Alternate Designations: None.
Commander: Lt. Col. Charles R. Mudge (Oct. 22, 1839-July 3, 1863); Maj. Charles F. Morse (1839-1926).
Numbers: 401; 23 killed, 109 wounded, 4 missing.
Raised: Middlesex, Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk, and Worchester
Dedicated: 1879.
Location: South side of Colgrove Avenue near Carman Avenue, on a native boulder near the Spangler Meadow. Monument is located near the site where the regiment, along with the 27th Indiana Infantry, launched an attack on the Confederates along Culp Ridge on the morning of July 3, 1863.
Description: Monument is a monolithic granite shaft of rough cut and tooled edges with a tapered toothed top, and set on a four foot square rough cut base with a tooled edge. It has inset bronze inscription tablets. Overall height is 3.9 feet. Flanking markers are 1.6x.8 foot. It was the first regimental monument erected on the Gettysburg battlefield. The veterans association purchased the land on the Spangler Farm and erected this memorial which contains the names of those killed at Gettysburg on the reverse side.
The Second Massachusetts was a distinguished regiment, as described by Fox:
The Second Massachusetts was the best officered regiment in the entire Army. Its colonel and lieutenant-colonel were educated at West Point. the latter graduating at the head of his class; the line officers were selected men, for the most part collegians whose education, supplemented by the year of practical service in the field preliminary to the first battle, left nothing that could be desired to make them equal in every respect to any line of officers, regulars or volunteers. Of the sixteen officers who lost their lives, thirteen were Harvard men, whose names appear on the bronze tablets in Harvard Memorial Hall.
Army of the Potomac > Twelfth Corps > First Division > Third Brigade