rans, and that tenacious defence of
the position gained, but the cost was appallingly great. The record of
Cold Harbor, of which all but a very small proportion was incurred on
June 1st, is given as follows: Killed or died of wounds, one hundred
and twenty-one; wounded, but not mortally, one hundred and ninety;
missing, fifteen; prisoners, three.

General Martin T. McMahon, writing of this battle in "The Century's"
series of war papers, says: "I remember at one point a mute and
pathetic evidence of sterling valor. The Second Connecticut Heavy
Artillery, a new regiment eighteen hundred strong, had joined us but a
few days before the battle. Its uniform was bright and fresh;
therefore its dead were easily distinguished where they lay. They
marked in a dotted line an obtuse angle, covering a wide front, with
its apex toward the enemy, and there upon his face, still in death,
with his head to the works, lay the Colonel, the brave and genial
Colonel Elisha S. Kellogg."

Such was their first trial in battle.

Immediately after receiving news of the action of June 1st, Governor
Buckingham had sent a commission as colonel to Lieutenant-Colonel
James Hubbard. He, however, was unwilling to assume the responsibility
of the command; this had been his first battle, and he "drew the hasty
inference that all the fighting was likely to consist of a similar
walking into the jaws of hell. He afterwards found that this was a
mistake."

Upon General Upton's advice, therefore, the officers recommended to
the Governor the appointment of Ranald S. Mackenzie, then a captain
of engineers on duty at headquarters, and this recommendation being
favorably endorsed by superior officers up to the Lieutenant-General,
was accepted, and Colonel Mackenzie took command on June 6th.

Of the man who was now to lead the regiment, Grant in his Memoirs
writes twenty years later the following unqualified judgment: "I
regarded Mackenzie as the most promising young officer in the army.
Graduating at West Point as he did during the second year of the war,
he had won his way up to the command of a corps before its close. This
he did upon his own merit and without influence." Such a statement
from such a quarter is enough to show that once more the Second
Connecticut was to be commanded by a soldier of more than ordinary
qualities, a fact which was not long in developing.

Colonel Mackenzie's active connection with the regiment lasted only
some four mo