f I were the destroying angel, as I might have become theirs,
they again faced the enemy. General Webb soon came to my assistance.
He was on foot, but he was active, and did all that one could do to
repair the breach or to avert its calamity."

Colonels O'Kane and Tschudy, of the 69th, were killed in action; Baxter,
of the 72d, wounded and carried off the field; Morehead and his 106th
Regiment had been sent by Gibbon to the support of Howard's Corps, thereby
materially weakening the Brigade; Col. R. Penn Smith, of the 71st, and
Lieut. Col. Theo. Hesser, of the 72d, were with their commands--which they
never left--encouraging their men to even greater deeds of heroism; Webb
is yet living and in a supplemental paper to this Reply will state
specifically where the Commander of the Brigade and his Adjutant were and
what they did.

While Haskell has long been dead--killed in action at Cold Harbor, in
1864, and it seems cruel to speak harshly of the dead, yet duty to the
living, and to the honored dead of the Philadelphia Brigade compels reply.
The unreliability of Lieut. Haskell as a writer of military matters was
equaled only by the egotism of the youthful Lieutenant. Thus this reckless
First Lieutenant wrote of General Howard and General Doubleday, and thus
he maligned the brave men of the Eleventh Corps:

"The two divisions of the Eleventh Corps commanded, by Generals
Schurz and Barlow, making but feeble opposition to the advancing
enemy, soon began to fall back. Back in disorganized masses they fled
into the town, hotly pursued, and in lanes, in barns, in yards and
cellars, throwing away their arms, they sought to hide like rabbits,
and were captured unresisting by hundreds.

"I suppose our losses during the first day would exceed five
thousand, of whom a large number were prisoners. Such usually is the
kind of loss sustained by the Eleventh Corps." (Haskell narrative,
page 6.)

The actual loss of the Eleventh Corps was 153 officers and 2,138 men
killed and wounded, and 62 officers and 1,448 men captured and missing, a
total of 3,801, thereby attesting that at least 2,291 brave men of the
Eleventh Corps did not "hide like rabbits," but that they fell like heroes
facing the enemy.

And thus of General Doubleday as to his action during Pickett's Charge on
the afternoon of the third day:

"Doubleday on the left was too far off, and too slow. On ano