McLaws assaults.
Sickles wounded.
Meantime the peach orchard was being furiously attacked. Exposed here to a severe cross-fire, the Union line crumbled away at every discharge. The resistance was stubborn, as might be expected from such good soldiers as Graham's, but even they could not long maintain such a disadvantageous position, and though the attacking brigades were badly cut up, the enemy broke through there after a bloody contest. Barksdale swept on over the guns, Wofford gathered up what he left behind. All that men could do to stem the tide was done, and all in vain. Graham was wounded and taken prisoner, Sickles himself carried off the field, shot through the leg. In less than two hours Birney's line was clean gone.
As the infantry fell back from the orchard, the artillery posted along the cross-road behind them became, of course, the enemy's object. Many of these guns had to be abandoned, some sacrificed in the effort to delay the enemy's progress. Bigelow's battery obeyed the order to fight to the last with a constancy as worthy of lasting commemoration as Perry's famous "Don't give up the ship!"
Though the position itself was scarcely worth the sacrifice of a single soldier, it was felt that Sickles' troops must be extricated at any cost; and since a battle had been forced we must not be the losers.
Efforts to help Sickles.
So after sending Vincent's brigade to Little Round Top, the rest of Barnes' division went out to help maintain the line where De Trobriand had been fighting; and Caldwell's division of the Second Corps also went to Ward's assistance.
Repulsed from Little Round Top, the enemy fell upon Caldwell. The struggle was brief but bitter. Half a score of general and field officers went down on the Union side. But Caldwell finally succeeded in driving the enemy back across the ravine from which Ward had been dislodged, and two brigades of regulars firmly closed the gap toward Little Round Top.
But the point of support at the orchard being gone, all these troops were in turn driven back after repeated charges and countercharges made across the wheat-field had piled it with the slain of both armies.
Anderson's Confederate division now advanced to perform its share of the work cut out for it; namely, of continuing the assault from right to left.