1st Lt. Alonzo Cushing and his artillerymen stood amid the smoke and the noises of war, trying to keep their cannons firing, on the most consequential day of the Civil War.

It was the third and final day of a bloody fight in the fields and forests of Pennsylvania, what historians would later call the Battle of Gettysburg. Cushing, respected by his men for his cool under fire, commanded the last cannon left firing in his battery. Though he could not see them through the haze of smoke, more than 10,000 Confederate infantrymen stalked toward them, in rows that stretched for a mile.

Cushing, who had served with distinction in earlier conflicts in the fractured country, was struck by enemy fire that day but told his men he would continue to fight. He burned his thumb to the bone keeping his cannon firing even as he was wounded in the shoulder and stomach.

Finally, with Confederate troops only 100 yards away, he was killed by a shot to the mouth. He was 22.

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