After distinguishing himself with his battery at such battles as First Winchester and Cedar Mountain, Latimer was promoted to command of the battalion that had previously belonged to A. R. Courtney.

Ewell referred to him as the "Young Napoleon", but his contemporaries noted his youth and small, slight stature by calling him the "Boy Major.

The Confederate guns engaged in a duel with their Federal counterparts while attempting to support the attack on Culp's and Cemetery Hills.

"Such an admission by so stubborn a fighter did not have to be verified,"[2] as historian Douglas Southall Freeman put it, and Latimer was allowed to begin withdrawing the guns.

Latimer, of Andrews' battalion, the "boy major," whose chivalrous bearing on so many fields had won for him a reputation to be envied by his seniors, received a severe wound on the evening of the 2d, from the effects of which he has since died."

The grave of the "Boy Major" is marked by a monument placed 51 years after his death by the Ladies Memorial Association and the United Daughters of the Confederacy.