While General Weed was meeting with Sickles, his brigade was moving west along the Wheatfield Road just north of Little Round Top. General Warren raced down the hill’s north slope and intercepted one of Weed’s regiments, the 140th New York led by Colonel Patrick O’Rorke, who told Warren that he was en route to help Sickles. But Warren convinced the colonel that troops were needed immediately on top of the hill. Fortunately O’Rorke consented. As the exhausted Confederates were overwhelming the 16th Michigan’s right, O’Rorke and his 140th New York charged toward Vincent’s line, slammed into the Confederates, and pushed them back down the hill. For his timely efforts, O’Rorke took a bullet during the charge and was killed instantly. The remainder of Weed’s brigade was moved “to the right and front some distance” to support Sickles, but before becoming engaged was somehow ordered (probably by Sykes) back to Little Round Top at the double-quick. The regiments took position on Vincent’s right, near the summit, and although General Weed was also killed by a Confederate bullet (thereby preventing him from further illuminating his role in supporting Sickles), they helped discourage further attempts by the Rebels to take the hill. Complicating matters for Longstreet’s attack was Hazlett’s Battery D, 5th United States Artillery, which reached the summit and began dropping shells into Benning’s exhausted Rebels who had conquered Devil’s Den.25
Not only had Sickles left Little Round Top empty, but both Sykes and Warren also blamed Sickles for nearly diverting Weed’s brigade away from the hill. Sykes stated in his report that after posting Tilton and Sweitzer’s brigades near the Wheatfield, he rode back toward the Taneytown Road and found Weed’s brigade “moving away from the height where it had been stationed, and where its presence was vital.” Sykes dispatched a staff officer to determine why Weed was moving and was told, “By order of General Sickles.” Sykes claimed he immediately directed Weed to reoccupy it. Later, in 1872, Sykes again complained of “an interference of General Sickles by which General Weed was withdrawn in part from Round Top, and placed en route towards the right, until I met him, and at once returned him to his place.”26
Warren likewise blamed “earnest appeals for support” that drew the Fifth Corps away from the hill and caused the corps to ultimately reach the position “in such small detachments.” Warren thought Sickles’ position was “untenable” and it was a “dreadful misfortune of the day that any reinforcements went to that line, for all alike, Third Corps, Second Corps, and Fifth Corps, were driven from it with great loss.” Unlike Sickles’ left flank at Devil’s Den, however, Little Round Top proved impregnable to Southern assault. With Benning’s brigade having advanced on Devil’s Den (instead of following Law’s brigade), Longstreet’s attack on Little Round Top lacked the depth necessary to follow up initial repulses. This lack of depth forced regiments such as Oates’ 15th Alabama to repeatedly and unsuccessfully attack the same positions. Without reinforcements, the Confederate infantry ultimately fell back, and when the day concluded, the Federals still held the hill.27
The successful Fifth Corps defense of Little Round Top yielded Meade at least one clear benefit. The Confederate occupation of Devil’s Den was neutralized by the Fifth Corps’ higher position only 500 yards to the east. Benning “made my dispositions to hold the ground gained, which was all that I could do” since Little Round Top now appeared “to me almost impregnable to any merely front attack even with fresh men. Indeed, to hold the ground we had appeared a difficult task.” Lieutenant Charles Hazlett’s battery was throwing shells from the hill “and every head that showed itself was the target for a Minie ball.” Longstreet’s offensive momentum was stalling. 28
The military significance of Little Round Top is open for legitimate debate. According to Colonel James Rice, who commanded the brigade after Vincent’s fall, “The object of the enemy was evident. If he could gain the vantage ground occupied by this brigade, the left flank of our line must give way, opening to him a vast field for successful operations in the rear of our entire army.” Outside of the army, as early as 1866, correspondent William Swinton wrote in Campaigns of the Army of the Potomac that Hood’s capture of this point “would have taken the entire line in reverse.” Had Hood massed his “whole division on the force that had outflanked Sickles’ left, pushed boldly for its rocky summit, he would have grasped in his hand the key of the battle-ground, and Gettysburg might have been one of those fields that decide the issues of wars.” Numerous later Gettysburg histories, such as Oliver Wilcox Norton’s influential The Attack and Defense of Little Round Top (1913), echoed this sentiment. Norton wrote that the capture of Little Round Top “would have forced Meade to abandon his strong position in disorderly retreat.” While this belief that Little Round Top was the “key” to Meade’s line is common throughout Gettysburg historical literature, the novel The Killer Angels probably cemented this notion permanently by vividly portraying the 20th Maine’s heroic defense of the “end of the line.”29
Strategically speaking, neither General Lee nor James Longstreet identified Little Round Top as a significant objective in their battle reports. Their objective was to envelop and drive in the Federal left flank, supported by elevated artillery positions along the Emmitsburg Road. Since Lee probably did not believe that the Federal left extended as far south as Little Round Top, there was no need for the hill to be an objective of the attack. However, once Longstreet finally commenced his assault, it became readily apparent that Sickles’ line extended farther south than Lee had originally believed. Any attempt to drive the Federal left was going to at least require a successful flanking of Devil’s Den, which from a distance mistakenly appeared to numerous Confederate attackers as an extension of Cemetery Ridge itself.
Once the combat moved toward the Southern end of Cemetery Ridge, Little Round Top obviously became the dominant terrain landmark on the left end of Meade’s line. As the true left flank of Meade’s army, Little Round Top became a critical goal in Longstreet’s attack. Meade, Warren, Vincent, and many others equated Little Round Top’s defense to the successful outcome of the battle. In order to crush Meade’s left, Hood’s field commanders saw the obvious need to drive the Fifth Corps reinforcements out of this position. After that, further speculation on what might have happened had the Confederates captured Little Round Top can never be proven, one way or the other. Numerous scenarios could have placed victory in the hands of either side. Claims that Confederate occupation of Little Round Top would have decided “the issues of wars,” as Swinton and generations of Gettysburg historians have written, are probably exaggerated. The seminal demonstrable fact is that the Confederates failed to take Little Round Top and drive Meade’s army from Cemetery Ridge. When Longstreet failed to drive the Fifth Corps off of Little Round Top, his flank attack increasingly degenerated into a series of frontal assaults farther north on lower Cemetery Ridge. Ignoring the exaggerated postwar claims, the Union defense of Little Round Top remains a pivotal turning point of the fighting on July 2.30
In the Dan Sickles story, as the post-battle legend of Little Round Top grew, the fact that this defense was conducted by another corps became a major stumbling block in his efforts to lionize himself as the day’s hero. Sickles and his partisans eventually became openly hostile to Sykes’ Fifth Corps. The Fifth Corps was being credited with saving the so-called “key” to the battlefield; perhaps saving the battle itself from Third Corps incompetence. Whether or not Little Round Top was the military “key” is somewhat irrelevant, because battle veterans North and South increasingly portrayed it as such at postwar gatherings, and placed an increasing spotlight on Sickles’ inability to occupy it. To counter these arguments, the Third Corps party line argued that the Fifth Corps had been tardy in its arrival, and that two Fifth Corps brigades under William Tilton and Jacob Sweitzer had fought poorly while supporting Sickles.
Tilton and Sweitzer’s troubles began when they went to Birney and de Trobriand’s support in the Wheatfield. When General Sykes was bringing Barnes’ Fifth Corps division ont
o the field, Sykes claimed that he had told Birney to close to the left and better support Smith’s battery at Devil’s Den. “I promised to fill the gap he opened,” Sykes reported, “which I did with Sweitzer’s and Tilton’s brigades, of my First Division, posting them myself.” This gap ran from the rocky elevation on the Wheatfield’s northwest corner (later referred to as Stony Hill) toward the left of Graham’s brigade in the Peach Orchard. In reality, Sickles lacked adequate manpower to fill his advanced line, and de Trobriand was unable to connect with Graham’s left even before the battle began. As Longstreet’s attack rolled along Houck’s Ridge, Colonel de Trobriand moved his 17th Maine to bolster his own left, and his 40th New York was detached to support Ward in Plum Run valley. These moves further reduced his ability to cover the gap between the Wheatfield and the Peach Orchard.31
When Barnes’ division approached the battlefield, Vincent’s brigade was in the lead, followed by Sweitzer and Tilton. When Vincent departed for Little Round Top, Sykes and Barnes ordered Sweitzer and Tilton into position near the Stony Hill. Barnes reported that as they moved into position “they passed over a line of troops, understood to be a portion of a brigade of the Third Corps; they were lying down upon the ground.”32
Like Sykes, Barnes was also worried about that gap between Stony Hill and the Peach Orchard. “Upon the right of our position an open space,” Barnes later reported,
apparently unprotected, extended to some distance. Upon [Barnes] calling the attention of General Sykes to it, he remarked, referring to the part of the Third Corps over which we had passed and then lying down in our rear, that those troops were to be removed. The remaining portion of the Third Corps was understood to be at some distance to the right, and much in advance of what seemed to be their natural and true position. This unguarded space was watched with great anxiety. There was little time, however, for deliberation. General Sykes, called by his duty to the left of the line, went toward that portion of his command. The attack of the enemy commenced almost immediately along my front.33
Colonel Sweitzer’s brigade largely faced west toward the Emmitsburg Road, except for his 32nd Massachusetts which, exposed on the brigade’s left, changed front to the south. Sweitzer had only three of his regiments in line of battle (the 9th Massachusetts was detached on picket duty.) Tilton posted his brigade facing south on Stony Hill’s southern slope. Tilton and Sweitzer’s reports are confusing because each officer reported that the other was on his left. Tilton, like Sykes and Barnes, was worried that no infantry was on his right. There is some debate regarding the timing of their arrival on Stony Hill, such as whether they arrived before or after G. T. Anderson’s first attacks on de Trobriand had already been repulsed. Regardless of the exact time, while Vincent and Weed’s brigades were saving Little Round Top, Tilton and Sweitzer went into action awkwardly positioned and with an exposed right flank that worried the Fifth Corps senior officers.34
A modern view of Devil’s and Houck’s Ridge taken from the foot of the “Slaughter Pen.” (Compare to the early postwar view that appears on page 163.) Author
Chapter 10
Gross Neglect or Unaccountable Stupidity
The Federal defense of the Wheatfield was characteristic of Sickles’ and Birney’s disjointed tactical deployments. Regis de Trobriand was under the impression that his role was to support Birney’s other two brigades, so de Trobriand posted his own “in column by regiments, ready to support either of the other two brigades according to circumstances.” When it became apparent that Ward would receive the attack first, de Trobriand positioned the 17th Maine behind the stone wall on the Wheatfield’s southern end to bolster Ward’s right flank. With the 3rd Michigan on the skirmish line and the large 40th New York having earlier been detached into the Plum Run valley, de Trobriand’s line was stretched dangerously thin. When the combat eventually swirled into the Wheatfield, Birney sent an aide “through a hail of bullets” to detach still another regiment. “Tell General Birney,” Colonel de Trobriand replied, “that I have not a man left who has not upon his hands all that he can do, and tell him that, far from being able to furnish reinforcements to anyone, I shall be in need of them myself in less than a quarter of an hour.”
In addition to the brigades of de Trobriand, Tilton, and Sweitzer, the Wheatfield was also supported by two regiments from Burling’s brigade (the 8th New Jersey and 115th Pennsylvania). Burling’s command, like de Trobriand’s, was cannibalized into several pieces, increasing the probability of breakdowns in control as Confederate offensive pressure increased. Birney’s presence in this sector might have been intended to mitigate the resulting confusion, but he seems to have personally been responsible for several of the detachments.1
In the 17th Maine’s rear was Captain George Winslow’s New York battery. These guns were posted on an elevation near the Wheatfield’s northern end, facing southwest towards Rose’s Woods. Once again, Sickles and Birney were unable to “connect” either their infantry or artillery. A 300-yard gap yawned wide between Winslow and John Bigelow’s battery on the Wheatfield Road. Private John Haley of the 17th Maine thought that the artillery was “useless as long as the enemy was under cover of good sized trees.” Winslow admitted he was unable to effectively hit Longstreet’s artillery with counter-battery fire, and the situation barely improved when the Southern infantry commenced its attack. “I was unable from my obscure position to observe the movements of the troops,” Winslow wrote, “and was compelled to estimate distances and regulate my fire by the reports of our own and the enemy’s musketry.”2
Whatever the magnitude of Sickles’ defensive problems, Longstreet’s offensive execution was hardly flawless. G. T. Anderson’s Georgia brigade initially deployed in support of Robertson’s brigade, but by the time it advanced and struck the Federal lines, the Georgians found themselves on Robertson’s left. While Anderson’s extreme right helped dislodge Ward from Houck’s Ridge, the majority of his men slammed into de Trobriand in the Wheatfield. Like most of Longstreet’s July 2 attack, Anderson’s first wave was repulsed and his commanders (like Robertson’s brigade before them) complained about the lack of support on their left. Captain George Hillyer’s 9th Georgia found itself “having for nearly an hour and a half no support on its left, the advance of McLaws’ division being for some reason thus long delayed.” The delay exposed the 9th’s dangling left flank to enfilade fire from McGilvery’s Wheatfield Road artillery line. B. H. Gee of the 59th Georgia offered a simpler explanation for Anderson’s first repulse. “The men were completely exhausted when they made it,” explained Gee, “having double-quicked a distance of some 400 yards, under a severe shelling and a scorching sun.”3
It is unclear exactly when McLaws attacked, but his division may have waited as long as one hour after Hood’s infantry stepped off. The precise reason for the delay has never been clarified, but it has helped fuel theories that Longstreet’s attack was intended to be en echelon. “I was directed not to assault until General Hood was in position,” McLaws wrote his wife on July 7, “Gen H had gone around above me to the right, and found that the enemy were very strongly posted on two rocky hills … before he could aid me it was necessary to carry one of the hills.” In a paper he read in 1878, McLaws claimed he could not attack earlier because “I was waiting General Longstreet’s will [sic].…” General Law, who assumed command of Hood’s division when the latter was severely wounded by the explosion of an artillery shell during the opening minutes of the attack, believed McLaws was supposed to attack at “the same time” as Hood, a belief that adds doubt to the theory the delay was due to a planned en echelon attack.4
When the signal was given to move forward, Kershaw’s South Carolina brigade, positioned on the right side of McLaws’ front line, attacked first. General Kershaw had been directed by Longstreet to attack the Peach Orchard to his left front, “turn his flank, and extend along the cross-road [Millerstown], with my left resting toward the Emmitsburg road.” By this time, Kershaw was aware that an attac
k up the Emmitsburg Road would expose his right flank and rear to the refused portion of Birney’s line that stretched from the Peach Orchard to Houck’s Ridge. Kershaw had also understood that Hood “was to sweep down the enemy’s line in a direction perpendicular to our then line of battle.” Because Hood’s attack had been underway for some time (and for perhaps as long as one hour), it must have been obvious to many of McLaws’ officers that Hood’s attack was not going according to plan. Despite all the heavy fighting that had taken place thus far, Sickles’ left was not being driven in. By the time McLaws’ division was ready to join the fighting, Longstreet’s attack was deteriorating into a series of small frontal assaults rather than a turn of the enemy flank. Studying the situation unfolding to his front, Kershaw determined to “move upon” the stony hill beyond the Rose house opposite his center “so as to strike it with my center, and thus attack the orchard on its left rear.”5
James A. Hessler Page 23