The 20th Mass. monument at Gettysburg is a large boulder known as a “Puddingstone,” native to Massachusetts and the official stone of the Commonwealth. It was brought for the monument’s dedication from Roxbury, Mass.

The fittest record of Lieutenant Paine's bright promise as an officer and of his heroic death is in the following words of the lamented Major Abbott:—


There is one thing I can bear testimony to, and that is his wonderful talent in making himself one of the most accomplished officers I knew in the army in two months time. His memory and application were so great that in a month's time he knew the whole book of tactics and regulations, and commanded a division in battalion and brigade drill as well as any old officer, besides doing all his guard and police duty with an exactness, a rigor, an enthusiasm, that the commanding officer in vain tried to stimulate in some of the older officers, sparing neither himself nor his men. When Lieutenant Paine was officer of the guard, his influence was felt by the remotest sentinel on the outskirts of the town. His intelligence and discipline and indomitable resolution were so fully recognized by Colonel Macy, that he often spoke of promoting him. Besides Lieutenant Summerhays, who saw him as I have described, he was seen by Lieutenant Perkins during the action, his face, according to both, actually glowing with pleasure, as it used in Falmouth when he had the best of an argument. He used always to be asking me how an officer should bear himself in battle, when he should be behind and when before his men. I had always rather understated than overstated the amount of danger it was necessary to incur, because I had seen at Fredericksburg that he would be rather disposed to expose himself too much than otherwise. He certainly carried out to the letter the duty, as he used to describe it, of an officer charging at the head of his men, and he evidently felt all the joy he supposed he should. His body was found close to the fence where the Rebels made their last desperate stand.

Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Harvard Memorial Biographies

He is memorialized at Memorial Hall on the Harvard University campus. Photo taken in July of 2014.