es? Indeed there was reason to suppose, and many
believed, while the battle was raging, that they had already come up
and were actually engaged. The moral effect of such a report circulated
through the ranks of contending forces, and even half credited, is
immense. The one it fills with enthusiasm and animates to heroic
endurance, for it summons them to victory; the other it fills with
terror, and makes effort seem useless, for it is to them the omen of
coming defeat. Nevertheless there can be little doubt that at the close
of the third day of conflict the rebel army was still a powerful
host--its organization not irreparably broken, its numbers equal if
not, indeed, superior to those opposed to it. True, it had been
repulsed with terrible slaughter, but it was far from being vanquished,
for it was made up of hardy and oft victorious veterans, to whom
repulse was not defeat. General Meade did not feel strong enough to
assume the offensive; and who shall undertake to say that there had yet
arisen an imperious necessity for the withdrawal of Lee across the
Potomac, except as involved in this very matter of reinforcements?

With regard to the ungenerous disparagement contained in the remarks of
General Halleck it is quite likely that he merely meant to say that the
troops hurriedly collected at Harrisburg were untried, and therefore
ought not to be entrusted with any critical service. But the words, as
they stand, carry with them a sweeping detraction and are nothing less
than calumnious. The Brooklyn Twenty-Third--or rather the Division,
taken as a whole, with which it was incorporated--has only to point to
its record as given very imperfectly in the following History, and
especially to the farewell orders of General Meade, and of the
commander of the Division, Brigadier General W. F. Smith, to whom the
nation is now looking as a military chieftain of great promise, for a
vindication of its fair name.

But it is not on account of any supposed historic value attaching to
the story it tells, that this book has been written. It was undertaken
rather as a memorial of the campaign of the Twenty-Third Regiment and
of other regiments with which it was from time to time associated,
interesting chiefly to the men who participated in the events
described, and to their friends. These will find herein a portraiture,
faithful so far as it goes, of the daily life they led amid the
monotony of the camp, the excitement of the siege, the