It has been asked, what could have been Haskell’s object in so perverting the facts of history relative to the Battle of Gettysburg? Gen. Henry S. Hindekoper, of Philadelphia, who won high renown in the battle, aptly answers the question in the statement made by him, wherein he said of Haskell’s “Narrative,” that “from a historical standpoint it is inaccurate and misleading, and from an ethical standpoint it is indecent, venemous, scandalous and VAINGLORIOUS.”
After describing the first day’s fight as minutely as though he had observed it all from the cupola of the Seminary Building on Seminary Ridge, Haskell thus seeks to acquit himself from all misstatements by saying: “Of the events of the first day of July I do not speak from personal knowledge.”
At two o’clock in the afternoon of July 1st, Haskell was at Taneytown, 13 miles distant from Gettysburg, and between 8 and 9 o’clock in the evening the Second Corps was halted four miles south of Gettysburg, where it, and Lieut. Haskell, biouvacked for the night; therefore—except detracting from officers and men who rendered heroic service—no glory came to Haskell on the first day. He “did not see what he thought he saw.”
At early dawn on July 2d Hancock’s Corps was moved forward about four miles, and at 6.30 A. M. was placed in position on Cemetery Ridge. The Third Division (Hayes), on the right, connecting with the left of Howard’s Eleventh Corps; the First Division (Caldwell’s), on the left, connecting with the right of Sickles, Third Corps, and the Second Division (Gibbon), in the centre, and Haskell started in early on the second day to catch fame, and thus, according to his own “Narrative,” he succeeded:
“A bullet entered the chest of my horse, ‘Billy,’ just in front of my left leg; a kick from a hitched horse in the dark that would likely have broken my ankle if it had not been for a very thick boot, but which did break my temper, and a bullet from a sharp shooter that hissed by my cheek so close that I felt the movement of the air distinctly.”
And thus the “Narrative” recites as to the third and last day of the battle:
“I had been struck upon the thigh by a bullet which I think must have glanced and partially spent its force upon my saddle. It had pierced the thick cloth of my trousers, and two thicknesses of underclothing, but had not broken the skin, leaving me with an enormous bruise, that for a time benumbed the entire leg. At the time of receiving it, I heard the thump, and noticed it, and the hole in the cloth into which I thrust my finger, and I experienced a feeling of relief when I found that my leg was not pierced.”
We shudder when we think what might have happened to that leg, if the bullet, when it saw Haskell, had not so kindly glanced and spent its force on his saddle before piercing the thick cloth of his breeches, and the two thicknesses of his underclothing.
The second and third days brought scant renown to such an ambitious officer as First Lieut. Haskell, but immortal fame is very chary with her favors. She tries a man long, and she tries him hard, before wreathing his brow with the laurel of victory, and fitting him for a niche in the Temple of Fame. Haskell realized all this at the close of the battle on this afternoon of July third, and he evidently concluded to create a niche for himself in the holy of holies by a page or two of romance in his “Narrative,” and so he planned it all out.