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. The company officers were not elected by the men, as in other volunteer commands, but were selected by the authorities who raised the regiment. The enlisted men were also above the average in intelligence and soldierly bearing. The Second sustained the heaviest loss in action of any regiment in the corps. At Cedar Mountain its casualties were 40 killed, 93 wounded, and 40 missing; at Chancellorsville, 21 killed, 110 wounded, and 7 missing; and at Gettysburg, 23 killed, 109 wounded, and 4 missing, out of 316 engaged. The latter loss occurred within a few minutes, in a hopeless assault made by the Second, and Twenty-seventh Indiana, which was ordered by a mistake; the blunder was apparent to all, but no one faltered, and each soldier did his duty gallantly; Lieutenant-Colonel Mudge, who was in command, remarked: "It is murder, but it's the order," and fell dead while waving his sword and cheering on his men.