Union
General Meade and Confederate
General Lee rushed troops into battle positions at Gettysburg on July 1 and 2. General Lee was looking
for a victory on northern soil. General Meade had orders from President
Lincoln to defeat Lee and his
Army. Each side wanted to claim the best positioned ground for battle.
Union
Major General Gouverneur Warren, Chief Engineer of the Army of the Potomac,
quickly placed his troops at Little Round Top, the extreme southern end of the
Union line. just minutes before the Confederates arrived.
Monument surveys
the ground
below
as he plans the defense
of
his assigned position.
Confederate
troops must cross this open area to
take
Little Round Top.
Confederate
General John B. Hood commands the assaulting forces. Wave after
wave of Southern soldiers charged up the hill. More and more Union and
Confederate soldiers fell, wounded or dead, during the onslaught.
Monument sits on the ridge
of Little
Round Top.
Pennsylvanians
fought hard
to defend
their land from
the
Confederates.
This
spired monument honors
111
New Yorkers were killed,
wounded
or captured at
Little
Round Top.
The 20th Maine, under the command
of Colonel Joshua Chamberlain, was positioned at the extreme end of the Union
line on Little Round Top. Confederate troops stormed up the hill
repeatedly and were repulsed, each time. The remaining men on both sides were exhausted and
the 20th Maine was running out ammunition. Colonel Chamberlain lined up
his soldiers, the gap between each one was wider that he would have liked, but they did cover the assigned position. Chamberlain ordered his men to mount bayonets on their the ends of their rifles and charge
down hill, at the advancing Confederates.
in the
woods at the center of
the Union
line that held their
line on
July 2, 1863.
Colonel Chamberlain, like General
Sickles, was not a professional soldier. He was a former Professor of Rhetoric at Bowdoin College in Maine. Both
officers received orders on July 2 at Gettysburg. Colonel Chamberlain
obeyed orders and rallied his men to repulse wave after wave of Confederate
charges on Little Round Top. General Sickles disobeyed orders. His
decision resulted in Southern troops overrunning Sickles' chosen position and
breaching the Union lines at the Peach Tree
Orchard.
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