The Battle of Gettysburg (review)

Book Reviews119 dier's star to return to a regular regiment as lieutenant colonel. His brief service with the Pennsylvania militia during the Antietam campaign was an unhappy experience. Yet no general officer was more respected, if not beloved , by the men who served with him—witness the "presentation" sword bought with enlisted men's dollars that he was not to hve to receive. Soon after Gettysburg, Frank HaskeU spoke of him as one of the soldier generals of the army. This is a book that is easy to read, with its climax the crucial battle of the war. It is tobe hoped that Towards Gettysburg wiU whet the curiosity of many readers—and thereby help do justice to the memory of a gaUant gentleman. It wiU delight the student with its first-rate reference summary and index. O. J. Keller Springfield, Illinois. The Battle of Gettysburg. By Frank Aretas Haskell. Edited by Bruce Catton. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. 1958. Pp. xviii, 169, $3.50.) this slender volume is neither more nor less than it purports to be: the personal account of a Union staff officer who was in an excellent position to see and to participate in the climactic events of 2-3 July, 1863. Written within two weeks of the battle, this account necessarily lacks the broad perspective and statistical accuracy that come only with time, but at the same time it evokes about as true a portrait of the battlefield as could be desired. Set down not by a rifleman who laid in wait behind a raü fence, nor yet by a senior commander concerned with grand tactics and logistics, this is the story of the battle through the eyes of the aide-de-camp to a division commander of the SecondArmy Corps. Frank HaskeU at thirty-five was not a professional soldier, but by mid-1863 he had acquired a very professional outlook. Native of Vermont, Dartmouth '54, HaskeU was practising law in Madison when war broke out. Joining the Sixth Wisconsin, he became its adjutant, and when the regiment came under the famed Iron Brigade, HaskeU was appointed aide-de-camp to its commander , West Pointer and renowned artüleryman Brigadier General John Gibbon. The two became fast friends, and from Gibbon the younger man learned the müitary trade weU enough to be caUed upon, the winter after Gettysburg, to organize and command the new 36th Wisconsin. As its colonel, stfll in Gibbon's division and having just taken temporary command of a brigade , HaskeU was instantly killed in the doomed assault at Cold Harbor. In this narrative HaskeU gives a fine and graphic account of what he actually saw at Gettysburg. Of what he deduced, he is on less firm ground. His ideas of the motives and methods that brought Meade to Gettysburg, for example, are not entirely accurate, and his presentation of Confederate strengths is vastly overestimated. Since he was not on the field on July 1, his description of that day's fighting is hearsay only. His telling of the actions of 120CIVIL W AR history the second day is confusing, as the Confederate tactics must have been confusing to him; he seems not to have realized, even after the battle, what a near thing the fight for Little Round Top had been. HaskeU's big day, of course, was July 3, and on that fateful day events conspired to push the eager ADC to the very forefront of the most critical actions. The Second Corps became the focus of the Confederate attack; both Hancock, the corps commander, and Gibbon, succeeding him, were wounded, and at the crisis there was a lapse in command. HaskeU, as Gibbon's aide, was used to transmitting orders, and in the heat of the moment he began improvising his own orders, very well indeed. The only mounted officer on the corps front, HaskeU gave the necessary directions to brigade and regimental commanders, and encouragement to wavering troops, to stop and then repel the near penetration . In a first-person account by a lieutenant this has to sound like bravado, but the Official Records bear out the fact that HaskeU was, indeed, a major figure on...