Gettysburg (56 page)

Like small animals fleeing an approaching conflagration, the skirmishers sent out by Strong Vincent’s right-side regiments came scrambling back out of the woods and up the slope to where the union battle line girded
lower Little Round Top. With them were some green-clad figures from the 2nd United States Sharpshooters, still busy dogging Longstreet’s men. Any distraction provided by the fighting at Devil’s Den was forgotten in an instant when the battle lines of the 4th Alabama and the 4th and 5th Texas Regiments appeared at the woods’ edge. “We had to fight the Yankees on a Mountain,” was how a soldier in the 4th Texas would remember it, “where it was very steep and [there were] rocks as large as a meeting house.”

That these Confederate troops, after their long march and difficult advance in the heat, had any fight left in them at all was amazing; that they retained the discipline, courage, and drive to charge across the broken ground into a prepared defense was beyond understanding. In this first attack, the three Confederate regiments hit Vincent’s right flank, with the 83rd Pennsylvania and the 44 th New York taking the brunt of it.

“In an instant a sheet of smoke and flames burst from our whole line,” recalled a Pennsylvania officer, “which made the enemy reel and stagger, and fall back in confusion.” “For the first time in the history of the war, our men began to waver …,” noted a Texan in the 5th. “The balls [were] whizzing so thick around us that it [looked] like a man could hold out a hat and catch it full.” The Confederate line stood the fire longer than the Yankee recollected, but not a great deal longer. Too many key officers were down, too many men on the verge of exhaustion. A number did not fall back but instead lay down at the farthermost point of advance. Many of these were captured by a handful of resolute New Yorkers who, after calling to their comrades to hold their fire, scampered forward to grab some of the shaken Rebels and propel them to the crest as prisoners. “Their dead and wounded were tumbled promiscuously together, so that it was difficult to cross the line where they fell without stepping on them,” testified one of the New York soldiers. Another confronted a frightened Texan who “stood directly in front of me begging me not to shoot him, when a bullet, from the musket of a brother Texan, entered his back.”

Along the tree line, the sweating, thirsty, bone-weary soldiers from Alabama and Texas showed the kind of mettle that made them the stuff of legend. “Now, it was to be expected that our men having tried it and seeing the impossibility of taking the place would have refused to go in again,” wrote a member of the 5th Texas. “But no, they tried it a second time.”

Partly because it had a shorter distance to march before making contact, and partly because its route brought it under a hurry-up fire from the Federal cannon posted near Sherfy’s peach orchard, Tige Anderson’s brigade closed quickly with the Yankee troops by Rose’s wheat field. With McLaws having yet to advance, these Georgians were hammered on both flanks and from their front. “For nearly an hour the enemy were on three sides of us, and a battery of sixteen guns enfilading us with grape,” an officer in the 8th Georgia remembered. “Grape, canister and musket balls fell in a shower like hail around us,” asserted the commander of the 59th Georgia. “I could hear bones crash like glass in a hail storm.” A young soldier in that regiment could only explain to his mother that “our Regiment got Cut all to Peaces.”

By now the Third Corps units of de Trobriand’s brigade were no longer alone, having been reinforced by portions of Andrew Humphreys’ division and joined on their right by the brigades of Colonels William S. Tilton and Jacob B. Sweitzer, both part of Barnes’ First Division of the Fifth Corps. Most of the fighting here was centered on the southwestern border of Rose’s wheat field, where the combined elements of the two Federal corps were able to hold the line, at least for the moment.

The 17th Maine, in de Trobriand’s command, held a key spot behind a stone wall that anchored the left flank of the position. As Anderson’s battle lines approached, according to Private John Haley, “our fire began to tell on their ranks, which were more dense than usual. We peppered them well with musketry while Randolph’s battery, which was on a gentle rise [in the middle of the wheat field] in rear of us, served a dose of grape and canister every few seconds.”
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Somehow, William Oates, his 15th Alabama, and the accompanying 47th Alabama clawed their way toward the crest of Big Round Top. “In places the men had to climb up, catching to the rocks and bushes and crawling over the boulders in the face of the fire of the enemy [sharpshooters], who kept retreating, taking shelter and firing down on us from behind the rocks and crags which covered the side of the mountain thicker than gravestones in a city cemetery,” Oates observed. A number finally reached the
summit. “Some of my men fainted from heat, exhaustion, and thirst,” their commander recorded.

Just minutes before the advance was ordered from Warfield Ridge, Oates had allowed a detail of twenty-two men to gather canteens to be filled at the Andrew Currens farm, a short distance south along the Emmitsburg Road. The detachment had not returned by the time the attack was set to begin. Oates’ hope that these men would rejoin his command was not to be realized, for as they attempted to catch up, they encountered several cells of the 2nd U.S. Sharpshooters, who took them prisoner.

One who did reach Oates, though, was none other than Leigh R. Terrell, whose stentorian tones had launched the brigade’s advance. The plucky aide to Evander Law made his way to the top on horseback. His instructions to Oates were “to press on, turn the Union left, and capture Little Round Top, if possible, and to lose no time.” Oates tried to argue that there was an advantage to be had in his holding his present position, but Terrell’s instructions were peremptory. Oates roused his regiment back into line in readiness to begin moving down the northern slope of Big Round Top.

More Federal firepower was bound for Little Round Top, in the form of Lieutenant Charles E. Hazlett’s Battery D, 5th United States (Light) Artillery. The six ten-pounder parrott cannon had been attached to James Barnes’ division while it began moving from its reserve position to the front. At first Hazlett’s guns had seemed destined for a place near Rose’s wheat field, but then the call had come for help on Little Round Top. There was no path visible through the jumble of trees and boulders that collared the cleared summit. Trying afterward to explain how they managed the ascent, one of Hazlett’s officers wrote, “We went there at a trot, each man and horse trying to pull the whole battery by himself.” “Our guns tipped over,” recalled a cannoneer, “[but] we put them back and somehow got them on top of the hill.” Any spare hands were put to use, including those belonging to stragglers from Vincent’s brigade.

The man whose timely warning had brought these Federal troops to this threatened point remained on hand. Gouverneur K. Warren intercepted Charles Hazlett to make the obvious observation that the summit of Little Round Top was a poor position for artillery, as the steep slope rendered it impossible for the guns to bear on the ground directly in their
front. “Never mind that,” Hazlett told Warren. “The sound of my guns will be encouraging to our troops and disheartening to the others, and my battery’s of no use if this hill is lost.”
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As quickly as they could be set in place, Hazlett’s guns began firing on targets below, in the Plum Run valley.

Responding to Strong Vincent’s instructions to deploy skirmishers, Joshua Chamberlain detached the 20th Maine’s Company B (forty-two men) and sent it forward under Captain Walter Morrill. The Maine men had just reached the foot of the northeastern slope of Big Round Top when they heard the tearing sounds of mass musketry to their right and rear, signaling the attack by the Texans and Arkansans against Vincent’s right. Morrill wisely backed off to the east, finally settling on a position behind a stone wall some four hundred feet east of the regiment. Soon after Company B had hunkered into place, a dozen or so U. S. sharpshooters slipped in among them to warn that there were Rebels coming down off Big Round Top. The riflemen offered to stick around, an offer that Morrill gratefully accepted.

Benning’s Georgia brigade moved through the stalled elements of Robertson’s and Law’s Brigades to attack Devil’s Den. It fell to the 20th Georgia to advance across the open slope marking the triangular field. As a resolute Private J. W. Lokey traversed the clearing, he passed by a prone comrade who called out, “‘You had better not go up there; you’ll get shot.’” Lokey ignored the admonition, pressed on nearly to the summit, and got shot. Making his way to the rear he corralled an unwounded Yankee to help him. As the two stumbled out of range, the Federal asked, “‘If you and I had this matter to settle, we would soon settle it, wouldn’t we?’”

The advance of the 20th halted just short of Smith’s abandoned guns. To its right, two other Georgia regiments pushed into the Plum Run Gorge, only to be hit and stopped by counterattacks launched by two Federal regiments sent to help, one (the 40th New York) from de Trobriand’s brigade, the other (the 6th New Jersey) from Burling’s.

The first Confederate regiment to descend from Big Round Top was the 47th Alabama, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Michael J. Bulger, who had taken over in midadvance after Colonel James Washington Jackson collapsed from illness and exhaustion. Bulger was leading his men toward the unseen enemy position when he was met by another of Evander Law’s seemingly indefatigable staff officers, on horseback, who
ordered, “Colonel Bulger, charge that line.” “Tell General Law that I am charging to the best of my ability,” Bulger responded. “For God’s sake put in the Fifteenth [Alabama] upon my right, and my life for it, we’ll drive them when we come to them.”

The 15th had yet to complete its descent when the 47th made contact with Vincent’s line, striking it on the left of the 83rd Pennsylvania and the right of the 20th Maine. Amply warned by their skirmishers, both regiments were ready and hit the 47th with a well-aimed volley that scythed men down, Bulger among them. According to a postwar interview, Bulger crawled for cover into a rocky crevice, where he sat “with the blood gushing from his mouth and nostrils.” Its leadership decimated, its men bewildered, the 47th fell back, its offensive power spent.

Brigadier General Joseph B. Kershaw was a perceptive, determined leader. His brigade had been the first in McLaws’ Division to take its place along Warfield Ridge, opposite Sherfy’s peach orchard. In the time it took for the rest of McLaws’ and all of Hood’s brigades to deploy, Kershaw considered his tactical situation. His preparations were based on two pieces of information. The first was that Hood’s men were “to sweep down the Federal lines in a direction perpendicular to our line of battle.” The second was that once his own South Carolina units (five regiments and a battalion) began their advance, Barksdale’s Mississippi brigade on his immediate left was to “move with me and conform to my movement.” Kershaw planned his assault to target a stony hill located on the western edge of Rose’s wheat field. He had also noted what appeared to be a gap between the hill and the union cannon posted along the Wheatfield Road. He intended to exploit that gap.