Battle of Gettysburg: Fighting at Little Round Top

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Theodore Gerrish of the 20th Maine described the battle from his side: ‘Ten minutes have passed since we formed the line…but we have no indications of the enemy: ‘But look! Look! Look!’ exclaim half a hundred men in our regiment at the same time; and no wonder, for right in our front…we see the lines of the enemy. The conflict opens…the carnage began. Our regiment was mantled in fire and smoke.

‘I wish that I could picture with my pen the awful details of that hour–how rapidly the cartridges were torn from the boxes and stuffed in the smoking muzzles of the guns; how the steel rammers clashed and clanged in the heated barrels; how the men’s hands and faces grew grim and black with burning powder; how our little line, baptized with fire, reeled to and fro as it advanced or was pressed back; how our officers bravely encouraged the men to hold and recklessly exposed themselves to the enemy’s fire–a terrible medley of cries, shouts, cheers, groans, prayers, curses, bursting shells, whizzing rifle bullets and clanging steel.

‘The enemy was pouring a terrible fire upon us, his superior forces giving him a great advantage….The air seemed to be alive with lead. The lines at times were so near each other that the hostile gun barrels almost touched….At one time there was a brief lull in the carnage, and our shattered line was closed up, but soon the contest raged again with renewed fierceness….Many of our companies have suffered fearfully….But there is no relief and the carnage goes on.’

Oates now decided to concentrate the 15th Alabama on his right in an effort to outflank the left end of the Union line. Warned that’something very strange was going on’ behind the attacking Confederates, Chamberlain climbed atop a large boulder and saw Oates’ flanking column moving to attack the left flank. The 20th Maine was in a very tight spot. Chamberlain had to maneuver to protect his left flank while actively engaged with the 47th Alabama along his entire front. He reported, ‘Without betraying our peril to any but one or two officers, I had the right wing move by the left flank, taking intervals of a pace or two…extending so as to cover the whole front then engaged; and at the same time moved the left wing to the left rear, making a large angle at the color which was now brought up to the front where our left had first rested.’

The 20th Maine’s line now resembled a ‘V’ composed of a single rank of men. ‘We were not a moment too soon,’ reported Chamberlain, for the 15th Alabama rushed forward against what they expected to be an unprotected left flank, reaching within 10 paces before being stopped by a sudden deadly volley by the new left wing of the 20th Maine. ‘From that moment began a struggle fierce and bloody beyond any that I have witnessed and which lasted in all its fury a full hour,’ reported Chamberlain. Each side fought like madmen. The 20th Maine regimental history simply states, ‘No one could ever describe this part of the fight coherently.’ Chamberlain remembered that ‘the edge of the conflict swayed to and fro, with wild whirlpools and eddies. At times I saw around me more of the enemy than of my own men.’

The Confederates somehow broke through the Union line in several places; there was hand-to-hand fighting. Somehow the 20th Maine line held, but the left wing had been forced back so far that the line now resembled a hairpin and incoming fire on the left was landing in the rear of the right wing. It was now after 7 p.m. and the 20th Maine was in bad shape.

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Tags: 19th Century, America's Civil War, American Civil War, Historical Conflicts

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