Reply of the Philadelphia Brigade Association to the Foolish and Absurd Narrative of Lieutenant Frank A. Haskell

by Philadelphia Brigade Association

Haskell might, with equal truth and egotism, have written: “To Dick and his rider belong the honor of meeting and repulsing Pickett’s Division,” and who can say that it would not have been accorded equally as generous consideration by the Loyal Legion of Massachusetts, and the History Commission of Wisconsin, as was given to all the other nonsense he wrote of the Battle of Gettysburg.

It has been said of Pickett’s Virginians, that accustomed to handling a gun, or rifle, from boyhood, any one of them could kill a jay bird at a distance of 150 yards, but not one of Pickett’s Division of 4,000 Veterans could kill that horse or that first lieutenant, and they the only horse and man in sight, and not forty yards away, parading between Hancock’s Corps of the Union Army and Longstreet’s Corps of the Confederate Army.

Oh! Veterans of Pickett’s Division, you who killed or wounded 491 of our Comrades of the Philadelphia Brigade from the time you began one of the most desperate charges ever recorded in the history of wars, starting from Seminary Ridge, one mile distant from the Bloody Angle, until you reached the culminating point where the intrepid Armistead fell mortally wounded within the lines of the Philadelphia Brigade. You who made such slaughter in OUR RANKS AT LONG RANGE could not kill First Lieutenant Frank Aretas Haskell, or his horse, and they not forty yards distant from your firing line, and he “the one solitary horseman between the Second Division of Hancock’s Corps and Pickett’s Division of Longstreet’s Corps.” And the Military Order, Loyal Legion, Commandery of Massachusetts, and the History Commission of Wisconsin, as late as the year 1908 in expensive publications confirm the Haskell “Narrative” of his wild “Buffalo Bill” ride between the Union and Confederate lines, and depicting your skill as marksmen, with a horse and officer as the inviting target not forty yards distant—defying the bullets of the most skillful marksmen of the Confederate Army.

Is there a veteran soldier of the Civil War, or even a thoughtful man in the United States, who believes this part of Haskell’s Narrative “of riding between the lines the one solitary horseman, and he not forty yards distant from the enemy?” Do Captains Daniel Hall and Charles Hunt, the Loyal Legion of Massachusetts, and Wisconsin History Commission, themselves endorsing it, really believe it?

It was on the third day that “Dick” was plugged with enough of Confederate lead to have warranted Haskell in organizing a Company to mine the lead in “Dick’s” dead body. His horse “Billy” was pumped just as full of lead on the second day, as this absurd statement on page 37 attests:

“And my horse can hardly move. What can be the reason? I know that he has been touched by two of their bullets today, but not to wound or lame him to speak of. I foolishly spurred my horse again. No use—he would only walk. I dismounted; I could not lead him along. So, out of temper, I rode him to headquarters, which I reached at last. With a light I found what was the matter with ‘Billy.’ A bullet had entered his chest just in front of my left leg as I was mounted, and the blood was running down all his side and leg, and the air from his lungs came out of the bullet hole. I rode him at the Second Bull Run, and at the First and Second Fredericksburg, and at Antietam after brave ‘Joe’ was killed, but I shall never mount him again. ‘Billy’s’ battles are over.”

Just one more instance of the scores of the colossal vanity of Haskell. It tells how General Meade turned the command of the Army of the Potomac over to the youthful First Lieutenant of Infantry—Frank Aretas Haskell. It is to be found on pages 69 and 70 of the Haskell “Narrative.” The battle had ended, and the Napoleon of Gettysburg, while patting himself on the back, was planting data in his mind for printing in his “Narrative,” and thus Paul planted, and the Apollos of Massachusetts and Wisconsin watered.

“Would to heaven Generals Hancock and Gibbon could have stood where I did, and have looked upon that field. But they are both severely wounded and have been carried from the field. One person did come, and he was no less than Major-General Meade, who rode up accompanied alone by his son—an escort not large for a commander of such an army. As he arrived near me he asked, ‘How is it going here?’ I answered, ‘I believe, General, the army is repulsed.’ With a touch of incredulity he further asked, ‘What! IS THE ASSAULT ENTIRELY REPULSED?’ I replied, ‘It is, sir.’ And then his right hand moved as if he would have caught off his hat and waved it, but instead he waved his hand and said, ‘Hurrah!’ He asked where Hancock and Gibbon were, but before I had time to answer that I did not know, he resumed, ‘No matter, I will give my orders to You, and YOU will see them executed.’ He then gave directions that the troops should be reformed as soon as practicable, and kept in their places, as the enemy might be mad enough to attack again, adding, ‘IF THE ENEMY DOES ATTACK, CHARGE HIM IN THE FLANKS AND SWEEP HIM FROM THE FIELD—do you understand?’ The General then, a gratified man, galloped in the direction of his headquarters.”

Of course, General Meade rode back to his headquarters a gratified man. Had he not just received the information from First Lieutenant Haskell that the enemy had been “entirely repulsed?” and had not Meade issued an order to this Wellington of Lee’s Waterloo to sweep the enemy from the field, if he were mad enough to renew the attack, by charging him on the flanks? General Meade’s order to Haskell was so sedately humorous as to leave us in doubt as to whether the First Lieutenant and his horse alone were to charge the enemy’s flanks, or for Lieutenant Napoleon Wellington Haskell to order the First, Eleventh and Twelfth Corps to charge his left flank, and the Third, Fifth and Sixth Corps his right flank, while Haskell and Dick swept his centre from the field.

And this is the “narrative” that a Loyal Legion and a History Commission feel honored in publishing. If the object was to prove that they were just as vainglorious as Haskell, has not this fact been fully established by their published books? Vaccinated by the Haskell virus of vanity and venom, the buffoonery of Haskell has been transmitted by a Military Order of the Loyal Legion, and the History Commission of a great State, to their admiring friends and the public. Like Haskell, “A great, magnificent passion came on them that seemingly sublimed every sense and faculty—when, great heavens! their senses mad,” the Battle of Gettysburg, by Frank Aretas Haskell, First Lieutenant, Sixth Wisconsin Infantry, was “published under the auspices of the Commandery of the State of Massachusetts, Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States, and the Wisconsin History Commission.”