Haskell knew—none better than he—that the Philadelphia Brigade met and repulsed the brunt of the charge of Pickett’s Division, but he would immortalize himself as a hero by recording in his “Narrative,” that the Brigade broke from the “Bloody Angle” without orders or reason, with no uplifted hand of Webb, or Banes, or Dennis O’Kane, or Martin Tschudy, or R. Penn Smith, or Theodore Hesser to check them; that he, Haskell, met them, “a tide of rabbits,” and ordered them to halt, to about face, and to fire, and hearing his voice they obeyed his command, and he led them back to glorious victory, and that he—as the one solitary horseman between the lines, only 40 yards from the enemy—repulsed Longstreet’s Corps, and thereby, therein and thereon ended the great conflict at Gettysburg.
It was such a ridiculous page of fiction that if Haskell had survived the vicissitudes of war, he would have eliminated it, and if he died before the close of the Civil War—as he did—he would trust to luck; he trusted aright, for a Loyal Legion concluded to continue the fiction, thereby placing its laurel on Haskell’s brow, crowning HIM the Hero of Gettysburg; and a State History Commission concluded to fill a niche in the Temple of the Immortals with the name and fame of First Lieutenant Frank Aretas Haskell, but not until fifty years after the fiction had been written, when few were left to refute that romance of the most vainglorious soldier of the Civil War.
AN OFFICIAL STATEMENT OF THE LOSS OF THE PHILADELPHIA BRIGADE.
The total number of officers and men present for duty of the Philadelphia Brigade, at the Battle of Gettysburg, was 1,573, and the total loss was 491, given in detail, as to regiments in the annexed tables:
NUMBER PRESENT FOR DUTY
| REGIMENTS | OFFICERS | MEN | TOTAL |
| General Staff | 4 | — | 4 |
| 69th | 22 | 312 | 344 |
| 71st | 27 | 366 | 393 |
| 72nd | 26 | 447 | 473 |
| 106th | 30 | 313 | 343 |
| Brigade Band | — | 16 | 16 |
| Totals | 119 | 1454 | 1573 |
LOSS OF PHILADELPHIA BRIGADE AND SECOND CORPS AT GETTYSBURG.
| No. of Regt. | No. of Killed | No. of Wounded | Missing | Totals | |||
| Officers | Men | Officers | Men | Officers | Men | ||
| 69th | 4 | 36 | 8 | 72 | 2 | 15 | 137 |
| 71st | 2 | 19 | 3 | 55 | 3 | 16 | 98 |
| 72nd | 2 | 42 | 7 | 139 | — | 2 | 192 |
| 106th | 1 | 8 | 9 | 45 | — | 1 | 64 |
| Totals | 9 | 105 | 27 | 211 | 5 | 34 | 491 |
TOTAL LOSS SECOND CORPS.
| No. of Killed | No. of Wounded | Captured or Missing | Total | |||
| Officers | Men | Officers | Men | Officers | Men | |
| 66 | 731 | 270 | 2923 | 13 | 365 | 4369 |