“And now is the moment when the battle rages most furiously. Armistead, with a hundred and fifty of his Virginians, is inside our lines; only a few paces from our Brigade Commander, they look each other in the face. The artillery of the enemy ceases to fire, and the gunners of their batteries are plainly seen standing on their caissons to view the result, hoping for success, while Pettigrew’s Division, failing to support Pickett, halts as if terrified at the scene. This is the soldiers’ part of the fight; tactics and alignments are thrown to one side. No effort is made to preserve a formation. Union men are intermingled with the enemy, and in some cases surrounded by them, but refusing to surrender. Rifles, bayonets and clubbed muskets are freely used, and men on both sides rapidly fall.
“This struggle lasts but a few moments, when the enemy in the front throw down their arms, and rushing through the line of the Seventy-second, hasten to the rear as prisoners without a guard, while others of the column who might have escaped, unwilling to risk a retreat over the path by which they came, surrendered. The battle is over, the last attack of Lee at Gettysburg is repulsed, and the highest wave of the Rebellion has reached its farthest limit, ever after to recede.
“General Armistead, who was in the Confederate front, fell mortally wounded, close to the colors of the Seventy-second. One of the men of that regiment, who was near him, asked permission of the writer (Col. Chas. H. Banes, Adjutant Philadelphia Brigade), to carry him out of the battle, saying, ‘He has called for help as THE SON OF A WIDOW, an order was given to take him to an ambulance, and when his revolver was removed from his belt, it was seen that he had obeyed his own command, ‘to give them the cold steel,’ as no shot had been fired from it.
“At the close of Gen. Webb’s official report he states, ‘The Brigade captured nearly one thousand prisoners and six battle flags, and picked up fourteen hundred stand of arms and nine hundred sets of accoutrements. The loss was forty-three officers and four hundred and fifty-two men, and only forty-seven were missing. The conduct of this Brigade was most satisfactory.’”
Compare the calm, temperate, lucid, truthful and dignified statement of Colonel Banes, who, as the Adjutant of the Philadelphia (Webb’s) Brigade, was more familiar with its every movement than any officer or private soldier could possibly be; a statement prepared with deliberation by a man of mature years, and ripened judgment, with that of the raving, distracted, ridiculous utterances of the youthful Lieut. Haskell, in his book said to have been hastily written within two weeks after the battle, written between his hours of duty, while on the march from Gettysburg back to Harper’s Ferry, written by him while not yet fully recovered from the delirium of excitement that overcame him in the exalted position he claims to have assumed, that of Supersedeas Commander of the Army of the Potomac to annihilate the Confederate Army, in the event of its renewing the attack.
It was the author Haskell who asked this question of Lieut. Haskell:
“Great heavens! were my senses mad?—the larger portion of Webb’s Brigade—my God! it is true, was breaking from the cover of the works, without order or reason, with no hand uplifted to check them, was falling back a fear-stricken flock of confusion. A GREAT, MAGNIFICENT PASSION OVERCAME ME as I met the tide of these rabbits,” and a lot more of such incoherent, disconnected trash, from the young Lieutenant so OVERCOME WITH A MAGNIFICENT PASSION that the aberration of mind which followed while writing that narrative was inevitable.
Col. Banes says, “This struggle lasted but a few moments, when the enemy in front threw down their arms, and, rushing through the lines of the Seventy-second hastened to the rear as prisoners without a guard.”
It was these men of Pickett’s Division hastening to the rear whom Haskell met, if ever he met any one fleeing to the rear on that occasion; but “Great heavens! his senses were mad.” A “Magnificent Passion” overcame him. He was in a delirium of vainglory, and he mistook the defeated Veterans of Pickett’s Division, seeking shelter from impending death, for the victorious Veterans of the Philadelphia Brigade, and the Military Order, Loyal Legion, Commandery of Massachusetts, and the History Commission of Wisconsin, also apparently overcome with a “Magnificent Passion” for book publishing, reprinted his “Narrative” to the world, as their adopted waif and heir.