12th Battalion Heavy Artillery
From Bergeron, La. Confed. Units, 11-12:
"Although composed of men from three states, this battalion is usually accounted a Louisiana unit. It was organized near Yorktown, Virginia, in May, 1862. The battalion served in the Yorktown defenses until they were evacuated. A portion of the unit is said to have fired the last shot from its gun and been the last Confederate unit to leave Yorktown. During the battles around Richmond, May-July, 1862, the battalion manned batteries in the capital's defenses. In August, 1862, Secretary of War ordered the battalion to Port Hudson, Louisiana, to man heavy artillery batteries under construction there. Captain Samuel T. Wright's company remained at Richmond and never again served with the battalion. The other companies reached Port Hudson in early September [1862]. On September 7, the men fired their cannons at the Union ironclad Essex but did not injure it. The men of the battalion helped in the erection and arming of the river batteries at Port Hudson during the winter of 1862-63. They eventually occupied the left (southern) wing of the batteries; Company E at Battery No. 4, Company A at Battery No. 6, Company D at Battery No. 8, and Company B at Batteries No. 9 and 10. The battalion engaged Admiral David G. Farragut's squadron when it attempted to run past the Port Hudson batteries on March 14, 1863; 1 officer was killed, and 2 enlisted men were wounded. Just prior to the investment of Port Hudson by Major General Nathaniel P. Banks's Union army, Captain W. Norris Coffin requested that his company receive orders to return to Virginia; but the Secretary of War denied the requiest. The men served in various capacities during the siege of Port Hudson, May 23-July 9, 1863. A detachment served as infantrymen at the breastworks under Major Anderson Merchant. Coffin's company manned a rifled 32-pounder gun until the canno was disabled on Brigadier General William N. R. Beall's line near Slaughter's Field. The rest of the battalion remained in the river batteries, where the men engaged the enemy's gunboats and fired occasionally over the land lines into the enemy's works. About 140 men surrendered with the Port Hudson garrison. The officers went to northern prisons; the men who did not return to their homes went into parole camps. Late in 1863, Captain Henry Castellanos collected about 117 men at Mobile, Alabama. There they manned batteries in the city's land defenses. Captain Coffin commanded the remnants of his company, which remained independent until the end of the war, in the Mobile defenses also. A small number of the men were ordered into the 1st Louisiana Heavy Artillery. The remnants of the battalion surrendered at Meridian, Mississippi, on May 8, 1865."
CSRC, M320, rolls 49 (Castellano's Battery) & 53 (Kean's Battery)
ROSTER