Philadelphia Brigade Association

The Philadelphia Brigade Association was formed by survivors of the Philadelphia Brigade, a Union Army brigade made up mainly of the 69th, 71st, 72nd, and 106th Pennsylvania Infantry. After the Civil War, the association helped keep the brigade’s history alive through reunions, memorial work, and published defenses of its wartime reputation.

The group is especially connected with remembrance at Antietam, where it purchased land in the 1890s for what became Philadelphia Brigade Park and dedicated the towering Philadelphia Brigade Monument in 1896. That work shows the association’s larger purpose: honoring the brigade’s service and making sure later generations would remember its role in the Army of the Potomac.

As a credited author, the association is best known for a 1910 reply to Lieutenant Frank A. Haskell’s narrative of Gettysburg. That book gives modern readers a vivid sense of how Civil War veterans argued about memory, leadership, and battlefield honor long after the fighting ended.