Gen. G. K. Warren, Meade’s Chief of Engineers, having assisted Sickles in placing his line, now rode to the crest of Little Round Top and found the hill, “the key to the Union position,” unoccupied except by a signal station. Warren was informed by the signalmen that they believed Confederate troops lay concealed on the wooded ridge a mile to the west. Smith’s New York battery, emplaced at Devil’s Den, immediately was ordered to fire a shot into these woods. The missile, crashing through the trees, caused a sudden stir of the Confederates “which by the gleam of the reflected sunlight on their bayonets, revealed their long lines outflanking the position.” Warren realized Longstreet would strike first at Little Round Top and he observed, too, the difficulty of shifting Sickles’ position from Devil’s Den to the hill.
The Wheatfield as it appeared in 1890. Little Round Top is in the background. (Tipton photograph.)
At this moment Warren noticed the approach of Union troops from the north and rode to meet them. They were Vincent’s and Weed’s brigades, leading Sykes’ corps from reserve position to the front. Intercepting these troops, Warren rushed them to Little Round Top. Law’s Alabama troops were starting to scale the south slope of the hill when Vincent’s men rushed to the attack. Weed’s brigade, following closely, drove over the crest and engaged Robertson’s Texans on the west slope. The arrival of Hazlett’s battery on the summit of the hill is thus described by an eyewitness: “The passage of the six guns through the roadless woods and amongst the rocks was marvelous. Under ordinary circumstances it would have been considered an impossible feat, but the eagerness of the men ... brought them without delay to the very summit, where they went immediately into battle.” A desperate hand-to-hand struggle ensued. Weed and Hazlett were killed, and Vincent was mortally wounded—all young soldiers of great promise.
The struggle at Little Round Top now became stalemated, and Longstreet directed his entire line to attack. The Confederate drive was taken up in turn by the brigades of Benning, Anderson, Kershaw, Semmes, Barksdale, Wofford, Wilcox, Perry, and Wright against the divisions of Birney and Humphreys in the Wheatfield, the Peach Orchard, and along the Emmitsburg Road. Four hours of desperate fighting broke the Peach Orchard salient, an angle in the Union line which was struck from the south and the west. It left the Wheatfield strewn with dead and wounded, and the base of Little Round Top a shambles. Sickles’ men had been driven back, and Longstreet was now in possession of the west slope of Big Round Top, of Devil’s Den, and the Peach Orchard. Little Round Top, that commanding landmark from which Longstreet had hoped to shell the Union lines on Cemetery Ridge and Cemetery Hill, still remained in Union possession.
CULP’S HILL.
In the Confederate plan, Ewell on the left was directed to attack Cemetery Hill and Culp’s Hill in conjunction with Longstreet’s drive. At the appointed time, the guns of Latimer’s battalion on Benner’s Hill, east of Gettysburg, opened a well-directed fire against the Union positions on East Cemetery Hill and Culp’s Hill, but the return fire soon shattered many of Latimer’s batteries and forced the remnants to retire out of range. In the final moments of this action the youthful Major Latimer was mortally wounded.
View of Little Round Top taken soon after the battle. The crest and western slope of the hill had been cleared the year preceding the battle. (Brady photograph.)
