Twilight at Little Round Top , livre ebook

T WILIGHT AT L ITTLE R OUND T OP
OTHER WORKS BY GLENN W. LAFANTASIE
Gettysburg Requiem: The Life of William C. Oates (forthcoming) Gettysburg: Colonel William C. Oates, C.S.A. and Lieutenant Frank Haskell, U.S.A. (editor) The Correspondence of Roger Williams, 2 vols. (editor)
T WILIGHT AT L ITTLE R OUND T OP

July 2, 1863- The Tide Turns at Gettysburg
Glenn W. LaFantasie

John Wiley Sons, Inc.
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Copyright 2005 by Glenn W. LaFantasie. All rights reserved
Published by John Wiley Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey Published simultaneously in Canada
Maps copyright 2004 by George Skoch. All rights reserved
Illustration credits: Pages 3, 13, 43, 50, 57, 68, and 73 courtesy of the Library of Congress; page 23 courtesy of Harold D. Simpson History Center, Hill College, Hillsboro, Tex.; page 25 courtesy of Main State Archives, Augusta; page 34 courtesy of Michael Albanese; pages 36, 107, 132, and 158 courtesy of the U.S. Army Military History Institute, Carlisle, Pa.; pages 37 and 69 courtesy of the Alabama Department of Archives and History, Montgomery; page 81 courtesy of the Adams County Historical Society, Gettysburg, Pa.; pages 85, 89 (bottom), and 177 photographs by Mathew Brady. courtesy of the Library of Congress; page 89 (top) drawing by Alfred R. Waud. courtesy of the Library of Congress; pages 117 and 142 drawings by Edwin Forbes, courtesy of the Library of Congress; page 127 painting by Edwin Forbes, courtesy of the Library of Congress; page 195 from Harper s Weekly, courtesy of the Library of Congress; pages 211 and 212 photographs by Alexander Gardner. courtesy of the Library of Congress; pages 213 and 214 photographs by James F. Gibson/Alexander Gardner, courtesy of the Library of Congress; page 218 photograph by Timothy O Sullivan, courtesy of the Library of Congress; page 226 from Frank Leslie s Illustrated Newspaper ; page 252 attributed to Alexander Gardner, courtesy of the Library of Congress; and pages 6, 54, and 165 from the author s collection.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

LaFantasie, Glenn W.
Twilight at Little Round Top, July 2, 1863 : the tide turns at Gettysburg / Glenn W. LaFantasie.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-471-46231-4 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Gettsyburg, Battle of, Gettysburg, Pa., 1863. I. Title.
E475.53.L24 2005
973.7 349-dc22
2004011820
In loving memory of my father and mother, Warren Edward and Edith May
Is war perhaps nothing else but a need to face death, to conquer and master it, to come out of it alive- a peculiar form of denial of our mortality?
- Elisabeth K bler-Ross
C ONTENTS
Preface

Prologue
1 Midnight to Morning
2 Patchwork Plans
3 March, Countermarch
4 On Warfield Ridge
5 A Wild Rush
6 Up Comes Vincent
7 Through the Valley of Death
8 Shouting the Battle Cry
9 Down This Way, Boys
10 A Sorry Place
11 Everywhere Men Torn and Broken
12 Twilight
13 Night of the Dead
14 Waiting for Tomorrow
Epilogue

Notes
Bibliography
Index
P REFACE
During the great national conflagration of the Civil War, the contending armies of North and South often sought a common tactical goal in the bloody battles they fought across America: occupy and hold the high ground. The technological development of firearms-especially long-range rifled artillery-over the first half of the nineteenth century meant that such weapons could potentially be the key to victory when deployed on hills and ridges. Napoleon put the maxim well: In mountain warfare the assailant has always the disadvantage. Civil War soldiers came to learn that charging uphill was not only exhausting, it was usually deadly.
At Gettysburg, several hills figured prominently in the battle and ultimately determined the outcome of the military contest there-Oak Hill, Blocher s (Barlow) Knoll, Benner s Hill, Cemetery Hill, Culp s Hill, Big Round Top, and Little Round Top. Over the years, Little Round Top has acquired a legendary reputation as the place where the Army of the Potomac averted destruction and ensured that the three-day battle would end in a Union victory. That legend has been enhanced in recent years by the rise in popularity of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, who has become known as the savior of Little Round Top, largely as a result of his portrayal in Michael Shaara s novel The Killer Angels (1974), which won the Pulitzer Prize; Ken Burns s monumental PBS documentary The Civil War (1989); and the theatrical movie Gettysburg (1993), based on Shaara s novel. While Chamberlain s fame has tended to overshadow the role that other individuals played in attacking and defending the hill, there is no doubt that his renown has served at the same time to spread an awareness of Little Round Top among Civil War enthusiasts and the general public. Little Round Top is now the most visited spot at Gettysburg National Military Park, and visitors regularly leave tokens of their affection-poems, votive candles, coins, flags-to Chamberlain and his brave men at the base of the marble monument to the 20th Maine Regiment.
But there is more to the Little Round Top story than fiction and legend, glory and remembrance. In the late afternoon of July 2, 1863, thousands of men struggled over this parcel of terrain, many of them giving their lives as they grappled to capture the hill or defend it. Its significance was real enough for those who fought there. To understand the hill s tactical importance, though, we might consider the words of Lieutenant General Antoine-Henri Baron de Jomini, the great French military theorist: There is in every battlefield a decisive point [i.e., place], the possession of which, more than any other, helps secure the victory, by enabling its holder to make proper application of the principles of war. At Gettysburg, Little Round Top-the eye in the shank of the Union army s famous fishhook line-was one such place.
As the battle on July 2 roared south of the town, both armies determined that the hill was of vital importance to them and to the cause of victory. In the end, the Union triumph on Little Round Top set the stage for the battle that was to be fought on the following day, July 3, because Federal possession of the hill meant that General Robert E. Lee s options for any further attacks against the defensive line of the Army of the Potomac would be, by necessity, severely limited. Having failed to turn the flanks of the Union army that rested on high ground, Lee chose to attack the Federal center on Cemetery Ridge-a doomed assault that would become forever known in American military annals as Pickett s Charge. In that sense, I would argue that the victory on Little Round Top augured well for the Union s victory at Gettysburg, and that it was the fighting on the second day, not the third, that sealed the fate of the Army of Northern Virginia in its second invasion of the North.
When it is not singling out Chamberlain for magnified praise, the Little Round Top legend also emphasizes how several key officers on both sides, using their quick wits and their formidable courage, shaped the battle on the hill s slopes that summer afternoon; their various decisions, good and bad, brought the contest to a bloody but firm conclusion. Yet the fight for Little Round Top was ultimately determined by the grim-faced, rock-hard soldiers of the line, North and South, who gritted their teeth, braved thunder and flames, and followed their officers commands as much as human endurance allowed. All told, Little Round Top was a grinding and mangling soldiers battle. An enlisted man in the 44th New York Infantry informed his friends at home that the battle had been a soldiers fight: The battle of Gettysburg belongs to the rank and file of the Army of the Potomac. The battle was not won by any superior handling of the troops; after our lines were once formed, they stood so. It was by the stubborn bravery of the men that the battle was won for us.
This book tells their stories, officers and enlisted men alike. I have attempted to render, in as many detailed strokes as I can, a picture of who these men were and what they experienced on Little Round Top as the shadows lengthened and as twilig