Touring Little Round Top at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

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.  

 The Major General Warren

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.  

 

The 91st Pennsylvania Invantry

Monument sits on the ridge

of Little Round Top.

Pennsylvanians fought hard

to defend their land from

the Confederates.

This spired monument honors

the 44th New York Infantry

3rd Brigade First Division

5th Corps

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.

The 20th Maine Monument sits

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.