Battle of Little Round Top
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The Battle of Little Round Top was an assault by Confederate troops against the Union's left flank on July 2, 1863, the second day of the Battle of Gettysburg. Late in the afternoon, Major General John Bell Hood's division of Maj. Gen. James Longstreet's corps initiated its attack on the extreme left flank of the Union Army, which had become disjointed following the confused movements of Maj. Gen. Daniel Sickles's III Corps, which had moved several hundred yards forward of the Union line of battle. Brigadier General Gouverneur K. Warren, the chief engineer of the Army of the Potomac, had been scouting positions south of this, on the hills known as Round Top and Little Round Top, when movement from below caught his eye. Realizing the danger, he hurriedly sent staff officers, including Washington Roebling, to find help from any available corps.
The response to this request to help came in the form of Maj. Gen. George Sykes, commanding V Corps. Sykes quickly dispatched a division headed by Maj. Gen. James Barnes to Little Round Top. In the confusion, Colonel Strong Vincent, leading the lead brigade, took charge and directed his four regiments to Little Round Top. Arriving only ten minutes before the Confederates, Vincent ordered his brigade to take cover and wait. The last unit to arrive was Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain's regiment, the 20th Maine, which represented the far left of the Union line. Given the order to hold at all costs, Chamberlain and his men waited for what was to come.
The Confederates were the Alabama Brigade of Hood's Corps, under the command of Maj. Gen. Evander M. Law, who had taken command of the Corps when Hood was wounded during the fighting at the Devil's Den. Dispatching the 4th, 15th, and 47th Alabama, and the 4th and 5th Texas to Little Round Top, Law ordered his men to take the hill. Approaching the summit, Law's men were thrown back by the first Union volley and withdrew briefly to regroup. The 15th Alabama, commanded by Colonel William C. Oates, repositioned further right and attempted to find the Union left flank.
The left flank consisted of the Maine regiment and the 83rd Pennsylvania. Seeing the Confederates shifting around his flank, Chamberlain first stretched his line to the point where his men were in a single-file line, then ordered the southernmost half of his line to swing back during a lull following another Confederate charge. It was there that they formed an angle to the main line in an attempt to prevent the Confederate flanking maneuver. Despite heavy losses, the 20th Maine held through two subsequent charges by the 15th Alabama and other Confederate regiments for a total of ninety minutes. On the final charge, knowing that his men were out of ammunition, that his numbers were being depleted and further knowing that another charge could not be repulsed, Chamberlain ordered a maneuver that was considered unusual for the day: He ordered his left flank, which had been pulled back, to advance with bayonets. As soon as they were in line with the rest of the regiment, the remainder of the regiment charged, akin to a door shutting. This simultaneous frontal assault and flanking maneuver halted and captured a good portion of the 15th Alabama, the regiment to its front. Thirty years later, Chamberlain received a Medal of Honor for this action, but at the cost of over one third of his regiment.
Despite this minor victory, the rest of the Union regiments on the hill were in dire straits. While the Alabamans had pressed their attacks on the Union left, the 4th and 5th Texas were attacking Vincent's 16th Michigan, on the Union right. Rallying the crumbling regiment several times, Vincent was shot and killed during one Texas charge. Before the Michiganians could be demoralized, reinforcements from Warren, who had continued on to find more reinforcements to defend the hill, had arrived in the form of the 140th New York. The 140th charged into the fray of the battle, driving the Texans back and securing victory for the Union forces on the hill. Reinforced further by Brig. Gen. Stephen H. Weed's brigade of V Corps, Union forces held the hill throughout the rest of the battle, enduring persistent fire from Confederate sharpshooters stationed around Devil's Den. General Weed would be among the victims, as would artillery officer Charles Hazlett.
Impact of the Battle
Historians are split as to whether or not this particular engagement would have made any impact on the outcome of the overall Gettysburg battle. It is believed by some that, had Longstreet secured the hill and reinforced his position, the Union army would have been forced back to a better defensive position. Others believe that the battle itself had little relevance on Gettysburg as a whole, citing the blundering by Confederate forces in the center and right of the Union lines to execute attacks properly—thus giving the Union a chance to send reinforcements to drive the Confederates off the hill before they could become entrenched. Historians all agree, though, that the fighting here and in the Devil's Den was extremely fierce and representative of the battle as a whole.
The impact on the career of Chamberlain was immense. He received life-long fame and launched a political career as governor of Maine based on his accounts of the battle. The publication of Michael Shaara's novel The Killer Angels in 1974 (and the 1993 movie, Gettysburg, based on the novel) caused an enormous increase in public interest and awareness of this minor engagement. In the Gettysburg National Military Park, the most popular monument that visitors request to see is that of the 20th Maine.
Bibliography
Clark, Champ. The Civil War. Vol. "Gettysburg". New York: Time Life, 1985.