Hey Doyle, I had a nice long post up last night but my computer got messed up and didn't post my message. The wife was also a little tensed up because of me spending time on here. Anyhow one of the brigads facing the Peen State Bucktails was lead by Jefferson Davis' nephew..Joseph...which is probably why he kept it as a trophy. They got the 150 colors later but had fought earlier around the 149...the 149 fake out.. here's a little story from the people in Stones brigade and the controversy between the 143, 149 and 150....

Stone's own report put the situation as follows:

[A] new battery upon a hill on the extreme right opened a most destructive enfilade of our line, and at the same time all the troops upon my right fell back nearly a half mile to the Seminary Ridge. This made my position hazardous and difficult in the extreme, but rendered its maintenance all the more important.
He moved the troops under his command into a right-angle deployment, with some men still on the ridge but with others facing to the north along Chambersburg Pike. However, the movement attracted Confederate notice. Shelling from Herr's Ridge became intense. Hartwig described Stone's response:

The situation threatened to grow intolerable. Stone improvised. Colonel [Walton] Dwight [of the 149th] was instructed to detach his color guard to a point north of the Chambersburg Pike, about fifty yards to the left front of the regiment. [Dwight's men] found a small breastwork of rails . . . and hunkered down with only their colors exposed to weather the storm.

The ruse worked [as the Confederates] spied the colors and assumed the 149th had changed their position again and shifted their fire at them, sparing Dwight's main body further punishment.

The color guard was under the direction of Sergeant Henry G. Brehm. His men were Corporals John Friddell, Frederick Hoffman, and Franklin W. Lehman, and Color Guards Henry H. Spayd and John H. Hammel.

The Confederates, part of General A. P. Hill's forces, were massing for an attack on the Union line north of the Chambersburg Pike, as Stone could see from his position. Stone's official report described the attack, which began about 1:30. He had been able to watch their formation for at least 2 miles:

It appeared to be a nearly continuous line of deployed battalions, with other battalions in mass or reserve. Their line being formed not parallel but obliquely to ours, their left first became engaged with the troops on the northern prolongation of Seminary Ridge. The battalions engaged soon took a direction parallel to those opposed to them, thus causing a break in their line and exposing the flank of those engaged to the first of my two regiments in the Chambersburg road.The Confederate troops began to scale a fence along a steep railroad cut that had been built some years earlier for an intended extension of the Pennsylvania Railroad parallel to the pike. The 149th opened fire, nearly destroying one North Carolina brigade. Stone stated, "Though at the longest range of our pieces, we poured a most destructive fire upon their flanks, and, together with the fire in their front, scattered them over the fields."

Anticipating a second attack under General Junius Daniel, Stone ordered Colonel Dwight and the 149th to occupy the railroad cut. While Daniel's men directed their fire to the repositioned colors, the 149th held its fire until the North Carolinians had reached the fence 22 paces beyond the cut. Stone explained that, "when they came to a fence within pistol-shot of his line [Dwight] gave them a staggering volley; reloading as they climbed the fence, and waiting till they came within 30 yards, gave them another volley, and charged, driving them back over the fence in utter confusion."
The 143rd had remained in its original position along Chambersburg Pike in support of the 149th. The volleys from the 143rd helped repulse Daniel's men. According to Colonel Dwight, "the enemy's dead and wounded [were] completely covering the ground in our front."

Although many observers and historians considered these actions as heroic, Private Harris of the 143rd viewed them from the perspective of his grudge against Stone and the 149th. Years later, when he recalled watching Dwight's men of the 149th moving toward the railroad cut, he summarized his thoughts at the time:

There go the men of the 149th with their tails just a bobbing. What does that mean? Have they got this job by contract? Stone is after a big chunk of glory for his tails and does not intend that the 143rd shall have any of it.
At about this point, between 1:30 and 2 p.m., as Colonel Wister faced attack from the railroad cut to the west, Colonel Stone was struck in the hip and arm. Chamberlin described the circumstances:

Colonel Stone, who had ably directed the operations of his brigade, exposing himself fearlessly at all times, went forward a short distance to reconnoitre [sic], when he received severe wounds in the hip and farm, which entirely disabled him.
Stone turned over his command to Colonel Wister and was carried off the field to a makeshift hospital in the McPherson barn, where he was placed on straw in a horse stall.

With Stone out of action, his brigade held McPherson's Ridge until nearly 3:30. Soon, the barn was behind the Confederate line and Stone was among the prisoners of war.

In the confusion, no one had ordered the 149th color guard to retreat from its successful ruse. Colonel Stone was incapacitated. Colonel Dwight was reportedly drunk. Captain John H. Basler, whose Company C of the 149th, included the color guard, was also injured and out of action. Still, the failure to recall the guard would be one of the points of controversy for historians describing the events of July 1, 1863.

Sergeant Brehm felt duty bound to remain at his post until relieved, but when it became clear the tide of battle was turning, he dispatched Corporal Hoffman to get revised orders. Finding that his comrades had retreated, Hoffman could not find an officer to issue new orders. Seeing that Sergeant Brehm's position was about to be overrun, Hoffman joined the retreat. The Confederates had been hesitant to approach the flags, which implied the presence of a regiment. Finally, a squad from the 42nd Mississippi moved forward cautiously to investigate. With a Rebel yell, they leaped into the hiding place. A frenzied fight over the colors took place, with the color guard desperately trying unsuccessfully to save the colors. In the end, Color Sergeant Brehm was killed trying to keep the colors from falling into enemy hands.

The color episode would be debated for many years, first for its employment and second for the failure to recall the color guard. As to the first, Matthews considered it "an unlikely maneuver, not found in any military textbook of the time." He wondered why only the colors of the 149th, but not the 143rd and the 150th, were moved to deceive the Confederate forces. Was this, he wonders, another example of Stone favoring the 149th he had recruited in 1862? Perhaps, after all, as Stone and Dwight later claimed, the episode was simply intended to deceive the Confederates:

We can therefore decide that while unconventional it was effective, though certainly not in keeping with mid-nineteenth century military tactics where honor on the battlefield dictated a great deal. Whatever the reason, we can be relatively certain that the ruse saved lives during Daniel's second advance on the Railroad Cut.
Years later, Captain Basler attempted to clear up what had happened, particularly in response to the controversy about why the color guard had not been recalled. In addition to pulling together accounts from the survivors of the color guard and others, he contacted General Stone, who replied to his "Dear Comrade" from Washington on September 26, 1896. He explained his plan:

The colors of the 149th were a target for the 34 guns which practically enfiladed the Regiment from the ridge beyond the run and when they had got the range, there was no safety for the regiment from quick destruction, but in confusing and deceiving the enemy [as] to its location. My plan was to fire a volley or two from the edge of the R.R. cut and bring the regiment back under cover of the smoke, leaving the colors to draw the fire of the batteries. But the movement, as it was executed, had greater results than I had hoped. It deceived the enemy in our front also, with the idea that we had force enough to take the offensive, and they delayed their final attack on that account, and "every minute gained then and there was worth a regiment," as Col. Nicholson says.
He indicated that he would have ordered the color guard to return "if I had been spared." He added that the regiment "could not have lived to do the grand work it did later in the action" if he had not dispatched the color guard. Noting that General Doubleday referred to the Bucktails' position as the "key point" in the battle and that the enemy's official reports agreed, General Stone stated:

I have proposed to the [U.S. Battlefield] Commission to establish the "key point" and mark it with a special monument, and shall ask the survivors of the 149th at their next reunion to co-operate in this work of justice to the Brigade.(80)
Overall, the new Bucktails had been severely weakened. The 149th had lost 335 men (killed, wounded, or missing in action) or 74.4 percent of the 450 men who began the day's battle. The 150th lost 263 out of 400 men (65.7 percent), while the 143rd lost 250 of 465 men (53.7 percent).(81)

As Hartwig explained, these losses, high though they were, had served their purpose:

The stand on McPherson's Ridge had purchased time, but the cost had been staggering. Every regiment, except for three, had lost more than sixty percent of their men. Four had lost over seventy percent . . . . What had such ghastly sacrifice gained? The job of the 1st Corps was to buy time and inflict losses. Doubleday had purchased perhaps one and one-half precious hours by defending McPherson's Ridge. His defenders had also inflicted crippling losses upon their attackers . . . . The Confederates had won a tactical victory on July 1, but the delaying action of the I and XI Corps, and Buford's cavalry, had given the Federal army the strategic advantage, which ultimately proved to be decisive in the outcome of the battle.
Stone, in his official report, gave all the credit to his men:

No language can do justice to the conduct of my officers and men on the bloody "first day" to the coolness with which they watched and awaited, under a fierce storm of shot and shell, the approach of the enemy's overwhelming masses; their ready obedience to orders, and the prompt and perfect execution, under fire, of all the tactics of the battle-field; to the fierceness of their repeated attacks, or to the desperate tenacity of their resistance. They fought as if each man felt that upon his own arm hung the fate of the day and the nation.
Doubleday also praised Stone and the Bucktails in his official report:

I relied greatly on Stone's brigade to hold the post assigned them, as I soon saw I would be obliged to change front with a portion of my line to face the northwest, and his brigade held the pivot of the movement. My confidence in this noble body of men was not misplaced . . . . They repulsed the repeated attacks of vastly superior numbers at close quarters, and maintained their position until the final retreat of the whole line. Stone himself was shot down, battling to the last.

A partisan report Doyle, but the best I'se could do under the circumstances. Adios, I must depart before my wife comes around blowing and moaning like a whale out of water. By the extent of some of the epistles I see on the board others must not have this trouble or significantly more time on their hands. I remain your eternal foe and sometimes friend.

Collin Wilberforce Chase.