HANCOCK'S DIVISION
The hardest fighting and greatest loss of life occurred in the First Division of the Second Corps,--Hancock's old division--in which more men were killed and wounded than in any other division in the Union Army, east or west. Its losses aggregated 2,287 killed, 11,724 wounded, and 4,833 missing; total, 18,844. This division was the one which Richardson, its first commander--led on the Peninsula, and at whose head he fell at Antietam; the one which, under Hancock, made the bloody assault on Marye's Heights; which, under Caldwell, fought so well in the Gettysburg wheat-field; which, under Barlow, surged over the enemy's works at Spotsylvania; and which, under Miles, was in at the death in 1865. Within its ranks were the Irish Brigade, and crack regiments like the Fifth New Hampshire, the One Hundred and Fortieth Pennsylvania, and the Sixty-fourth New York. Over 14,000 men were killed or wounded in this division during the war; yet it never numbered 8,000 muskets, and often could muster only half of that. After the charge on Marye's Heights it numbered only 2,800.
Close to it, however, in point of loss stands Gibbon's (2d) Division of the Second Corps, and Griffin's (1st) Division of the Fifth Corps.
The heaviest loss sustained by any division in any one battle, occurred in Getty's (2d) Division, Sixth Corps, at the Wilderness, where that division lost 480 killed, 2,318 wounded, and 196 missing; total, 2,994.
Gibbon's Division, at Gettysburg, lost 344 killed, 1,197 wounded, and 101 missing; total, 1,642, out of 3,773 engaged--a loss of 43.5 per cent.