[2] On the first day of the Battle of Gettysburg, July 1, 1863, Confederate forces engaged Union troops to the west of town, near the Lutheran Theological Seminary.

[citation needed] As the Union retreat swept toward the College Lutheran Church, Chaplain Howell was assisting members of the medical staff inside the building.

Later, Snow wrote the most detailed account of what happened: "I had just had my wound dressed and was leaving through the front door just behind Chaplain Howell, at the same time when the advance skirmishers of the Confederates were coming up the street on a run.

The man who fired the shot stood on the exact spot where the memorial tablet has since been erected, and Chaplain Howell, fell upon the landing at the top of the steps.

[6][7] Bruce Davis, president of the Civil War Roundtable of Gettysburg, notes that he had always thought Howell "something of a fool" for refusing to surrender, but now thinks he may have been "pushed beyond his emotional limits.