Southern Historical Society Papers, Volume 37.
Reverend J. William Jones, Ed.

[266]

The Color Episode of the one hundred and Forty-Ninth regiment, Pennsylvania Volunteers.

In the first days fight at Gettysburg, July 1, 1863.

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Paper read before the Lebanon county Historical Society, October 18, 1907, by J. H. Bassler, late Captain of the Color Company.

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The Reverend J. T. Lumpkin, of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, enjoys the highest regard and confidence of our people generally. To know him is to love him. So gentle and unassuming is he, it seems difficult to picture him in your mind's eye in a position so fraught with daring and imminent peril. As his so admirable qualities enlisted the spontaneous praise of the enemy, so his intrinsic worth, commands us.—Editor.

This paper is dedicated to the memory of Henry G. Brehm, Color Sergeant of the 149th Regiment Pennsylvania Volunteers, who, in the first day's fight at Gettysburg, was detached with his colors and guards to deceive the enemy and draw away from the regiment a destructive enfilading battery fire. He was never recalled; and his heroic efforts to save his colors against hopeless odds, after the brigade was flanked out of its position, and his escape practically cut off, stands unparalleled in the history of that great battle.

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Preface.

Justice to as gallant a little band of soldiers as ever faced the enemy, demands that Bates' history, and the official reports of Lt. Col. Dwight and Lt. Col. Huidekoper, in their reference to the colors of the 149th, P. V., at Gettysburg, be thoroughly investigated and subjected to the lime light of facts, in order that the cloud, which, through the false claims of others, obscures the heroism displayed by the bearers and guards of those colors, may be