Mr. Hughes:
The guns you are referring to are the four 6 pounder cadet field guns that were made by the Cyrus Alger & Co. of Boston MA in 1848 and had registry numbers #86, #87, #88 and #89. They were of the model M-1841 but were designed especially as a cadet battery and were about 300 lbs lighter than the normal guns of this pattern. They were meant to be light so the cadets could manuver them by hand. They were painted red because of their special intended use. Although red was normal for them, this color in field use was still not standard for the field artillery. Any present day painting of guns, limbers and carriages should follow the orginal Ordnance Department"s regulations to be historicly correct. Today you can see these same guns in the quadrangle of the VMI campus in Lexington VA and they are painted in the Ordnance Corps olive drab color. They were named Mathew, Mark, Luke and John by Captain (Later Brigadier General) William Pendleton, the commander of the Rockbridge Artillery of VA.

This Cadet battery did see service in the civil war as the guns were issued to the Rockbridge Artillery for their use. They were quickly replayed by normal field guns captured at the Battle of Bull Run. The VMI cadets were sent to Richmond to assist in instructing the volunteer batteries forming. These same guns were used in 1864 at the Battle of New Market. They were used by Major Thomas Jackson (later General Stonewall Jackson) to give artillery instruction to the VMI cadets.