Dec 08 , 2025
Alonzo Cushing Gettysburg Hero Awarded the Medal of Honor
Alonzo Cushing gripped the cold iron of his cannon’s breach as bullets tore through the smoke-choked sky. Blood slicked his hands. Seven wounds tore through his body, but the guns roared on. The ground around him was shattered earth and shattered men. The Union line faltered—and still, he would not quit.
He stayed. The last man standing behind the battery at Little Round Top.
Born for Battle and Belief
Alonzo Cushing was no stranger to duty. Born into a family with a legacy of service, he carried the weight of both expectation and faith. West Point forged him into an artillery officer, taught him precision, discipline, and how to hold when everything shattered.
“I know whom I have believed,” he would later embody with his final breath. Raised in a devout Christian household, Cushing’s fingers were as steady praying as on the lanyard. His faith was unyielded, a quiet fortress amid the storm.
Honor wasn’t just a word to him—it was a covenant. Death meant little compared to the solemn promise to never abandon the guns.
The Battle That Defined Him
July 3, 1863. Gettysburg. The air thick with smoke, sweat, and fear. Confederate artillery thundered from Seminary Ridge. Cushing’s battery, Battery A, 4th U.S. Artillery, sat exposed atop Cemetery Ridge, crucial ground beneath the Union guns.
As Pickett’s Charge surged forward, the enemy closed the gap. Enemy sharpshooters targeted him. Wounds cut through his arms, chest, legs—but he pushed forward.
“I think I have hold of my glasses—wait a second.”
Even with shattered nerves and leaking blood, Cushing called out orders, directing fire with icy clarity. Around him, gunners fell or fled—but he kept the battery firing. He was shot in the chest, a mortal wound. Prisoners found him moments later, barely conscious, commanding his men.
He died behind his guns, not retreating, not surrendering.
Recognition Finally Earned
His sacrifice passed quietly into history for decades, overshadowed amid the chaos of the war. But the truth endured like the cannon’s echo.
In 2014, after decades of advocacy by historians and veterans groups, Alonzo Cushing was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor by President Barack Obama.
“Lieutenant Cushing’s extraordinary leadership and self-sacrifice saved the Union line at a critical moment during the Battle of Gettysburg,” the citation reads.[1]
General John Gibbon, who witnessed the battle, called Cushing’s actions “the most heroic I ever saw during the war.”
The medal represented more than valor. It was justice for the man who stayed when all around him fled, a testament to grit carved in blood and honor.
The Legacy of a Fallen Warrior
Cushing’s story is not just Gettysburg history. It’s a raw lesson in sacrifice under fire—what it truly means to stand when nothing else will.
“Greater love hath no man than this,” scripture reminds us, and that truth fills every careful stroke of Cushing’s legacy.
His legacy hollers in the cold steel of every artillery piece. In the grit of every soldier who takes their post under fire.
For combat veterans, he is a brother who paid the ultimate price to hold the line, to protect the fragile hope forged by their sacrifice.
For civilians, his story demands reverence—not just for the man, but for the cost of freedom.
Alonzo Cushing’s cannon never fell silent—because the weight of duty, faith, and sacrifice still echoes through us all.
“I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith.” —2 Timothy 4:7
Sources
[1] U.S. Army Center of Military History, “Medal of Honor Awarded to Lt. Alonzo H. Cushing” (2014) [2] James A. Hessler, Gettysburg’s Forgotten Hero: The Story of Alonzo Cushing, Savas Beatie (2009)
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