The reputation of a fighting regiment, which its fallen leader had predicted, was amply earned by that unfaltering advance against intrenchments manned by Lee's veterans, 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 months, but they were months of great activity and afforded such occasions for proof of his abilities that his speedy promotion was inevitable. He never achieved the general popularity with his men that had come to his predecessor, nor cared to, but he did gain quite as thoroughly their respect through his mastership of the business in hand. It was not long after he assumed command that, as the regimental history says, the men "began to grieve anew over the loss of Kellogg. That commander had chastised us with whips, but this one dealt in scorpions. By the time we reached the Shenandoah Valley, he had so far developed as to be a far greater terror, to both officers and men, than Early's grape and canister. He was a Perpetual Punisher, and the Second Connecticut while under him was always a punished regiment. There is a regimental tradition to the effect that a well-defined purpose existed among the men, prior to the battle of Winchester, to dispose of this commanding scourge during the first fight that occurred. If he had known it, it would only have excited his contempt, for he cared not a copper for the good will of any except his military superiors, and certainly feared no man of woman born, on either side of the lines. But the purpose, if any existed, quailed and failed before his audacious pluck on that bloody day. He seemed to court destruction all day long. With his hat aloft on the point of his saber he galloped over forty-acre fields, through a perfect hailstorm of rebel lead and iron, with as much impunity as though he had been a ghost. The men hated him with the hate of hell, but they could not draw bead on so brave a man as that. Henceforth they firmly believed he bore a charmed life."