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of the non-commissioned officers and privates were instantly killed or mortally wounded.1 Surrounded by many of their men killed in the action, I saw dead upon the field Captains Cary, Goodwin, Abbott, Williams, and Lieutenant Perkins. Major Savage had been removed, to die at Charlottesville.
Never in the entire history of the Second Massachusetts Regiment had its percentage of loss been so great.
Not at Winchester, Antietam, Chancellorsville; not at Gettysburg, Resaca, the Atlanta campaign, or in the march to the sea,--was the sacrifice so large.
In my whole brigade the loss in killed, wounded, and prisoners was four hundred and sixty-six,--over thirty in every hundred of my command.
Jackson had won a complete victory.
How, indeed,
1 The losses of the Second had been terrible: Captains Abbott, Cary, Williams, and Goodwin, and Lieutenant Perkins, were dead; Major Savage was mortally wounded and a prisoner; Captain Quincy and Lieutenant Millen were wounded and prisoners; Surgeon Leland (early in the action), Lieutenants Oakey, Browning, Grafton, and Robeson, were wounded; Captain Russell was a prisoner. Corporal Bassett, Bright, Dyer, Flemming, Hazelton, Livingston, and Sergeant Whitten, of Company A; Gilson and Corporal Oakes, of Company B; Brown, F. H. Cochrane, Francis, Corporal Gray, Hines, Jewell, Stonehall, and Williston, of Company C; Bickford, Corporal Fay, and Corporal Wilcox, of Company D; Ide and Sparrow, of Company E; Sergeant Andrews, Hatch, Howard, and Hoxsey, of Company G; Corporal Cahill, Corporal DeWeale, and Duffy, of Company H; Sergeant Willis, of Company I; and Conlan, Daly, Livingstone, Montague, Roberts, and Watson, of Company K,--were killed. Corporal Buxton, Gilman, and Spalding, of Company A; Stephens (J.), of Company B; Donovan, of Company C; Daniels, of Company E; Moore, of Company F; Dillingham, Greene (M.), Smith, and First Sergeant Williston, of Company G; Sylvester, of Company I; and Hauboldt, of Company K,were mortally wounded. Ninety-nine others were wounded ; and fourteen men, besides four of the wounded, were prisoners. Of the twenty-three officers who went on the field, seven only came back unhurt, and thirty-five per cent of the regiment as engaged were killed or wounded. See “Record of the Second Massachusetts infantry,” by A. H. Quint, pp.110, 111.
James R. Osgood and Company, 1883.
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