But I have seen and said enough of this battle. The unfortunate wounding of my General so early in the action of the 3d of July, leaving important duties which, in the unreasoning excitement of the moment I in part assumed, enabled me to do for the successful issue, something which under other circumstances would not have fallen to my rank or place. Deploring the occasion for taking away from the division in that moment of its need its soldierly, appropriate head, so cool, so clear, I am yet glad, as that was to be, that his example and his tuition have not been entirely in vain to me, and that my impulses then prompted me to do somewhat as he might have done had he been on the field. The encomiums of officers, so numerousand some of so high rank, generously accorded me for my conduct upon that occasion—I am not without vanity—were gratifying. My position as a staff officer gave me an opportunity to see much, perhaps as much as any one person, of that conflict. My observations were not so particular as if I had been attached to a smaller command; not so general as may have been those of a staff officer to the General commanding the army; but of such as they were, my heart was there, and I could do no less than to write something of them, in the intervals between marches and during the subsequent repose of the army at the close of the campaign. I have put somewhat upon these pages—I make no apology for the egotism, if such there is, of this account—it is not designed to be a history, but simplymy accountof the battle. It should not be assumed, if I have told of some occurrences, that there were not other important ones. I would not have it supposed that I have attempted to do full justice to the good conduct of the fallen, or the survivors of the 1st and 12th Corps. Others must tell of them. I did not see their work. A full account ofthe battle as it waswillnever, can never be made. Who could sketch the changes, the constant shifting of the bloody panorama? It is not possible. The official reports may give results as to losses, with statements of attacks and repulses; they may also note the means by which results were attained, which is a statement of the number and kind of the forces employed, but the connection between means and results, the mode, the battle proper, these reports touch lightly. Two prominent reasons at least exist which go far to account for the general inadequacy of these official reports, or to account for their giving no true idea of what they assume to describe—the literary infirmity of the reporters and their not seeing themselves and their commands as others would have seen them. And factions, and parties, and politics, the curses of this Republic, are already putting in their unreasonable demands for the foremost honors of the field. “Gen. Hooker won Gettysburg.” How? Not with the army in person or by infinitesimal influence—leaving it almost four days before the battle when both armies were scattered and fifty miles apart! Was ever claim so absurd? Hooker, andhe alone, won the result at Chancellorsville. “Gen. Howard won Gettysburg!” “Sickles saved the day!” Just Heaven, save the poor Army of the Potomac from its friends! It has more to dread and less to hope from them than from the red bannered hosts of the rebellion. The states prefer each her claim for the sole brunt and winning of the fight. “Pennsylvania won it!” “New York won it!” “Did not Old Greece, or some tribe from about the sources of the Nile win it?” For modern Greeks—from Cork—and African Hannibals were there. Those intermingled graves along the crest bearing the names of every loyal state, save one or two, should admonish these geese to cease to cackle. One of the armies of the country won the battle, and that army supposes that Gen. Meade led it upon that occasion. If it be not one of the lessons that this war teaches, that we have a country paramount and supreme over faction, and party, and state, then was the blood of fifty thousand citizens shed on this field in vain. For the reasons mentioned, of this battle, greater than that of Waterloo, a history, just, comprehensive, complete will never bewritten. By-and-by, out of the chaos of trash and falsehood that the newspapers hold, out of the disjointed mass of reports, out of the traditions and tales that come down from the field, some eye that never saw the battle will select, and some pen will write what will be namedthe history. With that the world will be and, if we are alive, we must be, content.
Already, as I rode down from the heights, nature’s mysterious loom was at work, joining and weaving on her ceaseless web the shells had broken there. Another spring shall green these trampled slopes, and flowers, planted by unseen hands, shall bloom upon these graves; another autumn and the yellow harvest shall ripen there—all not in less, but in higher perfection for this poured out blood. In another decade of years, in another century, or age, we hope that the Union, by the same means, may repose in a securer peace and bloom in a higher civilization. Then what matter if it lame Tradition glean on this field and hand down her garbled sheaf—if deft story with furtive fingers plait her ballad wreaths, deeds of her heroes here? or if stately history fill as shelist her arbitrary tablet, the sounding record of this fight? Tradition, story, history—all will not efface the true, grand epic of Gettysburg.
Frank A. Haskell.
To H. M. Haskell.
Footnotes:
[1]History of the Second Army Corps in the Army of the Potomac(New York, 1886), pp. 512, 513.
[2]Annual Report of the Adjutant General of the State of Wisconsin for 1865(Madison, 1866), pp. 510, 511.
[3]Columbus (Wis.)Democrat, May 27, 1895.
[4]Colonel Harvey Boyd McKeen, of Pennsylvania, commander of the Third Brigade.
[5]Columbus (Wis.)Democrat, May 27, 1895.
[6]Upon the Portage Public Library’s copy of the original pamphlet edition, Hon. A. J. Turner wrote the following explanatory note:
“The within description of the ‘The Battle of Gettysburg’ was written by Colonel Frank A. Haskell who was on the staff of General John Gibbon, to his brother at Portage, Wisconsin. It was submitted to me soon after, in theState Registeroffice, but its great length rendered its publication in our columns quite impossible. The article was written from the ‘Head Quarters of the Army of the Potomac,’ but bore no date, although it was during the same month as the battle, and was written by Colonel Haskell in the intervals of the march, and was a private letter without design of publication—A. J. Turner.”
Transcriber’s Notes:
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Other than the corrections noted by hover information, printer’s inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation have been retained.