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 |
