Battle of Cross Keys

Battle of Cross Keys. Southern Artillery. Confederate Gen. Richard S. Ewell had five artillery batteries with him at Cross Keys. Four batteries and a 2-gun section (about 18 guns total) were massed on the ridgeline to your front. At the time of the battle on June 8, 1862, the ridge was mostly devoid of trees., Capt. Alfred Courtney’s Henrico Battery occupied the right of the Confederate position. Nineteen-year-old Lt. Joseph W. Latimer, who commanded a section of the battery, was later mentioned for his gallantry in Ewell’s report on the battle. By 1863, Latimer was known as the “boy major of the Confederacy.” Capt. John Lusk commanded the Second Rockbridge Artillery, to Courtney’s left. To Lusk’s left was the Eighth Star Artillery under Lt. Robert Rice, and to his left Capt. Charles Raines’ Lynchburg (Lee) Battery. On the extreme Confederate left, Capt. John Brockenbrough’s Baltimore Light Artillery inflicted great damage on Federals advancing from the vicinity of Union Church., Col. Albert Tracy of Frémont’s staff said of the Southern artillery that “the low and sullen roar of the enemy’s guns,” quickly became a “positive thunder.”, In the Battle of Cross Keys, the Southern artillery performed at its best., (sidebar): By the end of the war, two of the five Confederate battery commanders at Cross Keys were dead, as was a section commander. Two other battery commanders were badly wounded. Lusk was wounded first at Alleghany Mountain in 1861 and then a second time at Chancellorsville in 1863. Raines was killed in action in November 1864. Rice was mortally wounded in front of Washington on July 11, 1864. Brockenbrough was wounded at First Manassas and then suffered a terrible wound at Fredericksburg in December 1862 that incapacitated him from further active service. Latimer was mortally wounded at Gettysburg commanding an artillery battalion and died in Harrisonburg on August 1, 1863. He is buried in Woodbine Cemetery.