soldierly, appropriate head, so cool, so clear, I am yet
glad, as that was to be, that his example and his tuition have not been
entirely in vain to me, and that my impulses then prompted me to do
somewhat as he might have done had he been on the field. The encomiums
of officers, so numerous and some of so high rank, generously accorded
me for my conduct upon that occasion--I am not without vanity--were
gratifying. My position as a staff officer gave me an opportunity to see
much, perhaps as much as any one person, of that conflict. My
observations were not so particular as if I had been attached to a
smaller command; not so general as may have been those of a staff
officer to the General commanding the army; but of such as they were, my
heart was there, and I could do no less than to write something of them,
in the intervals between marches and during the subsequent repose of the
army at the close of the campaign. I have put somewhat upon these
pages--I make no apology for the egotism, if such there is, of this
account--it is not designed to be a history, but simply _my account_ of
the battle. It should not be assumed, if I have told of some
occurrences, that there were not other important ones. I would not have
it supposed that I have attempted to do full justice to the good conduct
of the fallen, or the survivors of the 1st and 12th Corps. Others must
tell of them. I did not see their work. A full account of _the battle as
it was_ will never, can never be made. Who could sketch the changes,
the constant shifting of the bloody panorama? It is not possible. The
official reports may give results as to losses, with statements of
attacks and repulses; they may also note the means by which results were
attained, which is a statement of the number and kind of the forces
employed, but the connection between means and results, the mode, the
battle proper, these reports touch lightly. Two prominent reasons at
least exist which go far to account for the general inadequacy of these
official reports, or to account for their giving no true idea of what
they assume to describe--the literary infirmity of the reporters and
their not seeing themselves and their commands as others would have seen
them. And factions, and parties, and politics, the curses of this
Republic, are already putting in their unreasonable demands for the
foremost honors of the field. "Gen. Hooker won Gettysburg." How? Not
with the army in person or by infinitesima