Hudson 3 13 3 19
Sutermeister's” -- 11th Indiana Chickamauga 3 12 4 19

1 Bates' History of the Pennsylvania Volunteers.

2 General Hunt, Chief of Artillery, in an article in the Century Magazine, states that Bigelow lost 80 horses killed or wounded, out of 88 horses.

3 A tabulated report of artillery losses at Stone's River (official), mentions some large figures; but as in each case, the battery was captured and held by the enemy, it would appear that the captured horses had been erroneously included in the column with the killed.

4 Appears twice in this list.

5 Appears twice in this list.

6 Including loss in the detail from “Les Enfans Perdus.”

7 Appears twice in this list.

8 Appears three times in this list.

9 Appears twice in this list.

10 Appears twice in this list.

11 Appears twice in this list.

12 Appears twice in this list.

13 Two sections only.

14 Appears twice in this list.

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